A simple, people-centred model for leading change in schools. Two diamonds, four moves and three checkpoints that help a school community understand a challenge together before trying to solve it.
Most change in schools doesn't stick. Not because people don't care, but because we rush to solutions before we've understood the problem, and we move on before the new way of working has had time to settle. The Double Diamond slows that down.
The first diamond is about the challenge: open out to understand it from every angle, then narrow to a shared goal. The second is about the solution: open out to explore what's possible, then narrow to something you can deliver and sustain. Each diamond goes wide before it closes, so thinking gets room to breathe before decisions get made.
Community sits at the heart of it. This isn't a model to keep within the senior leadership team. It works when the people a change affects are part of shaping it.
Where you begin, before you've looked properly. Often one person's view of what needs to change.
The shared aim that closes the first diamond. A far stronger place to build from than one person's perceived challenge.
The change, embedded in habits and culture, that closes the second diamond.
Each move pairs two stages that overlap and happen together, rather than one after the other.
The book sets out five questions for each of the eight stages: 40 in all, each with the thinking and research behind it.
The original Double Diamond comes from the Design Council, which created it as a simple way to describe the design process: discover, define, develop, deliver.
Shane Leaning and Efraim Lerner came across it through a chance conversation in a Shanghai coffee shop, and saw how well it could hold the questions that matter in school change. But schools aren't products. They're communities of people, and people are wonderfully complex. So they adapted it, adding the human work that change in schools depends on: connecting, aligning, learning and sustaining.
The result is the model at the heart of their book, Change Starts Here (Routledge, 2025), and of everything Work Collaborative does. In the open-source spirit of the original, it's free to use, adapt and build on. All we ask is that you share what you learn.
The model matters less than the questions it helps you ask. Use it to structure better conversations with your community, not as a checklist to follow to the letter.
A practical companion that takes you through all four moves, one at a time, using your own school and your own challenge.
Change Starts Here sets out all 40 questions, with the stories and research behind them.
The Foundation Certificate in Resonant School Change takes you through the model with a cohort of leaders and support along the way.
The free Double Diamond Change Workbook takes you through all four moves, using your own school and your own challenge.
