Last weekend I was clearing a shelf in my study and came across a book I hadn’t opened for years: Good to Great by Jim Collins.
About 15 years ago, it felt like every education leadership conference referenced it. Many of the ideas from the book found their way into conversations about school improvement, leadership culture and organisational change.
You don’t hear it mentioned quite as often now. But rereading a few pages reminded me that some of the core ideas still feel remarkably relevant, particularly when thinking about school leadership through the lens of English. The following ideas stood out to me...
1. Facing the brutal facts
One of Collins’ most well-known ideas is that successful organisations are willing to confront reality honestly, rather than pessimistically or defensively. He describes this as the discipline of “facing the brutal facts.”
It might come when leaders review writing outcomes across year groups and notice inconsistency, or during book looks when the quality of writing varies more than expected.
It might come when teachers say, with refreshing honesty, that writing is the area they feel least confident teaching.
These moments are not failures. In fact, they’re often the beginning of improvement. Meaningful change rarely begins with a new programme or a new initiative. It begins with leaders asking a simple but difficult question: Is our current approach to teaching writing working as well as it could?
When schools are willing to explore that question thoughtfully and without defensiveness, real progress becomes possible.
2. The flywheel effect
Another idea from Good to Great is what Collins calls the flywheel effect. The metaphor is simple. Imagine trying to turn a huge, heavy flywheel. At first it barely moves and each push feels like it makes very little difference. But gradually momentum builds.
Push after push, turn after turn, eventually the wheel begins to move faster. The energy required to keep it moving becomes smaller.
Collins argues that great organisations succeed not through dramatic breakthroughs but through consistent, cumulative effort.
This feels very familiar in schools. Improving writing is rarely about a single intervention. It’s the result of many aligned actions over time:
- Teachers strengthening their understanding of writing pedagogy
- Leaders clarifying progression across year groups
- Vocabulary development becoming more intentional
None of these changes alone transform outcomes overnight. But together they begin to build momentum. And after a while something interesting happens: improvement starts to feel natural rather than forced. That’s the flywheel turning.
3. The hedgehog concept
Collins also writes about what he calls the hedgehog concept. The idea comes from an old Greek parable: “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”
In organisational terms, Collins argues that great organisations succeed when they focus deeply on the intersection of three questions:
- What are we deeply passionate about?
- What can we be the best at?
- What truly drives impact?
For schools, this can be a powerful way to think about English. After all, it sits at the centre of almost everything we do in primary education.
Reading shapes access to the curriculum. Vocabulary shapes understanding. Writing allows pupils to express knowledge, thinking and creativity.
But the question for leaders is not simply whether English matters – it’s how deliberately we are developing it.
When schools focus clearly on strengthening language, reading and writing across the curriculum, the impact often extends far beyond English lesson.
4. The Stockdale Paradox
Another idea from Collins’ work is what he calls the Stockdale Paradox. This principle suggests that successful leaders balance two things simultaneously:
- They maintain absolute faith that improvement is possible
- But they also confront the reality of the challenges they face
In schools, this balance matters enormously. Optimism without honesty leads to complacency, but honesty without optimism can lead to discouragement.
The most effective leaders seem to hold both together. They recognise the complexity of improving writing across a school, while remaining confident that improvement is achievable through thoughtful, sustained work.
What might this look like in practice in school?
I recently worked with a school that had been reflecting honestly on writing outcomes. The pupils were enthusiastic and teachers were working incredibly hard, but writing across the school felt inconsistent.
In some classes pupils were producing thoughtful, structured writing. In others, writing felt more tentative and shorter.
Rather than rushing to adopt a new scheme, the leadership team started by facing the reality of the situation together.
They looked carefully at pupils’ books across year groups, spoke openly with teachers about confidence in teaching writing and explored how writing expectations developed from Year 1 through to Year 6.
What emerged was not a single problem, but a pattern. Teachers wanted clearer progression, a shared language about how writing develops and practical strategies for scaffolding pupils who found writing difficult.
So the school focused on a few deliberate actions: strengthening vocabulary teaching, clarifying writing progression across year groups and creating time for teachers to look at writing together.
None of these changes was dramatic, but over time the momentum built – the flywheel beginning to turn. Gradually, the consistency of writing across the school began to improve.
Rereading Good to Great reminded me that although educational language and frameworks change over time, many leadership principles remain remarkably consistent.
Improvement begins with honest reflection. Progress builds through consistent effort. Clarity of purpose matters. And optimism works best when it’s grounded in reality.
These ideas feel just as relevant to English leadership today as they did when the book first appeared on my shelf.
How Leading English can help
At Leading English, we work alongside schools and trusts to strengthen English leadership, develop curriculum thinking and support writing improvement in ways that are practical, sustainable and shaped around each school’s context.
