We Are What We Repeat: The Pulse of Culture-Building for Human Development by Mike Nicholson
From Provocations V1: Transforming Reality to Realize Interdependence and Human Unity
This piece is from our Provocations Magazine, V1: Transforming Reality to Realize Interdependence and Human Unity. If you’re tired of the same recycled edu-content and ready for ideas that actually challenge the system, this is for you. Provocations is an exclusive benefit for our paid subscribers—join the educators who refuse to tinker at the edges.
Written by Mike Nicholson.
In schools across the world, the word "culture" is often uttered with a tone of reverence, yet it frequently lacks the corresponding intention, design, and action.
Culture, the unseen force that shapes how students, educators, and communities experience schooling, is widely acknowledged as essential—but paradoxically left to evolve by chance rather than crafted by design. It is sometimes seen as too nebulous to manage, too universally owned to be anyone’s responsibility, and too large to be changed with limited time and resources. As urgent tasks command our attention, culture quietly recedes to the background—until its effects, sometimes experienced at the hands of unhealthy, even toxic, human behaviour, becomes unmistakably visible. Yet, for all the reasons it may be deferred or misunderstood, culture remains the leader’s most powerful tool and legacy. As the saying goes, "Culture eats strategy for lunch.”
Culture as Repetition: Making the Invisible Visible
So how do we reconcile the challenge of intentionally shaping something that feels paradoxically both omnipresent and intangible with its undeniable influence on the outcomes we care about most? Here, a philosophical concept provides a path forward— one that roots culture not in lofty rhetoric but in everyday patterns. The phrase, often attributed to Will Durant summarizing Aristotle, gives us a blueprint: "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit." In the context of schools, the insight could not be more valuable. If who we are as individuals is defined by repetition—by the small, frequent actions that accumulate into character—then it stands to reason that culture, too, is built on what is repeated in our collective behaviors, structures, processes, and communications. Culture, in this sense, is not just what we say or believe. It is what we do again and again.
This realization transforms culture from something abstract into something practical and knowable. If we wish to change culture, we must examine what we are repeating and consider what should be repeated instead. It gives school leaders, teachers, and staff a method for cultural stewardship: attend to the rhythms, rituals, and messages that form the daily experience of schooling. In this framing, culture becomes the soil into which repeated actions plant seeds — seeds that grow into the norms, values, and expectations students experience.
“When students are given authority over their learning, they become the most powerful force in their own education”. (Sam Levin, 2016)