- What if we spent less time fighting change, and more time building what’s right for learners?
- Constant pushback drains us — and dims our purpose.
- Focus on what fuels you, not just what fills your calendar.
- Small, positive shifts can spark big change.
- Dream as strategy – visioning isn’t fluff — it’s leadership.
Lately, I’ve been reflecting on how much of our energy in education is spent in resistance — resisting changes we don’t agree with, policies we didn’t co-create, systems that feel more like cages than launchpads. And while that resistance matters (it’s often essential) I’ve started to wonder what it’s costing us – personally and as a system.
What if we were to spend just some of that energy not just reacting to what’s wrong, but creating more of what we know is right for our young people? What if we made more space to dream, together, about the kind of system we want — not just the one we’re trying to survive?
Imagine an educator as someone tending a fire — the slow, intentional work of keeping warmth and light going, feeding it with what matters. But right now, it feels like we’re constantly running around with buckets of water, dousing sparks before they become flames. The fire that sustains us is being neglected. What would happen if we redirected some of that energy back into what keeps the hearth burning?
Are we putting our energy into resistance or innovation?”
I was recently working with a group of school leaders in Melbourne – a terrifically talented group of people committed to growing their own professional knowledge and skill as they lead their teams and communities back in their schools. Throughout the sessions we were exploring tools and strategies to become more effective in their role and to help achieve some of the aspirational goals and ambitions they have for their learning communities.
We began our programme with a deep exploration of ‘what drives us’ as educators – drawing on the wisdom of Dr Julia Atkin’s work and Simon Sinek’s Golden Circles. During the session participants identified their core beliefs and values (both personal and organisational), and from that developed some aspirational statements about changes they’d like to see made and where they’d like to expend their energy. It was very inspirational and a ‘high energy’ session.
The elephant in the room, however, was the lingering challenge of how to respond to the relentless feeling of external pressures and imposed change, things over which they felt they had little control and yet are accountable (to themselves, their staff and their communities) for ensuring are addressed in some way.
And so the challenge emerged – to what extent they needed to be focused on resistance, while clearly motivated and energised when focused on innovation.
This got me thinking more as I returned to New Zealand and was again confronted with the enormity of change being imposed on educators here – and the level of ‘resistance’ behaviour I see developing in response. To use a gardening metaphor, “Do we find ourselves constantly pulling weeds, or are we also nurturing what we want to grow?”
The System Is Under Strain
Educators are rightfully concerned about changes to curriculum, assessment, funding, and workforce conditions. You don’t need to look far to see evidence of this exposed in our media on almost daily basis. The conversations about the release of the new curriculum for example is a case in point. There’s little argument that our curriculum requires review from time to time to ensure it remains fit for purpose and is future focused, but concerns about the agendas driving the current change, the process used to develop it, and the perceived lack of transparency in all of this has educators polarised and focused on defending their particular positions.
I acknowledge that these issues demand attention and critique, but they also take a toll: “We are fighting so hard to stop the bleeding, we’re forgetting to dream about the recovery.”
Time Management vs. Energy Management
All of this requires a lot of time, effort and energy to address. As I mentioned earlier, these concerns demand attention and critique, but if we allow them to dominate where we put our energy we will find ourselves worn out and feeling defeated (as I’ve written about previously).
Many readers will be familiar with the concept of time management as a strategy to help alleviate this toll on our physical and emotional energy. Tools such as the Eisenhower Matrix provide a useful way of distinguishing between the urgent and the important, and for making strategic decisions about where to prioritise your time for example.
But an even more important consideration might be energy management – not simply where we’ll devote our time, but where we will devote our energy. Many leadership programmes introduce the idea of an energy audit. The process starts with identifying the things (people, places, tasks, habits etc.) that energize you and those that drain energy from you. Then, week by week, focus on removing the things that are a drain on your life. When the drains are gone, your vision expands, possibilities grow, and you achieve so much more with ease. This is different for each individual as we all respond differently in this regard – which is why an energy audit can be so helpful.
Another tool is Stephen Covey’s Circle of Influence vs. Circle of Concern – a concept that helps individuals focus on the things they can control or influence, and accept the things they cannot, and asking am we focusing on what I can influence creatively, or getting stuck in cycles of frustration? The key is to focus your energy on those things that you can influence. This will enable you to make effective changes whereas constantly focusing and worrying about the things you cannot influence simply becomes a drain on your energy.
Of course, this is not advocating for simply abdicating responsibility to someone else, or giving up on some of these very challenging and complex problems – that is a part of leadership. But we have to work more intelligently in the way we go about managing change and getting things done. Simply standing in the way of an oncoming Tsunami and telling it to stop isn’t a very effective strategy.
One approach that is worth considering is the power of Positive Deviance – the idea that solutions already exist in small pockets, and we can scale them by identifying and nurturing what’s working. One of the things that attracts me to this approach is that it strongly supports the idea of community driven transformation (a topic for another time!).
Dreaming as a Strategic Act
Many who know me will understand my passion for being future focused in our approach to strategic planning. I am currently involved with a number of schools and their communities in helping them reconceptualise their approach to strategic planning and thoroughly enjoy the challenge of encouraging them to look beyond the transactional things that appear in so many schools’ strategic plans to focusing on something that is more ambitious and future focused – designed to inspire all who are a part of that particular learning community.
This often begins with simply “dreaming together”, using approaches such as 3 horizons thinking, design thinking or appreciative inquiry, all of which begin with imagining what could be, before jumping into problem-solving. This is not a “fluffy”, nice to have. It’s a courageous, generative act, based on the idea that systems change is more likely to succeed when it’s led by shared values and vision, not just reaction.
We need to spend more time asking questions such as:
- What are the conditions in which young people thrive?
- What would a system look like that energises learners and teachers?
- What examples are already showing us the way?
Using questions like this to engage with our staff, students and communities invites them to dream and offer ideas and suggestions from which we can develop our strategic goals – and beyond that, our action plans to ensure these ideas get carried over into solutions that produce results!
Tending the Fire Together
It’s easy to feel like we’re at the mercy of external forces — policies, politics, priorities not our own. But when we constantly respond from a place of depletion, the fire that fuels our purpose starts to flicker. That fire is too precious to neglect.
So here’s a thought: what if dreaming isn’t an escape from the real work — but the beginning of it?
What if choosing to put our energy into visioning, building, and nurturing the kind of system we believe in is the most strategic and courageous thing we can do right now?
We are not powerless. In every school, in every team, there are already embers of change glowing — innovative practices, deeply human connections, powerful learning happening in spite of the odds. What if we chose to feed those flames? To gather others around them and ask, “What else is possible?”
We can’t always choose what happens to us — but we can choose how we respond. And more than that, we can choose what we create next.
Your Turn
So here’s my invitation to you — as a leader, a teacher, a changemaker:
- Do an energy audit this week. What’s fuelling your fire? What’s draining it? What one thing could you stop doing — and what one thing could you start — that would give more oxygen to the work that matters most?
- Gather around the fire. Who are your people? Set aside time to dream together — not just plan or solve problems, but ask “What do we want to grow?” and “What does good look like for our learners, staff, and communities?”
- Choose one act of Positive Deviance. What’s already working in your school or context that could be shared, scaled, or celebrated? Start there.
- Share your spark. I’d love to hear what’s energising you — or where you’re choosing to redirect your energy. Leave a comment, share this post, or start a conversation with someone who needs to hear it. Let’s fan these flames together.
