We like to think of ourselves as independent thinkers. Adults with experience, perspective, and the ability to change course whenever we choose.
But here’s the truth: much of the way we think, lead, and relate to others was installed long before we reached the workforce — in the very first years of our formal education.
When we first walked into a classroom, we may have been curious, impressionable, and open. We weren’t “blank slates” exactly — family and environment had given us our earliest emotional and social cues — but we had not yet been subjected to the structured programming that would quietly shape the rest of our lives.
That programming began at school. And for most of us, it didn’t stop until we retired — if it ever stopped at all.
Where the Programming Starts
Early education isn’t just about reading, writing, and arithmetic. It’s about learning how to sit still, wait your turn, follow instructions, and measure your worth against a grading system.
It’s here that we are first taught — explicitly and implicitly — that:
- There are right answers and wrong answers.
- Authority is to be obeyed, not questioned.
- Success comes from meeting external expectations.
- Mistakes are to be avoided, not explored.
These lessons are rarely named, but they are deeply learned. They form a silent operating system that runs beneath every career decision, leadership style, and interpersonal dynamic we develop as adults.
The Corporate Continuation
That same operating system doesn’t vanish when we leave school. It is reinforced at university, refined in professional training, and rebranded in the workplace as corporate culture — “the way we do things around here.”
Corporate culture may look modern on the surface, but much of it runs on familiar code:
- Hierarchies that mimic the teacher–student dynamic.
- Performance reviews that echo report cards.
- “Best practice” processes that reward compliance over experimentation.
- Unspoken rules about who speaks, who listens, and who gets rewarded.
The language changes — alignment, values, KPIs — but the behavioural expectations feel eerily familiar to anyone who ever learned to “play the game” in a classroom.
And because this code is so familiar, we rarely question it. We adapt to it. We teach it to new hires. We measure success by it.
This is why cultural transformation in organisations is so hard: you’re not just changing policies, you’re asking people to rewrite programming that’s been running since their first day of school.
The Problem With Old Code
The “code” we learned as children was designed for order and predictability in a classroom. It made sense there. The trouble is, we never stop running it.
In adulthood, those school-bred habits can look like:
- Playing it safe instead of innovating.
- Seeking permission before taking action.
- Measuring success by other people’s approval.
- Believing there is one “right” way to do things.
In the corporate world, these habits are often rewarded. They make you dependable, predictable, and low-risk. But they can also make you resistant to change, slow to adapt, and blind to new opportunities.
If you’ve ever caught yourself defaulting to these patterns — even when they hold you back — you’ve experienced old programming at work.
The Executive Illusion
Executives often believe they’re immune to this conditioning. After all, they’ve “made it” to the top. They’re in charge now. But leadership titles don’t uninstall old programs.
That’s why we see leaders talk about agility while clinging to rigid approval chains. Or announce bold innovation drives while rewarding the safest ideas. Without real unlearning, leaders risk creating the illusion of change while reinforcing the very culture they’re trying to move beyond.
Why Unlearning Comes First
Most leadership development and personal growth focuses on adding skills — new strategies, new perspectives, new tools. But if we’re adding them on top of decades-old code, they’re always competing with the original operating system.
It’s like installing a modern app on a 20-year-old computer. It might run, but not the way it’s meant to. The limitations of the underlying system will always get in the way.
Unlearning is about making that code visible, challenging its relevance, and rewriting it where it no longer serves. Until you do that, change will always feel like a push uphill.
Three Steps to Start Deprogramming
- Spot the Script Think about an automatic reaction you have at work — a hesitation, a habit, a reflex. Ask: When did I first learn to do this? Often, the trail leads back to the classroom.
- Ask Who Benefits Some scripts still serve you; others don’t. Which ones belong to your values and which belong to someone else’s system?
- Write Your Own Rules Unlearning isn’t erasure — it’s replacement. Create deliberate, adult-formed beliefs and practices that align with your current reality.
Culture Change Starts at the Top
Culture isn’t a slide deck or a set of values on the wall — it’s the lived behaviour of people in the system. If you want that behaviour to change, you have to address the programming beneath it.
This is why real cultural transformation begins with leaders. If the people at the top are still unconsciously running school-era programming, they will replicate it — no matter how many change initiatives they fund.
The Takeaway
The way we work today is not just the product of market forces or management theory. It’s the end point of a lifetime of conditioning — conditioning that began in early education and was continually reinforced at every institutional step along the way.
If you want to lead, work, or live differently, you don’t just need new strategies. You need the courage to look under the hood, see what’s been running your system for decades, and decide — deliberately — what to keep and what to uninstall.
That’s the real work of unlearning. And it’s the only way to create lasting, meaningful change — in yourself, your team, and your organisation.