The beautiful mess of schools

I want to talk about people. People are messy.

I don’t mean that with a negative connotation. I’m messy! I do, say, think things that wouldn’t make sense to most people (let alone myself). Our lives are a rich tapestry of different experiences, influences, aspirations and biases. 

And of course, people are the crux of our work. Whether in the classroom, at the Principal’s desk or helping share the stories of the school to the world in marketing.

Schools are a melting pot of messy people like few others in our society.

And yet, so much of our school branding, communications and marketing still tries to put these wonderfully complex humans into neat little boxes. 

How can we possibly think that a ‘customer persona’ or ‘parent journey’ or ‘brand strategy’ will ever work in the way we want or expect?

It doesn’t work. At least, not in the ways we wish it would. I write great brand strategies. Excellent enrolment journeys. Systems that support personal relationships – that’s my thing. But when you introduce real, living, breathing humans into the equation, something always shifts.

How do you market to people who refuse to be neatly defined? 

You don’t. 

Marketing to people cannot be a formula.

For me, experience strategy is a way through the mess. It embraces the messy. Rather than fighting against complexity, it leans into it, accepting that what we’re really doing is shaping the conditions where great experiences become more likely. A shift from trying to control outcomes to facilitating meaningful moments. It places people at the centre and designs for them, not the other way around.

But even as experience strategy has provided clarity, it’s revealed another, deeper challenge: change itself.

Because people are messy, meaningful change in schools is extraordinarily difficult. People hold onto things tightly, dig their heels in, or sometimes push too hard and too fast. The perfect system doesn’t exist. Neither does the perfect team. The beautifully written strategy almost never unfolds exactly as I hope.

This, perhaps, is the most significant challenge of my work. One I’m still wrestling with.

My hunch is that real change hinges on people within schools embracing the journey themselves, committing deeply to the hard, messy work of implementation.

An outsider’s perspective can cut through the noise. I’ve seen what works and what doesn’t. I’ve helped steer schools through the messy, unpredictable work of change. Sometimes all it takes is a fresh set of eyes to spot the shortcuts and avoid the pitfalls.

But it takes two. Change isn’t something you deliver, it’s something you build together.

Because at the end of it all, beneath every challenging, unpredictable moment, are people. Wonderfully, frustratingly, beautifully messy people.