Better Isn't Always Better

In 1985, Coca-Cola made what would become one of the most infamous marketing mistakes in corporate history. In an effort to compete with Pepsi — who had been gaining ground through the famous “Pepsi Challenge” taste tests — Coca-Cola decided to radically reformulate their flagship drink.

CEO Roberto Goizueta took to the stage at a New York press conference and proudly announced a new recipe that was, in his words:

“Smoother, rounder, yet bolder — a more harmonious flavour.”

On paper, everything looked perfect. In blind taste tests, the new product scored overwhelmingly positive reactions. It even beat Pepsi. Executives were convinced they’d cracked the code. But then reality hit. People Didn’t Just Dislike New Coke…They were furious.

The company received over 8,000 complaints a day. Customers hoarded the original Coke. Protests formed. Hotlines collapsed under the volume of angry calls. Coca-Cola had misunderstood what consumers valued. Sure, they liked the flavour — but they loved what the drink represented: Heritage. Familiarity. Identity. Nostalgia.

Coca-Cola had lost sight of something simple:

• People don’t just buy products.
• They buy what those products mean to them.

Within 79 days, “New Coke” was quietly removed. The original recipe returned triumphantly as Coca-Cola Classic — and the world exhaled.

What Schools Can Learn From New Coke

When making cultural or strategic changes, especially in education, taste-tests aren’t enough. You can have:

✔ Data
✔ Evidence
✔ A clearly superior model

…and still trigger resistance if:

✘ People feel the change is happening to them, not with them
✘ You remove something loved without acknowledging its value
✘ The symbolic meaning of the old way gets ignored

The Leadership Takeaway

Before launching a change:

• Try to create opportunities to involve your community in testing the idea
• Understand what people are emotionally attached to
• Understand the history of what came before
• Communicate not just what is changing, but why

Because sometimes…Improving something isn’t the same as making it better.

Culture is built on meaning. Meaning cannot simply be reformulated.

Why “Better” Fails

New Coke wasn’t a failure of flavour — it was a failure of cultural intelligence.

Coca-Cola fixated on the product and forgot about the people. They understood preferences, but not identity. They measured the sip, but not the story.

Change loses its way when leaders assume that improvement is purely technical — a smarter system, a refined idea, a new model. But culture change isn’t a flavour swap. It’s a shift in meaning, belonging, and what people believe the organisation stands for.

Schools can forget this too. We replace behaviour frameworks, curriculums, or pastoral structures with “better” ones — but can overlook how much comfort and pride staff and students draw from what already exists.

A Simple Culture Check for Leaders

Before changing something that seems inferior, ask:

✅ What purpose has this served — even if imperfectly?
✅ What identities are wrapped up in the current way of doing things?
✅ Who might feel a sense of loss if we remove it?
✅ How can we honour the old as we introduce the new?

If we can answer those honestly, we build change that strengthens rather than fractures community.

A Final Thought

The lesson of New Coke isn’t “don’t change.” It’s this:

Change that ignores meaning will always taste wrong — no matter how good it looks in the data.

Better isn’t always better. But belonging always is.

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The Values Monolith

In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the monolith appears as a sleek, imposing object — perfectly smooth, mysterious, and seemingly full of higher purpose. It’s a symbol of evolution and intelligence… or at least, it should be.

But imagine if the astronauts never understood why it was there. Imagine if they just walked past it every morning on their way to the mess hall.

That’s what many school values displays become: a silent object, worshipped for its form but not understood for its purpose.

When Values Become Wallpaper

Every school wants to present itself as driven by strong, positive values. But sometimes, the way those values are chosen and displayed can completely undermine their impact.

I once visited a school that proudly showcased a “values monolith” in its reception area — a towering display of more than twenty worthy words wrapped around the school logo. Every staff member passed it each morning. It was impossible to miss.

And yet… it made almost no difference to the culture of the school.

Why? Because no one in the school had actually chosen those values. Staff and students alike had been left out of the process entirely. Without ownership, those values held little meaning. They were decorative — not lived.

Worse still, the sheer number of words created value overload. Many were effectively synonyms that blurred into each other until the entire display became background noise. In trying to stand for everything, the school ended up standing for nothing.

What Makes Values Actually Work?

In most schools, three to five carefully selected values are enough to shape culture meaningfully — but only if:

• They are chosen with genuine staff and student involvement
• Everyone understands what they look like in practice
• They are revisited frequently, not left to gather dust
• They are visually represented in a way that reinforces memory and pride

Values should translate into observable behaviours:

• How we greet each other.
• How we respond to setbacks.
• How we celebrate success.

If you can’t see a value happening in corridors, classrooms, and conversations, it’s not a value — it’s wallpaper.

Performative Culture vs. Lived Culture

Displays and branding have their place. Professional design and smart placement can offer visual cues that reinforce behaviour — but only if the values themselves carry authentic weight.

Otherwise, they risk becoming performative — a glossy façade attempting to mask deeper cultural cracks.

When people feel part of creating the culture, they feel part of the community.

A Simple Values Audit

A helpful test for any school leader:

• Do staff and students use the values language naturally?
• Could a visitor identify our values simply by observing interactions?
• Do our systems — praise, behaviour, curriculum, recruitment — align with what we claim to value?

If the answer is no to any of these, the work isn’t finished.

Summary

Values aren’t a poster. They are what people live — and live together. Culture isn’t what we say on the wall — it’s what we tolerate in the hall. If we want values to matter, they must be owned, understood, and embedded… not just displayed.

HAL 9000 might say:

“I’m afraid I can’t let you ignore those values, Dave.”

And he’d be right.

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