Strategic Schools
Get simple and practical ideas to enhance your educational leadership in under 20 minutes. Join educational researcher and author Dr Simon Breakspear as he shares key insights and practical tools that can help you to find greater focus, flow and impact in an increasingly overwhelming educational landscape.
Each year Simon Breakspear works with hundreds of schools and thousands of educational leaders. He received a degree in Psychology from The University of NSW, a Master of Science from the University of Oxford and a PhD in Education from The University of Cambridge.
Episodes
27 episodes
Ep. 27: Working at a Natural Pace
In this episode, Simon explores why effective school improvement isn’t about going fast or slow - it’s about finding a natural pace. Drawing on lessons from fitness and recovery, he unpacks how leaders can tune into their team’s capacity, avoid...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 27
•
8:27
Ep. 26: Streamlining Improvement Plans through Pruning
Many school improvement plans are overloaded from the start. In this episode, Simon explores how to integrate The Pruning Principle into your planning cycle - by subtracting before you add. Learn how to reduce unrealistic commitments, embed sub...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 26
•
8:53
Ep. 25: How to find 1 additional week per year
By trimming just one hour of meetings per week, you could reclaim a full work week each year. In this episode, Simon explores how small shifts in meeting cadence, duration, and structure can unlock major time savings and boost focus. Learn how ...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 25
•
8:02
Ep. 24: Embracing Personal Pruning
In this episode, Simon shares why the best place to start pruning isn’t at the system level - it’s in your own life. From deleting unused apps to unsubscribing from email lists, he offers practical, low-stakes ways to reclaim clarity and focus....
•
Season 1
•
Episode 24
•
14:17
Ep. 23: The Sunk Cost Fallacy
In this episode, Simon Breakspear unpacks the sunk cost fallacy - a powerful cognitive bias that keeps educators clinging to ineffective programs simply because they've already invested time, money, or energy. This hidden trap can block the str...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 23
•
8:23
Ep. 22: The Pruning Principle Explained
In this episode, Simon reads from Chapter 2 of The Pruning Principle, his recently released book, exploring how ancient horticultural wisdom — yes, pruning olive trees and grapevines — can offer a fresh lens for tackling overload in education. ...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 22
•
10:58
Ep. 21: The Additive Trap
Explore the idea of "frenzied stagnation" - the state where educators are busier than ever but making little meaningful progress. In this episode, Simon unpacks the "additive trap" in schools: the relentless habit of doing more without letting ...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 21
•
9:07
Ep. 20: Psychological Safety
Leading complex improvement requires learning, making mistakes, offering alternative perspectives and asking when we aren’t sure about the next steps. To enable this, we need a safe platform for interpersonal risk-taking. In this episode, Simon...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 20
•
5:51
Ep. 19: Team Health
It’s time to move beyond the notion of heroic educational leadership. Improvement is a team sport, and leaders need to purposefully team the teams they are in. In this episode, Simon shares his concept of Team Health. He explains what it is, wh...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 19
•
7:07
Ep. 18: Running Retrospectives
In this episode, Simon shares one of his favourite tools for helping teams reflect, learn and adapt: The Retrospective. This simple routine involves teams systematically working through a series of questions at the end of an improvement cycle. ...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 18
•
6:25
Ep. 17: Less
What if the answer was less? In education, we naturally tend to try to solve problems and improve things by adding additional programs, initiatives and responsibilities. Too often, we overlook subtraction as a strategy for improvement. In this ...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 17
•
4:22
Ep. 16: Building Social Proof
Building social proof is a crucial step in any school change journey. When individuals see that others within your context have embraced the change and experienced positive outcomes, they are more likely to feel confident and motivated to follo...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 16
•
7:00
Ep. 15: The Power of Kanban
We are looking for ways to better structure and organise our work during long-term improvement projects. The Kanban approach to team rapid action planning can provide enhanced clarity, motivation and transparency about what needs to be done and...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 15
•
8:06
Ep. 14: Working in Cycles
Working in 5-8 week cycles can unlock new progress and momentum. At Strategic Schools, we help teams to get out of yearly implementation plans and into working in shorter, more responsive cycles of implementation work. Simon explains how you ca...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 14
•
6:48
Ep. 13: Build Momentum
How can you build and sustain momentum through complex improvement journeys? In this episode, Simon identifies the overlooked role of leaders in sustaining momentum through improvement work. He unpacks simple strategies leaders can take to rebu...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 13
•
10:12
Ep. 12: Identify your Must Do’s
What are the essential things that only you can do? In our overwhelmed and overloaded state, we often lose the ability to prioritise effectively. Simon unpacks a simple framework for pausing and identifying what matters most right now. The most...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 12
•
10:30
Ep. 11: Celebrate & Course-Correct
Improvement work is often a long-term endeavour. In the messy middle, our teams can lose track of the progress they are making and the lessons they are learning. In this episode, Simon explores the importance of setting up a regular rhythm of c...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 11
•
6:09
Ep. 10: Attune with Empathy
How can we more effectively understand and respond to change resistance? Attuning with empathy can provide fresh insights into what’s really happening for those who are experiencing the change on the ground. In this episode, Simon explores simp...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 10
•
10:12
Ep. 09: Running Experiments
If we are going to be successful in leading organisational change, we need to start small. In this episode, Simon explores the critical importance of running disciplined, fast experiments of educational change before scaling up. Simon shows why...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 9
•
11:06
Ep. 08: We Get To
How can you motivate yourself to engage in challenging work even when you don’t feel like doing it? In this episode, Simon explores a powerful reframing of how we can approach the work in front of us. He shows how shifting from ‘We Have T...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 8
•
10:09
Ep. 07: Praise Worthy Failures
Are you and your team ready to learn from failure? Simon argues that improvers test and sharpen their ideas by trying things out in the real world of schools and classrooms. The goal shouldn’t be to get everything right from the beginning...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 7
•
8:33
Ep. 06: Your Don't Do List
How can we tap into the power of doing less? Simon explores our tendency to become overloaded and outlines a practical approach to setting and keeping clear boundaries. He explores why flexing our ‘saying no’ muscle is crucial for creatin...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 6
•
10:47
Ep. 05: Tracking Lead Indicators
What should we first expect to see? Simon unpacks a simple framework for focusing on the most important lead indicators in our change efforts. He argues that leaders should focus on the essential changes we should we in 3 and 6 months and avoid...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 5
•
4:49
Ep. 04: Workload Mapping
How can future pacing the term ahead help us to create greater levels of sustainability in our workflow? In this episode, Simon outlines a simple routine individuals and teams can use in order to anticipate their future workload dema...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 4
•
8:09
Ep. 03: Cracking the Clarity Code
How can we gain enhanced clarity in our improvement thinking? Simon unpacks 4 key questions that educational leaders can use to test, refine and sharpen their improvement projects and ideas. He then outlines how leaders and teams can build a ha...
•
Season 1
•
Episode 3
•
6:25