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.
Strategic Schools
Ep. 27: Working at a Natural Pace
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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 burnout, and build sustainable momentum. Learn how to work in the right zone of improvement - challenged but not overloaded. An ideal listen for anyone leading change who wants to sustain progress over time.
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Introduction to Strategic Schools
Speaker 1I'm Simon Breakspear and this is Strategic Schools , the show that shares practical ideas and tools to enhance your educational leadership . Well , hey , it's Simon . I hope you're doing well at the start of the week . I've just come back from three or four weeks on the road with long-term partners , systems and schools working on improvement work , but it's great to be back in the HQ and spending a bit of time consolidating some of my lessons over the last couple of weeks of work and I was speaking to a terrific leader on Friday in Queensland , a really motivated , keen , intentional leader who said sometimes she gets the feedback from people of you've just got to slow down , and I could tell it was
The Myth of Going Slow
Speaker 1really kind of irritating her . I wonder whether you're one of those leaders sometimes that are trying to push ahead with important evidence , informed improvement , and maybe someone above you in the system or someone above you in the school sort of says , hey , you've just got to slow down . And I said to her look , slowing down isn't the point . You know I actually don't like it when people say , oh , go slow , go slow is not the point . I mean , we've got big aspirations to change things for children and young people and the longer that we take to do those things , the more groups of students are going to miss out . So for me , it's not so much about the go slow , but rather finding a natural pace for the work . Today I want to explore a little bit about this idea of pacing the work of change , because for me , taking a responsive implementation approach isn't about going fast
Finding a Natural Pace
Speaker 1or slow . It's actually about going at a natural pace and creating a rhythm-based approach that feels as though you can progress the work this week and then this term and then this year , and go again and again . Pacing the work of change and working out what is a natural pace for your school , your team , your sub-part of the organization , is a crucial skill for all leaders to get right . And yes , sometimes when you're trying to work at a natural pace , you will have to slow down , but not for the sake of going slow , but rather to bring things back into a sustainable rhythm of change .
Speaker 1Here I think modern wristwatches that give you some information about how you're going when you're exercising are a really good analogy . Many of us on our wristwatch now , whether we're going for a walk or run or a bike ride or other types of activity we might do in the gym or at home . We're going to get feedback around our level of heart rate , and sometimes we might exert ourselves a little bit too much . We might move into an anaerobic range . And when we move into that anaerobic range we're going to build up a lot of lactic acid and we're going to need a greater level of recovery afterwards . So too , in school change . You can run or you can move at an unnatural rate . You can pull that off for a period of time . The problem
Sustainable Improvement Rhythm
Speaker 1is , you will pay the cost almost like the lactic acid of school improvement the lactic acid of school improvement .
Speaker 1The writer Greg McKeown has a great phrase , and he says that you should never do more work today than you can recover from by tomorrow . You shouldn't push yourself this week more than what you can recover from by the start of next week . You shouldn't push yourself this term more than you can recover from by the end of the next holidays . It's not a bad rule of thumb actually . See , this isn't about taking it easy or going slow . No , we actually want to be in the push zone . We want to be in what you know those who are into their exercise might call zone two . You're working hard , but it's still an aerobic zone you are able to sustain a conversation with someone else , but only just like it's pushing you a little bit to keep your breathing up and keep going .
Speaker 1I think in school improvement it's good to get beyond the warmup and to get into that zone too . It's that moderate physical activity or or for us , that moderate school improvement push that is pushing us beyond our current limits , but not too far , and in any week or in any term we're not pushing beyond that which we could recover from by the start of the next week or the start of the next term . So for me , one of the key ideas here for leaders to get better at is not fast or slow , but moving at an natural pace and thinking and tuning in to your people , to the context , to what other things are occurring maybe whether it's flu season and there's a lot of sickness , about whether one of your key leaders has stepped out to take paternity leave , maternity leave , and so you're a little bit down on some of the capacity you'd normally have . You tune in to what's happening Maybe it's been a really intensive period of time working with some more dysregulated students or adults and you tune in and say what's going on here . What's the rate of change that we can handle over the coming month or the coming term ? We know that the rate of kind of exercise heart rate you should go after depends on your age . Well , that's a rule of thumb , but some people , even though they're much older in age , have a much younger health age , if I could use that phrase .
Speaker 1So , too , in schools , certain schools or certain teams , they'll kind of have a rate at which they can currently improve . That's not a set rate . By the way , as we get more into the rhythms of change whether we're running teaching sprints as teachers , whether we're running action cycles and school improvement teams as we go through multiple cycles and we become almost , our improvement fitness goes up . We're going to be able to sustain a
Working at Natural Pace
Speaker 1higher rate later on , but our job as leaders is always to be tuning in to . Are we working at a natural pace ? Can we sustain at this rate and perhaps even to adjust what you're expecting from certain teams or certain parts of the school based on their ability to sustain the rate of change that you're asking of them , to sustain the rate of change that you're asking of them ?
Speaker 1So today I kind of want you to reflect a little bit , not on whether school improvement work should go fast or slow , but rather what does working at a natural pace look and feel like in practice ? In your context , are you currently leading your team , your organization , at a natural pace ? Not easy , not just the warm-up , but not in that push anaerobic zone . That's going to mean that people can sustain it for a short period of time , but once you step away or once we get through another term , that they might actually have a tendency to revert back to default approaches , approaches . They might actually find that they kind of just want to jog it in for one term of school improvement because actually we've pushed too hard for a period of time and now they need a period of recovery .
Speaker 1That's much longer and so , bit by bit , we can make progress . But only if we tune in and constantly ask are we working at a natural pace ? If so , keep it going . If not , maybe you need to lift it up a little higher or course correct and bring it down a little lower . If we can work at a natural pace this week , this
Final Thoughts and Request
Speaker 1month , this term , we can do that again next term and the term after . We can set ourselves up for sustainable long-term improvement , one of the keys to leading sustainable change work at a natural pace . Well , thanks for tuning in today . I hope you're getting a huge amount of value out of these practical ideas . One last request before you go I genuinely appreciate it if you could subscribe , rate and review this show . It's the easiest way for us to get these ideas into the hands of even more educational leaders .