what i’m noticing
Writing on culture, leadership, and the things organisations avoid.
Most of what I do happens in rooms - workshops, leadership conversations, post-incident rebuilding. This is where I write some of it down. Pieces on the eight things that shape culture, the conversations leaders are avoiding, and what staying human under pressure actually looks like.
Your “Culture Problem” Is Usually a Leadership Problem Wearing a Disguise
We call it a culture problem because it’s easier to say. But in my experience, when an organisation’s culture is genuinely broken, the fault line almost always traces back to leadership behaviour, not vague culture and pretending otherwise wastes a year.
Three Tools I Actually Use to Find What’s Broken (Not Just Treat the Symptoms)
Last time I made the case that the away day isn’t the fix, that most wellbeing initiatives treat the symptom while the system underneath stays broken. This time, three practical tools I actually use with leadership teams to find what’s really wrong, no facilitator or budget required.
The Away Day Isn’t the Fix
Most leaders can tell when something’s wrong, so they book an away day, launch a wellbeing week, or put new values up on the staffroom wall. Three months later, nothing’s actually changed. Here’s why the visible fix rarely touches the system underneath it, and what does.
The Promotion Trap: Why Your Best Teacher Isn’t Automatically Your Best Leader
We keep promoting our best teachers into management and calling it leadership development — then acting surprised when they struggle. It’s not a hiring problem. It’s a culture system running on hope instead of design. Here’s the pattern I see everywhere, and what actually fixes it.
The Problem Isn’t Communication. It’s Trust Wearing a Communication Costume.
Ask any leadership team in FE what’s holding their culture back and someone will say ‘communication.’ More cascades, a tighter newsletter, a clearer intranet. I’ve sat in enough of those rooms to say this plainly: it’s almost never communication. It’s trust — and communication is just the safer word people reach for
The Culture You Build For Ofsted Isn’t The Culture You Actually Have
If the only evidence of your culture is the evidence you’d show an inspector, you don’t have a culture, you have a performance.
Amy Fowles on why compliance and care so often get confused in FE, and the one question that tells you which one you’re actually running.
Your Staff Survey Isn’t Listening. It’s Waiting.
Most “you said, we did” plans should be called “you said, we noted.” The fix isn’t a better survey – it’s closing the gap between feedback and action to weeks, not months.
There is only one family
For ten years I heard one word used to keep people loyal: family. This is the real story of what it cost me to stop believing it and why ELEV8 exists because of what I lost, not despite it.
You Don’t Know Your Culture. You Know Its Highlight Reel.
I don’t think you know what your culture is like. I think you know what it looks like when it knows you’re watching.