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As schools face challenges around managing cost, standards and as more schools start to operate from a centralised model for core functions - the question of whether to keep services like catering or cleaning in-house versus outsourcing them is a live discussion at the moment. The decision process usually starts with listing pros and cons. One column is the current in-house cleaning cost — salaries, materials, management overhead, sickness cover. The other column is a quote f

Every adviser is telling schools to commercialise their estate. The projections look compelling. What happens next is less often discussed — because the building was never the bottleneck. Commercial lettings fail not for lack of space, but for lack of operational infrastructure. The limiting factor is almost always the handoffs: who owns the booking, who's reachable at 7:45 on a Sunday morning, what happens when something goes wrong.

Layered governance feels like rigour. In practice it's where decisions go to be delayed. The gap between governance and leadership is where problems live.

Most operational reviews don’t fail because they’re badly done. They fail because they tell you what you already know. In complex environments - like Oxford colleges and heritage institutions - the real issues aren’t in the process maps. They sit between teams. In assumptions. In things no one quite says out loud. This is where the real value of a review should be. We’ve written a short piece on why most consulting misses this - and how to approach it differently.

There is an unspoken assumption in many of our most prestigious institutions that commercial standards and academic identity are somehow in tension. That paying serious attention to how a guest bedroom is presented, or how long it takes to turn around a conference enquiry, is a slightly uncomfortable concession to the commercial world — tolerated because the income is useful, but not quite the done thing to make a fuss about. I've worked in and around these institutions long