Work Collaborative

"Culture eats strategy for breakfast." Peter Drucker. Apparently. First things first: Drucker didn't say it. Looks like it got pinned on him after he died. But that's not the point. The point is the phrase isn't quite right. The cleaner version comes from Edgar Schein (shout out to Dr Kathryn Taylor for synthesising his work in our latest Work Collaborative paper). Culture doesn't eat strategy. It contains it. Contains. Your strategy doesn't sit next to your culture, competing with it for breakfast. It lives inside it. The culture is the container. The strategy is what you're carrying. So a strong strategy in a poor culture has nowhere to live. It leaks out. That's why it fails. But a strong culture on its own isn't enough either. A container with nothing in it just sits there. Good people, good values, no direction. The culture holds the strategy. The strategy gives the culture somewhere to go. Sometimes I reckon we can spend so much time on culture, on what makes a good one, that we forget to put anything in it.

Beyond the School Gates, a new blog on why community context and connection must shape system change. As schools increasingly act as community anchors, the barrier isn’t ambition but connection across education, health and public services. If you work in local authority, SEND, school leadership or system change, this 4‑minute read offers practical reflections on building collective agency. Read here: https://wix.to/heyVn41 #SystemsLeadership #Education #PublicServices #CommunityImpact #SchoolLeadership

Properly useful rundown from Jasmine Norden in TES on the policy changes heading for schools in 2026-27, plus a timeline visual mapping when each one lands. Both worth your time. H/t Jon Severs for surfacing it. The reaction we're hearing from leaders looking at that list: oh no. Which is exactly the moment a community-led approach has to kick in. Not every centrally-mandated change deserves the same response. Some are statutory and just need clean delivery. Some quietly fold into work you're already doing. A few are genuinely worth bringing the full community into. And some are worth parking until the detail drops. So we've sketched a four-lane sorter to help leaders run that list through a filter. The three questions at the bottom are pulled from Change Starts Here, by Efraim Lerner and Shane Leaning. Protect the strategy you've already chosen. That's the work. Jasmine's piece (timeline included) linked in the comments ↓

Schools already hold most of the wisdom they need to change well. The problem is how rarely they're trusted to use it. Work Collaborative is a not-for-profit working to put that confidence back where it belongs, inside the school. In this short video, hear our executive director, Shane Leaning, talk through what the collaborative is for, the two free research papers out this month, the three new working groups getting started, the advisory board taking shape, and how you can be part of any of it. It's worth a few minutes of your time. Press play. A few thank yous, because none of this is solo work. To Dr Kathryn Taylor EdD FCCT and The Bridge, for our first commissioned paper. To Tamara Zaple Rolfs FCCT and Valentina Devid, for stepping up to lead new work into being. And to Efraim Lerner, co-founder, who has shaped this from the very start. Whatever your role in education, there's a place for you in this. The quick form is in the comments. It takes a couple of minutes, and everyone who fills it in goes into a draw for a copy of Change Starts Here by Shane Leaning and Efraim Lerner. Come and build it with us.

'We didn't go to a product to help us frame great teaching - we went to our teachers'. What a brilliant post! Creating a shared understanding of excellent practice matters - the starting point has to be surfacing the expertise already in the school, so frameworks and playbooks are deeply rooted in context. Great teaching isn't 'implemented' - it's recognised, mobilised and celebrated.

Using Shane Leaning and Efraim Lerner’s brilliant book Change Starts Here to support the thinking behind the exciting projects we have coming up for September!

Okay. Deep breath. I’ve just signed with Crown House Publishing for a book to come out in 2027. Excitement doesn’t quite cover it. This is big. More soon.

The most important paper on school change this year. Dr Kathryn Taylor EdD FCCT's Beyond the quick fix: culture, agency and sustainable change in education names what most school leaders feel but struggle to articulate: why well-meaning initiatives keep collapsing, and what it actually takes to make change stick. A few reasons it matters: It refuses the two dead ends. - Top-down compliance burns teachers out. - Laissez-faire autonomy breeds inconsistency. Kathryn sets out a third path, what she calls tight democratic implementation, where leaders hold firm on direction while genuinely empowering teacher expertise. The cost of getting this wrong is spelled out plainly. Four decades of performative accountability haven't just failed to shift outcomes at the pace we need; they've produced moral injury, burnout, and the retention crisis we're all now living with. Psychological safety is treated as a pre-condition for learning, not a nice-to-have. Teachers who fear looking incompetent won't learn. And if they don't learn, nothing changes. There's a sharp focus on de-implementation too, the thing leaders rarely name. If you keep adding without ever subtracting, don't be surprised when your staff burn out. It's all grounded in structuration theory, which gives leaders a proper way to understand why their carefully planned initiatives so often mutate into something unrecognisable by the time they reach the classroom. If you lead a school, work with those who do, or care where this sector's heading, read it.