Is this really a time of transformation? 

I had a discussion in March with a school director who believed that the whole business of international schools was going to die away. There was the keynote speaker in April proclaimed that this year was the year that the public education system as a whole would (finally) transform, or be forced to transform, beyond all recognition. Have you heard them, too? 

When was the last time you didn't feel that there was a lot going on in the world? I have a totally unscientific feeling, confirmed in conversations with my elder mentors, that every generation has believed that they're the generation who really got hit hard, by something, who made sacrifices and underwent tumultuous change in their lifetime, for the benefit of future generations.

The education business, and what parents and students say they want, is not going to transform this year or next, or even in the two years after that. It's going to take more time than you think. If anything, parents and students still crave what they used to have, rather than something unrecognisable and innovative.

Rather, I think we're going to see innovators have a go, as they always have done, prototyping the change they've been incubating for some time before this crisis came along, and amplifying the successes. They'll appear as responses to the crisis, when in fact the germination and clues to success were there long before. The job of great leaders is to spot them and ask what they need to pursue them one step further. 

You can see this in retail. Arguably, no business was hurt more than the high street in 2020. And while local businesses have actually flexed quicker, with a deep understanding of local needs, big business has stumbled, with already weak retail outlets collapsing one after the other.

IKEA has recognised the opportunity shown by small businesses, to get under the skin of local communities. As the crisis led to many of their out-of-town warehouses switching more to online order fulfilment centres, they didn't assume that they were just going to go online 100%. Instead, they have ramped up plans that were already underway before the crisis hit.

IKEA is now appearing in your high street. On holiday this summer in Paris, I waltzed into an IKEA shop just off the Rue de Rivoli, slap bang in the swanky heart of the city. There were more staff than customers, some of the brilliant room setups that confront you at the entrance to any warehouse store, and an opportunity to walk out with product there and then, or order it and pick it up later that day, on the way home.

This isn't a crisis response idea - it was response to the increasing number of people living in cities without access to a car. But pitched as a crisis response is good marketing. See: you're reading about it here.

I'd argue this: stop panicking about the crisis, and what it means for your school, or your education system. Instead, look for the bigger trends that were already emerging before 2020, and build on those. These trends will last longer than the crisis, and stand you in good stead for a decade or more to come.