Muscle Memory: The Invisible Ingredient of Schools

One of the most overlooked influences on school culture may be something we normally associate with sport rather than education: muscle memory.

Think about riding a bike, playing a musical instrument or even scrolling through your phone. When we first learn these activities, they require conscious thought. We concentrate on every movement and regularly make mistakes. But through repetition and practice, the actions become increasingly automatic. Eventually, we perform them with remarkably little conscious effort.

Scientists generally describe this as procedural memory: our ability to learn and retain skills and processes through repeated practice. But what if schools have a form of muscle memory too?

Of course, an organisation does not literally have muscles. However, the concept provides a useful metaphor for understanding school culture. Over time, schools develop an organisational muscle memory.

Processes that initially require explanation, modelling and conscious effort gradually become automatic. Staff know what happens. Students know what happens. Leaders know what happens. Eventually, nobody needs to ask. It is simply "how we do things here."

And that phrase should sound familiar, because it is also one of the simplest definitions of organisational culture.

New schools don't have muscle memory

This becomes particularly interesting when considering new or rapidly growing schools. An established school may possess years, or even decades, of organisational memory that is easily taken for granted. A new school does not have this luxury.

Consider something as apparently straightforward as staff duties. In an established school, staff may instinctively know where duty points are, when they need to arrive and which areas require particular attention. They know where sightlines are restricted, where students are most likely to congregate and what to do if a colleague is absent.

They may also understand the less tangible aspects of performing the duty effectively: wearing a high-visibility jacket, positioning themselves rather than standing passively, actively scanning the environment, interacting positively with students, challenging inappropriate behaviour and not becoming distracted by their phone. Very little of this may appear in the duty rota. It doesn't need to. The organisation has developed muscle memory.

Now imagine the same duty system being introduced into a new school with a large number of new staff. The spreadsheet might be identical. The outcome probably won't be.

Without organisational muscle memory, leaders may need to spend significant time and resources explicitly teaching, modelling, rehearsing and revisiting behaviours that an established school simply assumes people understand.

This has significant implications for leadership. Sometimes what looks like a failure of commitment is actually a failure of practice. We assume people know how to do something because we have told them what to do. But knowing and doing are very different things.

It can also explain why initiatives that are taken for granted in established schools can be that much harder to implement and embed in new schools.

Culture needs rehearsal

This is where the metaphor becomes particularly useful. Nobody would expect somebody to become an accomplished pianist because they had been shown a PowerPoint explaining where the keys were.

Yet schools can sometimes introduce important cultural changes in almost exactly this way. A new behaviour system is presented during INSET. A new routine appears in the staff handbook. Expectations are emailed to staff. And then we expect fluency.
If we want cultural behaviours to become automatic, they need something closer to deliberate practice. Explain it. Model it. Practise it. Correct it. Repeat it. Then repeat it again.

This applies equally to students. Walking calmly between lessons, entering classrooms, responding to instructions, using equipment, attending assemblies or leaving the building at the end of the day are all behaviours that can become part of the school's organisational muscle memory.

When they are sufficiently embedded, they require less conscious thought. Culture begins to feel effortless. Of course, it isn't effortless at all. It only looks effortless because somebody put considerable effort into establishing it.

But muscle memory can also be wrong

There is, however, another side to this. Muscle memory does not distinguish between good and bad technique. Practise something incorrectly often enough and the incorrect technique can become automatic.

The same is true of schools. Poorly organised meetings can become normal. Weak duty practice can become normal. Starting lessons five minutes late can become normal. Ignoring minor disruption can become normal. Leaders failing to follow through on decisions can become normal. "That's just how we do it here."

Suddenly, organisational muscle memory stops supporting culture and starts protecting dysfunction. This creates a particular challenge for established schools.
New schools may struggle because they lack muscle memory. Established schools may struggle because they have too much of the wrong muscle memory.

Changing an embedded practice can therefore be considerably harder than creating one from scratch. Leaders are not simply introducing a new behaviour; they are asking people to consciously override something that has become automatic.

Consider learning to ride a bike incorrectly. If poor technique has been practised thousands of times, simply explaining the correct technique may not be enough. The old behaviour must first be recognised, interrupted and then replaced through repeated practice. School culture can work in much the same way.

This means that when leaders encounter resistance to change, the explanation is not necessarily that staff oppose the destination. Sometimes the organisation is simply attempting to overcome years of established muscle memory.

The advantage of being new

This also presents new schools with an enormous opportunity. They may lack organisational memory, but they also have fewer deeply embedded habits to unlearn.
The first assembly matters. The first parents' evening matters. The first examination series matters. The first transition day matters. The first staff meeting matters.
Not because any of these need to be perfect, but because every repetition begins teaching the organisation what "normal" looks like.

The challenge for leaders of new schools is therefore not simply to establish systems. It is to deliberately practise the culture they eventually want to become automatic.
Because today's consciously rehearsed behaviour can become tomorrow's organisational instinct.

Muscle memory doesn't disappear overnight

There is another interesting feature of muscle memory. Once a skill has been learned thoroughly, returning to it after a period away is often easier than learning it for the first time.

Someone who has not ridden a bicycle for ten years can often climb back on and rediscover the skill surprisingly quickly. Similarly, previous physical training can make returning to exercise easier than beginning from scratch. Organisations can experience something similar.

An established school may stop running an activity for several years—perhaps mock interviews following examinations, a particular transition event or an annual community project. When it is reintroduced, there may still be staff knowledge, documents, stories and expectations that allow the school to recreate it relatively quickly. The organisation remembers.

This may help explain why established schools can sometimes absorb change or reintroduce systems more easily than newer organisations. They possess a reservoir of experience that is largely invisible until it is needed. But again, the same principle applies negatively. Old habits can return too.

This is why leaders should be interested not only in what their school currently does, but in what their organisation has learned to do automatically.

What is your school's muscle memory?

Perhaps this gives leaders a different way of thinking about culture. Walk around your school and look for the things people do without being told:

•   What happens when the bell rings?

•   What happens when a student drops litter?

•   What happens when a colleague needs help?

•   What happens when behaviour deteriorates?

•   What happens when somebody makes a mistake?

•   What happens when a leader says they will do something?

Those automatic responses may tell you more about your culture than any values statement ever could.

Because culture is not only what an organisation believes. It is what an organisation has practised so many times that it no longer has to think about it.

The challenge for school leaders is therefore deceptively simple: What behaviours are we practising today that we want our school to perform automatically tomorrow?