In a recent episode of The Table, I had the privilege of speaking with Nissi Ozigbu , a change leadership strategist and founder of The Growth Hut. With over 15 years of experience leading transformation across multiple sectors, Nissi brings a refreshingly human-centered approach to organizational change. What struck me most about our conversation was how directly her insights apply to the work we do in schools, where change is constant but the systems supporting it often fall short.
As someone who has spent years working in independent schools and now coaches educational leaders, I found myself nodding along as Nissi described the hidden barriers that keep organizations stuck, even when everyone claims they want to move forward. Her perspective on change literacy, storytelling, and integrated leadership offers practical wisdom for school administrators navigating everything from restructuring to cultural shifts.
Why Change Leadership Matters in Schools
Nissi’s journey into change leadership began with an unexpected revelation. After giving birth to her first son at 27, she noticed something had shifted in how she viewed her team members. “I found it very hard to perform management because now I was seeing everybody as, oh my gosh, this is somebody’s baby,” she explained. “How would I feel if somebody were talking to my baby? And these are people double, triple my age, but they’re still somebody’s baby somewhere.”
This realization led her to question the fundamental disconnect between who we are as individuals and how we’re expected to behave at work. For those of us in education, this tension feels particularly acute. We work in schools because we care about human development, yet we often operate within systems that treat people as resources rather than whole individuals.
The parallel to schools is striking. We ask teachers to bring their authentic selves into the classroom, to build genuine relationships with students, and to model vulnerability and growth. Yet when it comes to institutional change, we often fall back on top-down mandates and rigid timelines that ignore the very human concerns about what these changes mean for people’s lives and identities.
The Industrial Age Legacy We’re Still Fighting
One of the most illuminating parts of our conversation centered on why organizations struggle to balance strategic goals with human needs. According to Nissi, we’re still operating under limiting beliefs inherited from the industrial era. “A lot of the way organizations are set up now is based on the industrial era,” she noted. “Let’s train people who can do the exact same job in a set amount of hours to a set quality standard. And let’s mark them on it and let’s make the baseline we are looking out for when you’re doing it wrong, not when you’re doing it right.”
In schools, this manifests in policies around sick leave, performance reviews, and rigid hierarchies that assume teachers and staff need constant monitoring rather than support. We’ve created systems designed to catch people failing rather than to help them thrive. Even progressive schools that pride themselves on student-centered pedagogy often maintain faculty evaluation systems that feel punitive rather than developmental.
The challenge, Nissi explained, is that “even leaders with the best intentions have to work within the set frameworks and policies and best practices that are set out for the organization. They can’t just go rogue.” This rings especially true in independent schools, where tradition and established procedures often carry significant weight, even when they no longer serve our communities well.
Stories as Strategic Tools
Nissi’s emphasis on storytelling as a leadership tool for change resonated deeply with my own experience. “Stories are not just an escape. They’re a means of teaching. They’re a means of seeing the world through another person’s perspective. And crucially, they’re such a tool for transformation,” she shared.
What’s changed in recent years is that storytelling is now recognized as a legitimate business practice. “Any organization that is worth its soul is investing in storytelling,” Nissi observed. This includes having strategies translated into stories that people can engage with and training leaders in storytelling techniques.
In schools, we intuitively understand the power of narrative. We tell stories about our founding, our values, and our community. But we often fail to use storytelling strategically when implementing change. Instead of painting a compelling picture of where we’re going and why it matters, we present changes as fait accompli with PowerPoint slides full of bullet points.
The most effective school leaders I’ve worked with understand that major initiatives need narrative arcs. They know that people need to see themselves in the story, understand the stakes, and feel connected to the outcome. When a school decides to implement a new advisory program or restructure its divisions, the difference between success and resistance often comes down to whether leaders have crafted a story that helps people make sense of the change.
Change Literacy: The Missing Skill
Perhaps the most actionable concept Nissi introduced is “change literacy,” which she describes as a basic understanding of how organizational change works. She used the analogy of moving into a new house: “You would wanna know exactly what your real estate agent or property agent wants from you. You would wanna know what the financial requirements are. You would wanna know what day of the month each month the payment is going to come out.”
When we lack change literacy, we’re “at the mercy of your organization, you are waiting for them to drip feed information to you.” This creates a dynamic where people feel blindsided by predictable events. “There’s nothing that’s come out where I’ve thought, whoa, they’re now bringing in aliens. I didn’t see that coming,” Nissi said about her 15 years in the field. “There are very predictable steps that happen, but if you’re not aware and if you don’t have a view of that cycle or that chain of events, you are constantly feeling blindsided when it doesn’t need to be like that.”
For schools, this suggests we need to be more transparent about how change processes typically unfold. When we announce a strategic planning process, do teachers understand the typical timeline and decision points? When we face enrollment challenges, do staff members recognize the predictable sequence of budget reviews and program evaluations that may follow?
Building change literacy among faculty and staff means they can ask better questions, advocate for themselves more effectively, and feel less anxious about uncertainty. It also means they can recognize when they want to be part of the journey versus when it might be time to look elsewhere—a much healthier dynamic than people feeling trapped or betrayed.
The Hidden Commitments That Keep Us Stuck
I was particularly interested in how Nissi’s thinking connects with concepts from “Immunity to Change” by Robert Kegan and Lisa Lahey, which I’ve been studying in my graduate work. The book explores hidden commitments and unspoken assumptions that prevent people from making changes they genuinely want to make.
Nissi connected this to systems thinking and the concept of mental models, as presented in Peter Senge’s work. “Understanding what the limiting beliefs or prevailing beliefs that are held individually and collectively within organizations” is foundational to change management, she explained. “If those are not targeted, what you get is this constant push and pull.”
She offered a powerful analogy: when you press both the brake and accelerator in a car, the brake overrides. “That’s the same neurologically. In organizations, if you present a change as both exciting and scary, the scary aspect will prevail. Our survival mechanism will kick in.”
This has profound implications for how we introduce change in schools. Too often, we emphasize the exciting possibilities without adequately addressing the fears. We announce a new academic program without acknowledging the concerns of teachers regarding their workload. We introduce a new community values framework without discussing the implications for existing traditions. The result is that people smile and nod in meetings while their internal brakes remain firmly engaged.
The path forward, according to Nissi, is to focus on “the restraining factors, the brake factors, the things that are gonna pull people back. Because if those are not addressed, that is what’s going to override.” This means asking: What are people afraid of losing? What competing commitments do they hold? What assumptions about “how things work here” might we be challenging?
The Biggest Mistake: Doing Too Much
When I asked Nissi about common mistakes organizations make when launching significant changes, her answer was immediate: “Doing too much. That’s notorious, isn’t it? Biting off way more than you can chew and then constantly dropping things along the wayside.”
The ripple effects of overcommitment are devastating. Leaders start forming factions, each prioritizing what they deem most important. “The message that goes out to their teams is actually we all have different priorities here, which translates as we all have different agendas here, which translates as we’re several different teams all facing in different directions.”
This ultimately leads to broken trust and creates “an organization that doesn’t even have the foundation for even one successful change initiative to thrive.” Even more sobering: this damage can’t simply be rolled back. “All you can do is start to destroy and rebuild,” Nissi explained. Recovery requires years of building new habits and getting support to create more honest leadership team dynamics.
I’ve witnessed this pattern repeatedly in schools. A head of school returns from a conference energized about personalized learning, project-based assessment, restorative practices, and design thinking. The board approves an ambitious strategic plan touching every aspect of school life. Two years later, initiatives are scattered across divisions with uneven implementation, teachers feel overwhelmed, and the leadership team is quietly fighting about priorities.
The solution, according to Nissi, lies partly in having someone in a strategic planning role “who is willing and able to push back and hold people accountable” rather than being a “yes person” who accepts everything on the table. This is challenging in school culture, where consensus-building is often valued above clarity. But without someone willing to say “no” or “not yet,” we set ourselves up for the very fragmentation that undermines our goals.
Transparency, Trust, and Psychological Safety
Our conversation touched on a theme that connects directly to my work in restorative practices: the importance of doing things with people rather than to them. I raised concerns about management cultures where information is withheld, whether to prevent people from leaving too soon or to avoid creating anxiety.
“The mere fact that you’re withholding information makes everyone uncomfortable,” I noted. “People know, people can sense when things are changing and things are happening, but can’t quite put their finger on it. And when you don’t have that psychological safety in your workplace to be able to ask the questions and where the boss can be transparent, it just makes for a very stressful environment.”
Nissi agreed, pointing to deeply ingrained patterns: “The managers or the bosses have had all the information and all the power, and then they dole it out when they feel necessary.”
This connects to the broader issue of whether people feel valued and invested in. In schools, we pride ourselves on cultivating student voice and agency, yet we often fail to extend the same principles to faculty and staff. Major decisions about curriculum, schedule, or program structure get made in closed leadership meetings, then presented as conclusions rather than as proposals open to meaningful input.
Building the kind of environment where people can ask hard questions and expect honest answers requires intentional cultivation. It means leaders acknowledging what they don’t yet know, being transparent about constraints, and genuinely welcoming dissent. It also means recognizing that the temporary discomfort of honest conversation is far preferable to the long-term damage of broken trust.
Preparing the Next Generation
Nissi is encouraged by how younger professionals approach leadership. “Gen Z really is forcing us to prove and account for our leadership,” she observed. They’re not impressed by titles alone; they want to know: “What are their personal beliefs? How do they show up?” This forces leaders to “walk the talk.”
However, she also acknowledged the challenges young people face entering the workforce now, including intense competition for entry-level roles and the need to differentiate themselves. Her advice focuses on experimentation and self-belief, particularly through building expertise and audience on platforms like LinkedIn, YouTube, and TikTok.
For those of us working in schools, this raises important questions about how we’re preparing students for a world where “business as usual is so a thing of the past.” Understanding change processes isn’t just relevant for business; it’s essential life literacy. Our graduates need to know how to navigate organizational change, advocate for themselves during transitions, and recognize the patterns that signal what’s coming next.
We also need to think about how we’re modeling adaptability and resilience. Are we showing students that mistakes are part of growth, or are we still operating from a perfection-driven mindset? Nissi’s reflection on her own journey is instructive: “I cannot berate myself this hard each time something goes wrong, ’cause things are gonna keep going wrong.” She learned to show herself grace, recognizing that without “oops moments,” there’s no growth.
This self-compassion extends to how we think about organizational imperfection. Schools will never implement change flawlessly. We will make mistakes, disappoint people, and have to course-correct. The question is whether we can do so while maintaining relationships and learning from the experience.
Practical Steps for School Leaders
Based on Nissi’s insights and my own experience working with schools, here are concrete ways to apply these principles:
Start with fewer priorities. Resist the temptation to say yes to every good idea. Better to do three things well than ten things poorly. Involve your leadership team in honest conversation about capacity and sequencing.
Build change literacy. Help faculty and staff understand how organizational change typically unfolds. When announcing an initiative, explain the phases, decision points, and timeline. Make the process visible rather than mysterious.
Address the brakes first. Before selling the exciting vision, acknowledge the fears and concerns. What might people lose? What assumptions are being challenged? Create space to discuss these openly before moving forward.
Tell better stories. Don’t just present data and bullet points. Help people see themselves in the narrative of where the school is going. Use stories to illustrate what success looks like and why it matters.
Create transparency structures. Establish regular forums where leadership shares what they know, what they don’t know, and what constraints they’re working within. Make it safe to ask hard questions.
Align your leadership presence. Consider whether there’s coherence between who you are, what you claim to value, and how you actually lead. Where are the gaps, and what would it take to close them?
Invest in leadership development. Help emerging leaders develop change leadership skills early in their careers. This includes storytelling, systems thinking, and navigating the human dimensions of change.
Model self-compassion. When changes don’t go as planned, acknowledge it openly and focus on learning rather than blame. This creates psychological safety for others to take risks and grow.
The Courage to Change
What stood out most in my conversation with Nissi was her fundamental optimism about human capacity. Despite witnessing countless organizational failures, she believes deeply in our ability to lead change more humanely and effectively. But, this requires courage—courage to challenge inherited systems, courage to be honest about what’s not working, courage to prioritize people over metrics.
For those of us in schools, this work is both more complex and more important because we’re not just managing change; we’re modeling it for the young people watching us. Every time we navigate a difficult transition, we’re teaching students about resilience, adaptability, and what it means to lead with integrity.
Change is no longer an occasional disruption punctuating long periods of stability. It’s the water we swim in. The question isn’t whether our schools will change, but whether we’ll lead that change in ways that honor our values and strengthen our communities.
As Nissi reminded me, we’re all “just finding our way,” and that’s something to be excited about rather than ashamed of. The leaders who will thrive in education’s future are those who can hold this paradox: having clear direction while remaining genuinely curious, being strategic while staying deeply human.
You can connect with Nissi Ozigbu on LinkedIn where she shares daily insights on change leadership, or learn more about her work atThe Growth Hut.
