Technology-based renovating processes
First, “F” stands for Failure…
As a typical example of globalization a multi-national corporation was expanding rapidly to other countries, thus experienced an urgent need for qualified employees viable for relocation. In full concordance with the statement that “what this globalization means for business-people is that the need to interact with people who are culturally different has never been greater and will only increase in the future” (Thomas & Inkson, 2008), thus the company regarding the assimilation of a foreign culture as key for the success of the relocated employee as well as the expansion projects was right but something happened during implementation. The human resources department hired an external consultant firm to identify the candidates in all areas of the company that would make a good fit for the openings. The consultant firm installed their surveying system on the corporation’s platform making it company-wide available, although the access to the system was granted on a personal basis.
Once invited through a formal letter that explained the details of the expansion project and the procedure to gain access to the consultant’s system, each candidate had to train herself/himself on how to use the system, and that self-training was performed only with the guidance of the system’s directions displayed on the screen.
There were several pieces missing in this effort. First, the invitation letter was the only information the employee received regarding what the corporation was doing. In a different context, a personal letter from the company would be extraordinary in itself but in this case it lacked the human touch to allow the person to interact with someone that could provide more meaning to the content. The corporate effort to anticipate the availability of qualified individuals depended on a surveying technology that, according to Shneiderman, should be in harmony with the users’s needs while enriching their experiences with support of their relationships and activities (2003).
Second, due to the objective of the survey several questions explored subjective aspects with regard to the adaptability of the candidate. The study was delicate because it required that information. Nonetheless, the answers were interpreted solely by the consultant firm’s staff thus lacking the context of each candidate in order to properly understand the answers. There were several cases of inexact results caused by that situation which generated conflict. Which, again, proves that information technology is most valued when it provides the user with a sense of security, mastery, and achievement (Shneiderman, 2003).
And third, being the process a direct invitation to participate not everyone in the company received a letter. Regardless of the criteria to select whom shall receive such letters which only top management levels knew, the project was informally -although perhaps rightly so- stigmatized as discriminatory.
Even though there was a personal written communication, it was not enough nor correctly used. The leader in charge of the change process must constantly communicate the objective of changing to all in the company, and those acting as change agents should plan on how to bring about such communication (Biech, 2007).
Second, “S” stands for Success…
The state of Texas in the U.S. is divided in 20 geographic regions. Each region includes public school districts and public school charters. Region 4 encompasses 48 public school districts and 34 open-enrollment charter schools, representing more than 1.2 million students, 95,000 educators, and 1500 campuses. Half of the student population is of Hispanic origin, and 22.3% of the total of students are English Language Learners. This supports the importance of having a bilingual program in place (Wells, 2018).
Region 4, in coordination with local universities, had the Alternate Certification Program (ACP) taught in several cities of Mexico, during which the instructors travelled from the US to the Mexican locations on weekends back and forth for the ten months the program took to complete. When physical security started to be an issue in Mexico, Region 4 looked for ways to avoid exposing their staff thus enabled an online version of the ACP which was gradually implemented.
The moderate introduction of the online version of the ACP helped the students as well as the instructors, since similar to the conductor’s full involvement needed for the flawless performance of the orchestra, the instructors had to actively pay detailed attention to achieve effective engagement of all students. The ACP acquired a new dynamic thanks to both, the online asynchronous interactions amongst learners and instructor, and the Blackboard synchronous sessions.
Leadership was fundamental because the involvement demonstrated by the instructor over the gradual shifting of the program allowed the students to assimilate the way the class would be online and, at the same time ask questions receiving the coaching needed to take off with the new version.
Two things were evident: An immediate and natural resistance to change, and the absence of the human contact provided by face-to-face sessions. As the weeks went by the quality of online interactions together with the constant participation of our instructor (which not necessarily happened in other groups) helped the learners assimilate the transition, and succeed in the program without the feeling of something lacking in the process. I credit our instructor fully for that result due to her authentic rapport with the group.
We recognized our instructor’s merit of having each one of us actively collaborate with one another, regardless of how each one was presenting their work on screen. This has to do with assimilating the shared notion of digital environments as mentioned by Feldstein (2017), and by achieving this she broke more than one paradigm in her students’ minds. When we were done with one assignment we were already eager to peek into the next assignment in order to share our work with other peers and exchange opinions and comments. That degree of interaction is not easily accomplished.
References
Biech, E. (2007). Models for change. Thriving Through Change: A Leader’s Practical Guide to Change Mastery. Alexandria, VA: ASTD
Feldstein, M. (2017, May 28). A flexible, interoperable digital learning platform: Are we there yet? [Blog post]
Shneiderman, B., (2003). Leonardo’s laptop: Human needs and the new computing technologies. MIT Press. ISBN: 9780262692991
Thomas, D., & Inkson, K., (2008). Cultural intelligence: People skills for global business. ReadHowYouWant.com (Ed). ISBN 1442953861, 9781442953864
Wells, P., (2018). Retrieved from http://www.esc4.net/about/about-region-4