Six weeks is a long time. That’s the point.
Effective leadership requires the traveller's mindset: becoming a curious observer in one's own organisation to ensure one keeps changing one's mind.
Learning
What makes learning worthwhile? Essays on teaching, curriculum, assessment and the future of schools, alongside what businesses, teams and individuals can learn.
27 articles. The highlighted label is each article’s primary category; other labels are secondary tags.
Don’t outsource all the hard work
Writing is thinking; by outsourcing the process to AI, professionals risk losing their taste, discernment, and the capacity to lead with clarity.
Why don’t more Boards visit school like this?
Board immersion days allow governors to move beyond pruned reports and experience the lived, human reality of a school's daily operational life.
Don’t Waste “Tired You”
Fatigue is not always a sign to stop; it can be a productive state for generating the raw, imperfect material needed for future brilliant work.
Are you listening to the people closest to the problem?
True listening is a deliberate discipline, not a courtesy; leaders must seek out the candid insights of those closest to the daily problems.
Swimming on the living-room floor and other lessons we might avoid
Banning social media for young people is like swimming on dry land; true resilience is built through engagement, not avoidance of real-world contexts.
Some ideas don’t arrive with a fanfare
The best ideas are often slow hunches that require leaders to create space for reflection so that shared clarity can surface organically.
“The builders may have decided our pedagogy…”
Default architectural plans often institutionalise outdated teaching; deep consultation before design ensures spaces support actual student needs.
Your Classroom Is Speaking… But What Is It Saying?
Classroom layouts communicate powerful messages; teachers can experiment with small, intentional changes to align their space with their pedagogy.
What jazz legend Thelonius Monk can teach us about improvisation
Improvisation in leadership is about being well-prepared enough to listen to the room and find the right path in service of others.
The hidden psychology of People, Place and Pedagogy
Successful transformation requires designing for human nature, using rules to create new habits and relying on trust to enable change.
What if your best decisions begin with doing nothing at all?
Clarity for difficult decisions is often found in the gaps of silence and rest, not in the frenzy of an always-on work culture.
There is a background noise that boosts thinking. The other kind kills it.
Optimal creative thinking requires specific background environments, while fragmented, inconsistent noise disrupts focus and mental clarity.
The problem with feedback? You might be starting in the wrong place.
Feedback often fails because it lacks a shared vision; schools must define what excellence looks like before attempting to measure performance.
Want better learning? Design for this first.
Beyond content and competences, schools must prioritise designing spaces that foster deep human connection and the ability to relate to others.
Design isn’t decoration: it’s decision-making.
Successful school architecture requires bridging the gap between institutional ambition and design through prototyping and meaningful language.
Collaboration or cooking: which matters more?
Schools should reconsider their definition of basic education to prioritise practical life skills that foster student confidence and independence.
Pretty much everything about leadership training is wrong.
Generic, event-based leadership training fails because it lacks relational depth and does not address the systemic barriers within schools.
What’s your manifesto for 2025?
Writing your own manifesto should be an uplifting, optimistic exercise, particularly as we approach the new year.
What’s your philosophy? It defines more than you think…
Once you know the answers to those questions for yourself, only then you can set about finding a shared philosophy - or purpose - for your team.
We know it’s bad. But we keep doing it.
But grades don't just hurt the kid - they actually harm learning itself.
Flying lessons focus on one thing: how not to stop flying.
When you start to worry that you’re sinking closer to the farm, it’s time to learn.
Personalisation isn’t the strategy you’re looking for.
But we rarely ask, what are the types of relationships schools should model and encourage for everyone, adults and young people alike?
Show, don’t tell; listen, don’t preach.
All too often, we tell young people what to do because it’s so much easier than showing them. Septuagenarian rocker Alice Cooper has rewritten his perennia
Don’t let fear write the script.
Some of the schools we’re spending time with this past few months have struggled. They’re in a balancing act that nearly every school plays out nearly ever
How to unlock the magic of undivided attention.
When I worked in the television industry in 2008, we were at the dawn of cell phones actually being able to do things, and we were experimenting how to inv
You’re a millionaire investor without even realising it.
Imagine your local school offers you a stake in it for an incredibly low price. All you need to do is spend less than the price of a textbook and you get a