I spent the last week helping a good friend prepare his house for sale. He’s downsizing, which meant facing the inevitable task that comes with moving to a smaller home: deciding what stays and what goes.
Over the weekend we held a garage sale. And what an assortment it was. There was sporting equipment that hadn’t been used for years. Kitchen utensils – sometimes several versions of the same thing. Boxes of DVDs and CDs, most of which had not seen the inside of a player for years. There were things that had clearly been superseded by something newer, things that had been kept “just in case”, and things that carried a sentimental attachment that made them surprisingly difficult to part with.
Some things were easy to dimiss. Others required a story – “Ah, I remember when…”
And therein lies the challenge. We don’t only keep things because we need them. We also keep them because they have a history. But there was something else I noticed as we worked our way through all of this stuff. It wasn’t simply taking up space. It was getting in the way of moving forward.
Until we started sorting through it, my friend had remained somewhat stuck. There was only so much further preparation he could do while the house was still full of things he no longer needed. The sludge was creating a kind of paralysis.
Once we began making decisions – keep it, sell it, give it away, throw it out – something changed. Space began to appear. Not just physical space, but a sense that things were becoming possible again.
And that got me thinking about a concept that my colleague Harry Mills and I have included in our transformation framework: remove sludge. The metaphor came to mind clearly during the week, prompting my reflection in this post.
What is the sludge?
In my friend’s garage, the sludge was all the stuff getting in the way of his move. Not necessarily rubbish. Much of it had once been useful. Some of it had even been important. But its usefulness had passed.
Some things had been replaced by something better. Some had become redundant. Some were duplicates. Some were kept because they might be useful one day. And some were simply there because nobody had ever made the decision to get rid of them.
I wonder whether our schools are a little like that garage. We talk a lot about educational transformation. We introduce new pedagogies, new technologies, new curricula, new assessment approaches, new professional learning, new strategic priorities. But we rarely talk with the same energy about what needs to go.
Perhaps that’s because adding something feels like progress. Removing something can feel like loss. Yet the experience of helping my friend has reminded me that sometimes it is the things we are holding onto that prevent us from moving forward.
The sludge of stuff
There is, of course, physical sludge. Every school has it. Somewhere there will be an old Gestetner machine. Boxes of obsolete computers. Outdated software. Filing cabinets full of resources nobody has opened for years. Shelves of books that haven’t been touched since before the current staff were appointed. And every time someone suggests getting rid of something there is often a voice saying: “We might need that one day.”
Perhaps. But “one day” can be an expensive place to store things. The bigger problem is that physical sludge is often easier to see than the other kinds.
The sludge of traditions
What about the things we do that are an embedded part of how the school operates? Those things that everyone just expects will happen – the annual athletics day. Swimming sports. Cultural festival. Assemblies. Prize-giving. School productions. The endless collection of rituals that have accumulated over generations.
I’m not suggesting that these things should simply be discarded. Traditions can be powerful. They can create identity, belonging and shared memories. But perhaps every tradition deserves to be asked a simple question – “If we were designing our school today, would we choose to do this?” and if so, “would we choose to do this in this way?“
If the answer is yes, great. If the answer is “well, we’ve always done it this way”, perhaps that’s a different conversation. Tradition shouldn’t be confused with purpose.
The sludge of meetings
Then there’s the sludge that consumes something much more precious than storage space – time.
Most of these were probably created for a good reason. But over time, purposes change. Circumstances change. Technology changes. The way we work changes. And yet the meeting remains. Perhaps the most useful question isn’t “How can we make this meeting more efficient?” It might be: “If we didn’t already have this meeting, would we create it today?” Because every hour spent maintaining an old routine is an hour that can’t be spent on something else.
And transformation needs time.
The sludge of systems
There is another, less visible, kind of sludge. Forms that no longer inform anything. Reports that nobody reads. Data collected because we have always collected it. Processes designed around yesterday’s technology. Policies copied forward from previous versions. Approval processes that made sense when information moved slowly but now simply slow things down. Assessment practices that tell us things we already know.
And perhaps most importantly, ways of thinking that have become embedded in the way a school operates:
Some of these may be legitimate constraints. But some may simply be organisational sludge masquerading as reality.
And then there’s sentimental sludge
This might be the hardest kind to remove. Because sometimes the thing we’re holding onto isn’t really the thing itself. It’s what it represents. A programme that a much-loved teacher established. A tradition associated with a previous principal. A resource that has been part of the school for decades. A way of organising learning that worked brilliantly for a previous generation of learners. A practice that carries memories of a time when the school felt different.
These things deserve respect. But respect doesn’t necessarily require preservation. My friend’s DVDs and CDs had stories attached to them. They represented music he loved and films he had enjoyed. But the memories didn’t disappear when the discs went into the garage sale.
We can honour the past without keeping everything from it. Perhaps that’s an important distinction for schools too.
Transformation isn’t just about adding
One of the dangers of educational change is that we keep adding. Add another initiative. Add another strategy. Add another assessment. Add another meeting. Add another professional learning requirement. Add another priority to the strategic plan. Add another digital platform. Add another layer of accountability. Until eventually the organisation becomes exhausted under the weight of everything it has accumulated.
Perhaps transformation requires a different discipline. Before we add, we need to remove. Before introducing something new, ask what it replaces. Before creating another meeting, ask which one can disappear. Before adding another initiative, ask which existing initiative has reached the end of its useful life. Before asking teachers to find time for innovation, ask what is currently consuming the time we need.
And before we dismiss something as “just the way we do things”, ask why. Not because everything old is bad. And not because everything new is better. But because purpose matters more than precedent.
What’s in your school’s garage?
What I have reflected on in this post is that removing sludge isn’t a housekeeping exercise. It’s part of transformation. We can’t create space for new possibilities if every available space is already occupied by something from the past. And we can’t expect people to move towards something new when they are still carrying the accumulated weight of everything that came before.
That’s why we’ve included this important step in our Friction Free Transformation framework. Perhaps the start point for a transformation conversation isn’t: “What should we start doing?” but instead “What have we stopped needing, but never stopped doing?” Questions you might ask to help you think about this…
- What are we doing simply because we’ve always done it?
- What have we kept “just in case” that we probably no longer need?
- What has been superseded, but never actually removed?
- Which routines or meetings consume time without creating enough value?
- What are we asking people to do that gets in the way of the things we say are most important?
- What are we holding onto because of sentiment or history, rather than current purpose?
- What could we stop doing that would immediately create some space for something more worthwhile?
And perhaps the most uncomfortable question of all: What is the sludge in our school that we have become so accustomed to that we no longer even see it?
Every garage sale begins with a decision. This can go. Perhaps every transformation journey needs a few of those decisions too. Not because the past doesn’t matter. But because sometimes letting go of what has served us is what makes room for what might serve us next.
After working on this post I used ChatGPT to create a simple image that would summarise the process I have been thinking of here – you may find it helpful….
