You can view an infographic based on the interview of three leaders here: Change in the Workplace by Jeff Clemens

The idea of following specific models of change seems to be something that most people look at as ideal but never quite get there, or so it is thought when talking to some leaders. For the purpose of exploring change management, three leaders in digital learning environments were consulted to ask them about their different approaches to leadership.

The three members all had experience at different levels with helping to facilitate or build digital learning environments at different stages in their careers. One common model that worked with all three was the ADKAR model (2006) in which all of them had (A)wareness of the changes that needed to be made to ensure success. The (D)esire to make the change and to support it, the (K)nowledge of how to change, the (A)bility to implement and the (R)einforement to sustain the change.

The awareness of change was an important element for one of the leaders as he began a push towards the use of Open Education Resources (OER) within curriculum. This led to a journey of advocating for both the use of these resources and the creation of guidelines to evaluate the quality. This work was not easy and needed the resilience discussed by Weller and Anderson (2013). The leader was working against resistance and had to know when to push and not to get discouraged through the process. It was the desire for change that led to continued work on this project and instituting this change.

Another leader showed how they were able to use their knowledge to find out what was needed and get things done. A recent example was looking at different curriculum and how to deliver new programs in innovative ways using different digital environments. The opportunity to create a partnership with a company to deliver strong industry relevant education was available and it was this knowledge that allowed that to be built. It is this connection that is discussed by Udas (2008) when he said: “services share similar traits that not only provide for continual development that meets the evolving needs of their users while ensuring quality and availability”. This can be used from companies like Amazon (https://aws.amazon.com/training/awsacademy/) or Adobe (http://assets.omniture.com/en/downloads/marketing/AI_overview.pdf) who partner with institutes for their academies.

The ability to implement the change had one common theme among the three leaders spoken to. All members needed to get everyone on board before being able to make a change. This is discussed by Wiener (2009) with the exploration that in order for change to be implemented it involves a behavior change from the whole organization. This means that from the top down there needs to be work done to ensure that everything is coordinated to be aware of the potential roadblocks and have team members on board to help push past them. This also follows along with the reinforcement of the change which becomes easier to maintain and support with more members invested and connected to the change.

In the end all leaders spoke of the difficulties in successfully implementing change and for many they were in the midst of the change and working to get teams on board. So with that in mind, even though all these leaders felt they were not correctly following models of change it can be seen that all of them are actually connecting and following along with the strengths of multiple models.

 

Hiatt, J. (2006). ADKAR: a model for change in business, government, and our community. Prosci.

Udas, K. (2008, June 30). Distributed learning environments and OER: the change management challenge. [blog post].

Weiner, B. J. (2009). A theory of organizational readiness for change. Implementation Science, 4(67).

Weller, M., & Anderson, T. (2013). Digital Resilience in Higher Education. European Journal of Open, Distance and E-Learning.