As a parent with kids in elementary, middle, and high school—and with my oldest on the verge of college—I’ve been thinking more about the question: What is school for?
It’s a question that mirrors the work I do with clients every day, helping them take a Design Thinking approach to their businesses. And like any system, school exists because it once solved a problem (primarily, the industrial age problem of how do we create obedient, compliant, interchangeable workers to power our factories). But does it still serve the future we want?
How do leaders in education who seek to build something new, create ideal conditions for change, and market those ideas so they spread?
See the Game
If you’re a leader, creator, or entrepreneur working to shift the way people think, you already know this: the status quo isn’t going anywhere without a fight.
Ideas that challenge the norm—whether it’s rethinking education, redefining success, or disrupting an industry—don’t spread just because they’re good. They spread when they are positioned in a way that feels like a better deal than the current system.
If you want to engage people in a critical conversation—whether it’s about the future of school or the future of your industry—you don’t start with logic. You start by understanding how people decide what matters–what they’re keeping score of.
Here are three principles to help you market ideas that challenge the norm and create the conditions for change.
1. Make the Invisible Scoreboard Visible
Every system—whether it’s school, business, or culture—has an invisible scoreboard. The things we measure, prioritize, and reward define how people behave within the system.
- In school: The scoreboard is standardized test scores, GPA, college admissions, class rankings.
- In business: The scoreboard is revenue, growth, brand recognition.
- In media: The scoreboard is audience reach, views, likes, shares, engagement metrics.
People don’t resist change because they’re stubborn. They resist because the current scoreboard tells them they are winning.
To create change, you have to show them a different scoreboard.
- Instead of measuring only grades and test scores, how do we score and celebrate curiosity, collaboration, and creative problem-solving?
- Instead of tracking social media likes, how do we measure and reward depth of audience engagement and real-world impact?
- Instead of chasing revenue growth at all costs, how do we acknowledge success as building something sustainable and meaningful, that moves our culture forward to a better, healthier place?
People will play a different game when they believe it’s worth playing, and one way to stimulate that belief is to score a broader menu of things.
2. Sell the Long-Term Value
People don’t make decisions based on logic alone. They make them based on what feels like the safest path to the future they want.
A parent pushing their kid to ace standardized tests isn’t obsessed with bubble sheets—they’re trying to secure opportunities for their child in a competitive world. An entrepreneur hesitating to shift their strategy isn’t stuck in old ways—they’re trying to minimize risk.
If you want to change minds, you have to reframe the trade-off.
- Don’t fight against the existing system head-on. Instead, show how your idea helps them achieve their deeper goal (success, security, belonging) in a better, low-risk way.
- Make the future feel tangible. What does success look like 5, 10, 20 years from now? If your alternative path leads there more effectively, make that case clear by telling the story of what that future looks like.
- Create urgency. If people don’t change now, what will they regret later? How much will it cost them to do nothing? Help them see that not taking action is the real risk. Fear of loss is a much more powerful driver of behavior, compared to the promise of future gain.
3. Model the Change, Don’t Just Argue for It
People don’t change because they’re told to. They change because they see and experience a better way working in real life. They have to “see it to believe it”.
- Want to shift school culture? Celebrate and amplify the stories of educators who are redefining learning by leading with a new playbook of behaviors.
- Want to redefine success in your field? Be the example—document the journey, show what’s possible, and make the “new way” look undeniably appealing. You’ll attract the early-adopters, who are often the leading change agents.
- Want to create demand for something new? Make it easy to start. Big shifts feel overwhelming, but when the first step is obvious, people are more willing to take it. Names and labels can be good places to start–are we calling this meeting the right thing? Is the brand name for our project or art the right signal?
Change happens when the alternative is experienced and undeniable, not when people are argued into submission.
Making Change Isn’t a Battle—It’s a Shift
If you’re building something new—whether in education, business, or creative work—you’re not just trying to sell a better idea. You’re offering people a new way to define success.
- Show them a different scoreboard.
- Help them see the long-term value.
- Model the change so it’s impossible to ignore.
Because the system we have today took a hundred years to build. It won’t change overnight.
But if you can shift the way people measure what matters, you won’t have to fight head-on for change.
You’ll create the conditions where change spreads on its own.
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