NoTosh

At Kristin School, Auckland, strategy did not begin and end with spreadsheets and data. It began with a Design Team from across the school learning how to gather the kind of data that surveys and desk research often miss: the lived experience of students, staff, parents and leaders. From there, NoTosh worked through the data to identify areas with real strategic potential: ambitious choices the school could make about its future. In the Strategy Choices session, Kristin’s Leadership Team and Board worked with a set of deliberately provocative options, each with a counterpart that might be just as good. The purpose was to make genuine choices, and discard the rest. We used five questions, inspired by Roger Martin’s work on strategy, to sharpen the conversation: What future are we really trying to make possible? Where will we focus our effort? How will Kristin succeed in a way that feels distinctive? What systems and capabilities can we build on? And what unique approach to developing the school might Kristin have that others do not? That is where strategy starts to become useful, rather than just being a long list of priorities or innumerable ‘pillars’. For Kristin, this meant moving from rich evidence, to ambitious options, to a clearer view of the school’s future: a strategy grounded in who they are, but brave enough to stretch what they might become. The feedback from experienced Board members was striking. They described it as the most engaging strategy work they had ever done. Good strategy work should not feel like a report to be approved and forgotten. It should feel like people making serious choices together that make school even better for everyone. That is what NoTosh does. In schools. In governments. In corporates. We help teams turn evidence into choices, choices into focus, and focus into a future people can actually build. #kristinschool #newzealand #auckland #notosh #strategy

When schools get their turn for a redesign, for most people the process starts with a “request for proposals” or a “brief” (which is often anything but brief). But what happens when you stop starting with the brief? That was the provocation behind a packed evening in Melbourne, hosted in the beautifully curated showroom of Shaw Contract, who didn’t just provide the space but created the conditions for proper thinking with generous hospitality and a setting that invited movement, conversation and challenge. We brought together teachers, designers and architects and asked a deceptively simple question: who really designs the learning experience? Instead of presentations and polite consultation, we worked through conversation. Real ones. The kind where you ask, “What are you actually trying to achieve?” and then the uncomfortable follow-up: “What’s getting in the way?” The room was a mix you rarely get in one place. A delegation from the Singapore Ministry of Education alongside school leaders and collaborators from New Zealand and across Victoria. Different systems with the same tensions. Plenty of ambition, often constrained by process, habits, or the invisible weight of “how we’ve always done it”. We also reconnected with participants from the Mayfield Project who have spent months digging into these questions through applied research. The evening was proof that when educators and designers are given space to investigate their own practice, the conversation shifts quickly from what is… to what could be. Across the evening, one idea kept surfacing. Consultation keeps people at arm’s length. Conversation pulls them into the work. And when you pair that with prototyping, not just talking about change but trying it out, even in small ways, the future becomes something you can test. The takeaway was simple, and slightly uncomfortable. If we want better learning experiences, we cannot outsource their design to a document. We have to design with the people who live the experience every day. #learning #architecture #design #notosh #lea @a4le_2

Today’s Featured Imagine a school built not around walls-but around experiences. Inspired by Reggio Emilia and cultural narratives, this Early Years Centre in Nanjing blends nature, movement, and imagination into everyday learning. A gentle reminder-space shapes how we grow. Grateful to Philip Idle, Chloe Summers, and Kate Miles for facilitating and sharing this project. Architects: EIW Architects Location: China Area: 1800m2 (internal) Year: 2019 Project Architect/Director : Philip Idle ,Chloe Summers Photo Credits: Sun Jian and Wicky Chen Want to explore how design transforms learning? Tap the link in bio for full project details. @teamnotosh #InternationalSchool #EarlyYearsArchitecture #DesignForLearning #CreativeSpaces #educationdesign Credits to respective architects and photographers; content used strictly for non-commercial, educational purposes.

Have you ever walked out of a leadership meeting thinking, “What did we actually decide?” If yes, it probably means your team isn’t lacking ideas: you’re probably missing the right conversations. Auckland friends! Join our free in-person session: Five Conversations That Create Clarity. In collaboration with the Stonefields Collaborative Trust, we’ll help you cut through noise, align your team, and make decisions that actually stick. So you never have to sit through another meeting that goes nowhere. Save your spot (it’s free). Search for “Ewan McIntosh Stonefields” or copy / paste the link: 👉 /e/ewan-mcintosh-five-conversations-that-create-clarity-tickets-1983851061930?utm_experiment=test_share_listing&aff=ebdsshios&sg=260353c7a363aa5f342c6fd1ca1da41cc1ffeed525efa0aa184477107130cfa24630777fcd828082b3fa2bafd41f3c5c7eb9293f2d8142a803c64c02e3e667a8256086df00b651d679ec4b

Our colleague Kate Wadsworth has written her first book! Awedinary: The Wonder of Everyday Things. While there are so many books out there sharing techniques for asking the right question or pleading with us to be “more curious”, this work of art is full of great curiosities with brilliant photography to provoke you every day. #newbook #awedinary #curiosity

When was the last time you had your photo taken?
I mean, really taken? My guess is school. Sat on a stool in front of a fake sky, told to smile and show your teeth. Your parents loved it. And that was pretty much it. When I look back at yearbooks now, I barely recognise my classmates. It’s as if the photographer captured someone else entirely. I’ve never enjoyed posed photos. In fact, I’ve avoided them for over forty years. This shoot happened almost by accident. It was meant to be my daughter Catriona’s Christmas present, and I tagged along, partly out of curiosity, partly to see if I could finally shake that long-held discomfort. Andrew Perry is nothing short of a genius. From a freezing studio in Edinburgh, on one of the coldest days of the year, he did all the things you do to help someone forget they’re being photographed. He even taught me a new word. “Smise”. Smiling with your eyes. It’s very Benjamin Zander, who’s spent his life talking about the way music can change lives, and you see the change by the smile in the eyes. In our case, it wasn’t classical music. It was hip hop and a bit of gangster rap. Catriona will have many shoots ahead of her that will need to live up to this one. I’m just glad I finally have a picture that actually looks like me. I’m almost ten years older than the last time I did this. Somehow, I look ten years younger. If you’ve always avoided having your photo taken, I’d genuinely recommend it. It’s not vanity. It’s more like a spa day, without the dressing gown. 📸 @andrewperrycouk #edinburghphotographer #edinburgh #photography #notosh

2025 was the toughest year in business I’ve ever experienced, and yet: we’ve had stellar support from a tight group of incredible, ambitious clients - many of whom have become friends. And they’ve allowed me to visit new places and learn so much about corners of the world where sheer joy exists cheek-by-jowl with daily struggles. Two things can be true at the same time, and more often than not we need the juxtaposition to do our best work: that’s my biggest takeaway from 2025. #travel #recap2025 #recapvideo #recap #travelgram #notosh #edinburgh #hongkong #france #sunset #cartagena #paris #colombia #muscat #oman #dubai #singapore #london #scotland #cali #washington #dc #usa #toronto #canada #santodomingo #split #croatia #sydney

Today, NoTosh is 16. In Scotland, turning 16 is a funny old milestone. You’re trusted with real responsibility, while still very much in the middle of figuring things out. You can smoke. But you can’t drink. You can get married. You can have children. You can join the Army (though, sensibly, you’re not sent into battle yet). You can leave school. You can stay at school. You can vote in Scottish elections (but not British ones). You can be tried in court, but not sent to an adult prison. You can be treated as an adult… some of the time. That mix of trust, freedom, responsibility and constraint feels about right for NoTosh. On 19 December 2009, with very little certainty in the world around me, I sat at the same kitchen table I’m sitting at now and founded NoTosh. No rulebook. No five-year plan. No desire to copy what everyone else was doing. Just a strong sense that schools didn’t need another programme or off-the-shelf answer. They needed space to think. They needed language for what mattered. They needed someone to say, “Hang on. Are you sure that’s the problem?” Working alongside some of the world’s best creative teams at Channel 4 showed me what happens when creativity is treated as a serious discipline, not a decorative extra. Many organisations, schools included, were being starved of that same creative confidence. Sixteen years in, we know who we are. We do work that’s hard to do well: crafting language that helps teams make decisions. We’ve done it in over 70 countries, 61 this year alone, and we know how much care, rigour and listening it takes. We challenge assumptions and surface uncomfortable truths, but we stay around to help make sense of what comes next. Provocation isn’t the point. Progress is. We stretch ambition and imagination, then help turn ideas into decisions, and decisions into action. Strategy that doesn’t move behaviour isn’t strategy at all. We’re creative and we have fun with it. Creativity isn’t an afterthought for us. It’s how we think, solve problems and communicate. But we’re also more grounded. More confident. More comfortable saying no. NoTosh at 16. Designing the future on purpose. Happy birthday to us! 🎂 🎁

Eight months ago, we began a long trek to win a competition to rebuild the campus of one of the world’s foremost innovators in learning. From fifteen initial teams, to one. We’re delighted to see the UWC South East Asia Tengah project moving into its next chapter, and proud to have played our part in shaping the vision and design drivers that underpin this ambitious new campus, a Learning Village at the heart of a new sustainable community in Singapore. Opportunities like this don’t come along often: a brief with real aspiration, a client deeply committed to its mission, and design partners who understand the importance of aligning place, people and pedagogy from the outset. Our role was to help express the project intent with even greater clarity: distilling its values, learning principles and community hopes into a set of guiding ideas that our incredible design leaders at BVN, Allford Hall Monaghan Morris and RSP could take forward into the conceptual design. Seeing those ideas come to life in the emerging masterplan has been a joy. A huge thank you to the teams at UWCSEA, BVN Architecture, Allford Hall Monaghan Morris, RSP and the many collaborators who brought such energy, expertise and generosity to the competition process. A huge thanks to Ali Bounds for entrusting us as part of her ace team - BVN are a rare breed in architects who really understand learning, deeply. It has been a genuinely collaborative effort, thoughtful, creative and deeply grounded in what this United World College community stands for. We’re excited to continue supporting the journey as the vision becomes reality. #masterplanning #notosh #nononsense #uwcsea #uwc 📷 BVN

Eight years ago today this photo was taken, in an escape room in Berlin, where we’d taken our Innovation Garage team to decompress after 12 straight hours of prototyping. It might look like a fun team moment (it was), but behind the photo is a bigger story. Most clients sign a contract and then want the timeline and deliverables. This one, from the very first phone call, wanted to co-create something concrete and full of impact for his firm. Patric Hellermann didn’t just ask us to “deliver innovation” or run some “L&D workshops” for thyssenkrupp. He asked: how might we build a culture of innovation from the ground up, and transform the mindset about how long (and much money) it takes to create a fresh idea that can become a company in its own right? Over 3.5 years, we built the Innovation Garage together as a platform where people across the business could challenge assumptions, test ideas fast, and launch real products and spinouts (some still thriving and turning significant revenue today). Patric never defaulted to the transactional relationship that so many clients would be forgiven for - “we paid you, please deliver”. He took bets on people. On us. On his own colleagues. And it worked. We designed and ran Challenge Generation and Ideation Sprints across Europe We took teams out of their day jobs and into real-world problem spaces like Berlin’s mobility challenges or overfishing in the North Sea or overcoming the perennial issue of motion sickness. We asked oblique questions that generated fresh insights. We helped turn ideas into prototypes, and prototypes into pitches, and pitches into spinouts We picked up international awards for the impact and saw long-term value and job creation. I’ve worked with a lot of great people. Patric stands out for how he led: with trust, humility, and a genuine commitment to building something that lasts. Happy escape room anniversary, Patric. One of the best 12-hour days of my career. @thyssenkrupp @thyssenkruppmarinesystems @thyssenkruppautomotivehungary @thyssenkruppusa #thyssenkrupp #engineering #designthinking #notosh

NoTosh have been proud Silver Sponsor of GESS this week. It has been wonderful to host panels, interviews and participate in talk and discussions. Above all, we’ve made fresh connections with the community here in the UAE and wider region. If you want to do business here, the relationships start at GESS. #gessdubai #leadership #community #edtech Discover more @gesseducation

✨ From DNA to Design: The UWC Experience Every @uwcint College shares one mission: education as a force for peace and a sustainable future. But each school lives that mission in its own way. Over time, the language we use to describe what makes UWC special has become so familiar inside the movement that it can be hard for others to grasp the “secret sauce.” This year, UWC Heads — with partners from the @iborganization , @outwardboundpeacebuilding and @teamnotosh — came together to define the essence of a UWC experience. Months of interviews and research became a shared design language: 🔸 25 DNA cards capturing what makes UWC, UWC 🔸 20 Tension cards naming the creative struggles 🔸 10 Frontier cards exploring what’s next In one day, the Heads honed the DNA, faced the tensions, and designed new prototypes: 🕊️ Peace-Building Experience 🌍 UWC Day Reinvented 💡 Shared Innovation Culture 💬 Dialogue as Culture Because when we understand our DNA and the tensions that define us, we can design experiences that make peace, purpose and belonging real. #UWC #UnitedWorldColleges #EducationForPeace #Leadership #DesignThinking #LearningByDesign #InnovationInEducation #NoTosh #IB #OutwardBound #GlobalEducation #SchoolLeadership #learningculture