Become your school’s Chief Simplicity Officer

Simon Breakspear
19 March 2026

A few weeks ago I was working with leadership teams from across an entire system of 100+ schools. Every team had finally completed their 2026 improvement plans. The plans were comprehensive, evidence-informed, and signed off by the required system leaders. There was a collective exhale in the room, a real sense of relief that the planning work was done.

During a break, I found myself talking with one capable and committed leader. When I asked her how early implementation was going to bring the plan to life in classrooms, something shifted in her expression. She paused. Then she said quietly, “Honestly Simon, I don’t know where to start. We’ve committed to so much. Everyone is already stretched just trying to maintain what we were already doing.”

I’ve heard some version of that sentence more times than I can count. And if you’re reading this in March, there’s a chance you’ve said it yourself recently.

The idea: Your improvement plan is overloaded. The most valuable role you can play right now is Chief Simplicity Officer.

30-Second Version

• Most leaders know they’re doing too much, but haven’t had a concept or process to actually change that
• March is the moment where the gap between our aspirations for improvement and the bandwidth we actually have becomes clearest
• Now is the time to become your school’s Chief Simplicity Officer: simplifying down your improvement strategy to the few things most likely to move the needle

The Full Read

The overload you’re feeling didn’t come from carelessness. It came from moral ambition, from caring deeply about your students and your staff, and from wanting 2026 to be the year things really moved.

But here’s what nobody talks about enough. There’s a quiet guilt that often sits alongside that overload, a feeling that a good leader should be able to hold all of this together, that struggling to gain traction somehow reflects on your capability or your commitment. I want to name that, because I see it in leaders everywhere I work. You are not failing. You are trying to move too many complex things forward simultaneously.

Every decision that went into your plan came from a good place. You were responding to real demands, real aspirations, and real pressure to move things forward. But with the year already underway, the most important question has shifted. It’s no longer about what you wanted to achieve when you wrote the plan. It’s about what you can actually move forward this year, with the people and the energy and the time you genuinely have. Everything else needs to be pruned back, at least for now.

The leaders I work with who reach genuine impact aren’t always the ones with the boldest plans. They’re the ones willing to narrow their focus, protect their team’s energy, and go deep on what matters most – making the courageous trade-off decisions about what they will and won’t actually create impact on this year.

Your plan was built on genuine care for what’s possible. Now it needs pruning pragmatism to bring it to life.

Small step → Find fifteen minutes this week and sit with your improvement plan as a team. Not to add anything. Just to ask one honest question: what is the smallest number of things we could focus on, implement well, and build our people’s genuine confidence and momentum around? When you can answer that clearly, you’ve found your pruning starting point.