When success becomes the problem
- Ruth Thornton
- Aug 1, 2025
- 2 min read
Updated: 2 days ago
(Part 2 of the Harvesting Learning Series)
Success can be dangerous
After a brief LinkedIn exchange with @SianCarter about learning from experience, I've been reflecting on something from my own practice.
In Post 1, we explored why Renewal matters. Here's a practical example from my own leadership.
We ran a reading intervention at my secondary school that delivered exceptional results (+2.8 ratio gain - basically double the expected progress). The data looked good, Ofsted recognised it as good practice, and we kept running it year after year.
But we never stopped to ask the most important question: Are we still doing the right thing for our school?
At what point did I pause to ask:
"Is this still what our school truly needs?"
"What are we not doing while this intervention is happening?"
Regular checkpoints to answer these questions simply didn't happen. Why? Because no one wants to mess with success? Because it felt safe to keep doing what worked before? Because stopping to question success can feel uncomfortable?
I could have used those moments to harvest our learning
Instead of just evaluating whether the intervention "worked," I could have paused with my team to reflect on what we were really learning from the experience. Not just celebrating the results, but asking what they meant for our next steps. Turning that experience into genuine insight about what our students needed next.
I benefited from coaching as a leader, but I could have used it with my teams - holding brief, structured check-ins each term to reflect on our 'why':
Why is this working and what do our students need now?
What have we learned that's making us think differently?
What assumptions might we be making about what's working?
A pause worth taking: How might you harvest learning in your own school or team?
Next up: In the next post, I’ll explore why letting go of “good” things is so hard, and how coaching can help us build the confidence to do it.