Within a neoliberal educational policy context, we are increasingly witness to educational leaders compelled to become strategic operators to ensure the survival of their schools. Drawing on the tenets of institutional ethnography (IE), this article traces the everyday work and experience of a school leader in one Australian private school site that was in 'survival mode' after experiencing an unprecedented decline in enrolment numbers. By tracing the power of global and local market forces informing the work of one educational leader, our intention is to capture how a school leader's subjectivity was influenced by market demands and how he invested his time in strategizing to ensure his school would survive. The article makes two main contributions; first, the case study complements research exploring the impact of neoliberal reform on schooling and, second, we highlight the role of IE in furthering our understanding of the pressures schools face and the lived experience of school leaders.