We've Tried This Before

The principal had barely finished outlining the school’s new improvement priorities when the room fell quiet.

Not awkwardly or defiantly. Just quietly.

The presentation had been thoughtful. The research was sound. The vision was compelling. There was nothing obviously wrong with the proposal. If anything, it was difficult to disagree with.

Then, from somewhere near the back of the room, a teacher smiled gently and said:

“We’ve tried this before.”

Nobody challenged the comment. Nobody rushed to defend the proposal. A few people smiled. Several nodded almost imperceptibly.

It was one of those moments when the atmosphere in a room changes before anyone has actually responded.

I’ve heard those four words in schools all over the world.

Sometimes they follow a new literacy initiative. Sometimes they appear during conversations about assessment, wellbeing, instructional coaching, inquiry, technology or curriculum. The this changes.

The sentence rarely does.

For a long time, I assumed people were responding to the idea itself.

Eventually, I began wondering whether they were responding to something else entirely.

The ideas were rarely the problem. Many were thoughtful, most were grounded in strong research and some had already made a genuine difference for learners elsewhere. Looking back, I struggle to think of many initiatives that were fundamentally poor ideas.

Yet somehow, the same sentence kept returning.

“We’ve tried this before.”

The more I listened, the more curious I became about who was saying it.

It was rarely the newest teacher in the room. More often, it came from someone who had lived through years of school improvement. Someone who had attended countless professional learning days, rewritten planning documents, embraced new approaches and invested themselves wholeheartedly in work they genuinely believed would make a difference.

These were often the very people leadership most wanted beside them. They cared deeply about their students. They contributed generously to professional conversations, volunteered, shared ideas and wanted the school to improve as much as anyone else.

That made me pause.

Because it became harder and harder to believe I was listening to resistance.

Not about whether the new idea was worthwhile, but about whether this time would be different. Whether the organisation would stay with the work long enough for people to discover what it could become. Whether it would still matter when the excitement of the launch had faded, implementation became difficult and something newer inevitably appeared on the horizon.

The more schools I worked alongside, the less I heard those words as scepticism.

I began hearing them as memory.

And once I heard them that way, I started paying much closer attention to what happened immediately afterwards.

Sometimes the room became quieter. Sometimes someone laughed gently and knowingly. Occasionally a leader responded by explaining why this initiative was different. They described the research, the planning, the consultation and the implementation process.

Everything they said was thoughtful.

Everything they said might also have been true.

Yet I often wondered whether they were answering the question that had actually been asked.

Because perhaps the teacher wasn’t asking:

“Why should I believe in this idea?“

Perhaps they were asking:

“Why should I believe that our organisation will stay with it?”

That is a very different question.

And it can’t be answered by another slide.

Over time, I became increasingly interested in the idea that organisations carry memory in ways that are difficult to see.

Not simply in strategic plans, archived documents or lists of previous initiatives. Organisational memory lives in people. It appears in conversations over coffee, in the gentle smile exchanged across a meeting room and in the experienced teacher who quietly waits before becoming emotionally invested again.

It lives in what people have learnt to expect.

A new strategic priority may appear on a fresh page, but the people receiving it do not.

They arrive carrying everything that came before.

They remember the professional learning that initially felt exciting. The framework everyone spent months learning. The new language that appeared everywhere for a while. The planning documents that were rewritten, the meetings that were devoted to implementation and the genuine effort people invested because they believed the work mattered.

And they remember what happened next.

Sometimes the work endured.

Sometimes it quietly lost visibility as another priority emerged.

No announcement was required. Nobody necessarily declared that the previous work no longer mattered. Attention simply moved, meetings changed, professional learning went elsewhere and the language that had once seemed so important gradually became less present.

People noticed.

Organisations teach people what to expect from improvement through what happens to the improvements that came before.

That recognition changed the way I thought about experienced staff in particular.

It is easy to look at someone who hesitates around a new initiative and conclude that they have become cynical about change. Sometimes that may be true.

But hesitation can also contain wisdom.

The person saying “We’ve tried this before“ may be remembering the professional energy they invested last time. They may remember convincing reluctant colleagues, redesigning practice, becoming genuinely excited about what the work might mean for learners — only to watch organisational attention move elsewhere before the work had enough time to mature.

Their hesitation may not mean they care less.

That is an important distinction.

Because if leadership interprets organisational memory as resistance, the natural response is persuasion. Explain the initiative more clearly. Strengthen the rationale. Build enthusiasm. Show why this approach is different from the one that came before.

But if leadership interprets those same words as experience, the response becomes curiosity.

What happened here?

What has this organisation learnt about improvement?

Which previous efforts do people still remember — and why?

What happened after the launch?

Which work was sustained long enough to become meaningful?

Which work disappeared before people could discover what it might become?

What have those experiences taught people about whether investing deeply is worth the professional risk?

Those questions reveal something a strategic plan cannot.

They reveal the organisation’s improvement culture.

I became particularly aware of this when thinking about leaders arriving in new schools.

A new principal can inherit a community they did not build, relationships they did not shape and an organisational history they did not personally create. They may arrive with enormous energy, deep expertise and a thoughtful understanding of what the school needs next.

Yet every new idea they introduce enters an existing story.

People cannot simply separate today’s leadership from yesterday’s organisational experience because the new direction arrives inside a culture that has already learnt things about change.

That isn’t the new leader’s fault.

Nor is it the staff’s.

It is simply one of the realities of organisational life.

Eventually, I became less interested in whether schools appeared enthusiastic about change and much more interested in what their repeated experience of change had taught people to expect.

Did improvement feel like something the organisation stayed with?

Or something that arrived in waves?

Did new priorities build upon previous learning?

Or replace it?

Did professional learning deepen over time?

Or repeatedly restart?

Did leadership attention remain steady once implementation became difficult?

Or did the next worthwhile idea gradually become more compelling?

None of these questions asks whether an organisation is good or bad at improvement.

They ask something more useful.

What kind of improvement culture has repeated experience created here?

That question matters because organisations do not develop beliefs about improvement through statements of intent.

They develop them through experience.

If leadership repeatedly returns to the work when other priorities compete for attention, people notice. If professional learning remains connected across time rather than continually resetting, people notice. If a new idea emerges and leadership chooses not to let it displace existing work immediately, people notice that too.

Slowly, expectations begin to change.

People discover that this year’s conversations are still shaping next year’s practice. They see that the organisation is willing to remain with complexity after the initial enthusiasm has disappeared. They experience priorities being deepened rather than continually replaced.

None of this creates a dramatic moment of transformation.

There is no meeting at which everyone suddenly announces that they trust the improvement process again.

Something quieter happens.

People begin investing differently.

They contribute an idea they might previously have held back. They take a professional risk because they believe the work will still matter long enough for that risk to be worthwhile. They allow themselves to become curious again rather than waiting to see what replaces the current priority.

Perhaps most importantly, their confidence gradually shifts.

They stop being asked simply to believe in the initiative.

They begin believing in the organisation’s capacity to sustain improvement.

That is a much harder belief to build.

It is also far more powerful.

Years later, this thinking contributed to the way I began conceptualising the Theory of Improvement Cultures™. Organisations do not simply implement improvement. Through repeated experience, they develop cultures around improvement itself.

People learn whether priorities endure. They learn what happens when implementation becomes difficult. They learn whether leadership protects attention, whether professional learning remains connected and whether today’s important work is likely to survive tomorrow’s competing demands.

Those lessons accumulate.

Eventually, they shape how the next initiative is received before anyone has had the opportunity to judge it on its own merits.

That is why I hear those four words differently now.

“We’ve tried this before.“

I no longer hear someone questioning the future.

I hear them remembering the past.

And perhaps the most important leadership question is no longer:

“How do we convince people this time is different?“

Perhaps it is:

“How do we help people experience that it is?”

Because people rarely believe an organisation simply because of what it says.

They begin believing because of what it repeatedly does.

Organisational Truth

Every improvement effort enters a culture already shaped by the ones that came before.

Organisations do not begin each improvement journey with a blank page. People bring accumulated experiences of previous priorities, professional learning, implementation efforts and leadership decisions into the way they encounter new work.

Those experiences shape expectations.

A new initiative may therefore be thoughtful, coherent and strongly supported by evidence while still encountering hesitation that has very little to do with the initiative itself.

What appears to be resistance may sometimes be organisational memory.

The leadership opportunity is not to assume what that memory means, nor to classify an organisation according to whether its culture is positive or negative.

It is to become curious about what repeated experiences of improvement have taught people to expect.

Where We Chose to Begin

Every organisation enters improvement through a different doorway. The doorway illuminated by this story is Belief.

The immediate temptation when people say “We’ve tried this before“ is to strengthen Direction. Explain the initiative more clearly. Clarify why it matters. Demonstrate how this approach differs from previous ones.

Sometimes that may be useful.

But before assuming the problem sits in the current direction, there is value in understanding the beliefs people already carry about improvement itself.

The question shifts from:

“How do we convince people this initiative is different?”

to:

“What has our organisation’s experience of improvement taught people to expect?”

That distinction changes the leadership response.

Instead of beginning with persuasion, leadership begins with recognition.

Creating the Conditions

Improvement culture is shaped through repeated organisational experience.

That means it cannot be changed through a single conversation, a stronger launch or another commitment to “doing things differently this time.“

People need to experience the difference.

Leadership can begin by becoming more curious about the organisation’s improvement history. Which initiatives still carry meaning for people? Which disappeared? Where did professional energy produce lasting change? Where did people invest heavily only to watch attention move elsewhere? Which patterns have repeated often enough to become expected?

The purpose is not to conduct an archaeological investigation into every previous initiative, nor to assign blame for decisions made in different circumstances.

It is to understand what those experiences may have taught the organisation.

From there, leadership can begin creating different experiences: protecting attention around fewer priorities, connecting professional learning across time, allowing worthwhile work to deepen before introducing something new and continuing to return to the work once its novelty has faded.

These experiences now inform EIA’s Theory of Improvement Cultures™ and the wider School Improvement Pathway™. They reinforce an important principle: an organisation’s relationship with improvement is itself an organisational condition worthy of leadership attention.

The work is not to promise that this time will be different.

It is to create enough consistent evidence that people can discover the difference for themselves.

What Changed

The most meaningful shift was not necessarily greater enthusiasm.

It was greater willingness to invest.

When organisations became more disciplined about sustaining attention, people noticed. When professional learning remained connected rather than continually resetting, people noticed. When leadership resisted allowing another worthwhile idea to immediately displace existing work, people noticed that too.

Those experiences gradually created different expectations.

Teachers became less focused on whether the current initiative resembled something they had seen before and more willing to explore what the work might become in this context. Professional energy was no longer spent repeatedly starting again. Learning accumulated.

The change was subtle because organisational belief rarely changes through announcement.

It changes as experience contradicts expectation often enough for a new expectation to become possible.

Eventually, the question was no longer whether people believed in the latest initiative.

They were beginning to believe that meaningful improvement could endure here.

Framework

Theory of Improvement Cultures™

Organisations develop cultures not only around teaching, learning and leadership, but around improvement itself.

Repeated experiences teach people what improvement means in this organisation.

Does it arrive through a succession of initiatives? Does worthwhile work remain visible long enough to deepen? Are priorities connected across time? Does leadership continue returning to the work once implementation becomes difficult? Are people given opportunities to build upon previous learning, or repeatedly asked to begin again?

The Theory of Improvement Cultures™ provides language for examining these patterns without reducing organisations to simplistic categories.

Its purpose is not to label a culture.

It is to help leaders recognise that today’s response to improvement may have been shaped long before today’s initiative arrived.

The framework did not create the observation at the heart of this story.

It gave language to something repeated experience had already revealed:

Organisations remember how improvement happens here.

School Improvement Pathway™

Entry Point: Belief

This story enters the School Improvement Pathway™ through Belief.

The organisation may already possess worthwhile strategic Direction. The challenge is that people’s willingness to invest in that direction is influenced by what previous improvement experiences have taught them.

Before leadership can expect sustained professional commitment, it may need to understand and strengthen belief in the organisation’s capacity to sustain the work itself.

As leadership creates more coherent experiences of improvement — protecting attention, connecting learning and staying with worthwhile work — those experiences can gradually strengthen Belief.

Stronger Belief creates better conditions for Leadership to become more widely exercised and for implementation to endure beyond the initial energy of a launch.

If This Feels Familiar...

You may recognise something of your organisation in this story if:

• experienced staff quietly say, “We’ve tried this before“ when new improvement work is introduced;
• worthwhile initiatives begin strongly but struggle to remain visible over time;
• staff appear cautious about investing deeply in another improvement effort;
• professional learning frequently feels like a succession of new beginnings rather than an accumulating body of learning;
• new priorities inherit reactions that seem disproportionate to the initiative itself;
• leadership finds itself repeatedly explaining why this time will be different;
• people wait to see whether a priority will endure before committing significant professional energy;
• new ideas regularly compete with work that has not yet had time to mature;
• organisational enthusiasm appears strongest around launches and weaker during the less visible work of sustained implementation; or
• leadership senses that the organisation’s response to improvement is being shaped by something older than the current strategy.

None of these patterns necessarily indicates cynicism or resistance.

They may suggest that people have learnt something from the way improvement has previously been experienced.