As a schoolboy on the Scottish island of Skye, Dugald Ross found dinosaur footprints. His teachers didn’t believe him.

Aged 15, he left school, founded the Staffin Fossil Museum on the island, and discovered other dinosaur prints, helping to excavate bones.

It was only in 1982, when Dugald was 25, that visiting university Professors and students confirmed that they, not Dugald, had discovered the first dinosaur prints on the island.

At least twice, it seems, Dugald’s voice wasn’t heard, and yet his schoolboy discovery helped make Skye famous as Scotland’s “Dinosaur Island”. In 2024, the University of Edinburgh awarded him an honorary doctorate for his perseverance and contribution to the field. Sadly, Dugald died last year from an illness, aged 68.

Most organisations do not ignore young people or quiet people because they are cruel. They ignore them because they are busy, or sure of themselves. They might be convinced that experience sees more clearly than youth.

But often, the people with the freshest view of your organisation are the ones with the least power in it.

In schools, that should make us stop and think. Here’s one repeated example of what we hear from young people, every week:

Every month, we gather data from thousands of students across some of the world’s leading schools. One message comes through again and again: young people want more challenge, but not more work.

The distinction matters. They are not asking for longer to-do lists, fuller timetables or heavier homework. They are asking for learning that makes them think hard, solve something that matters, wrestle with complexity, and feel themselves getting better.

And they can tell the difference between busy work and meaningful learning better than we can.

Adults often confuse rigour with volume or endurance. Young people rarely do.

Young people know when a task is stretching them.
They know when it is just filling time.
They know when “challenge” is really just compliance in disguise.

They tell us that too much of the work filling their days feels irrelevant or disconnected from success. It is activity without meaning.

But when they are given something genuinely challenging and worthwhile, the response is different. They think more deeply, they remember what they’ve learned, and they want more of it.

The schools we work with take that on board, and rethink what is taught, how it’s learned, and overhaul their ideas of assessment.

This is not just a story about schools. It is a story about any organisation trying to decide where to go next.

Too often, leaders ask for feedback on their plans after the direction has already been set. They invite comment on the wallpaper after the paste has dried.

That is not listening. Listening is not a courtesy at the end of decision-making. It is a discipline at the beginning of it.

Young people are often the first to notice where the official story and the lived experience no longer match. That kind of honesty is gold dust.

Have the adults built organisations humble enough to hear their communities?

Before your next strategic plan, curriculum review, innovation sprint or vision workshop, ask the youngest people in your community: What here feels meaningful, and what just feels like busy work?

Then have the courage to believe the answer the first time, and see what discoveries you make as a result.