In March 2020 a Youth Services department, where I worked at the time, switched to working from home. 90% of my job had nothing to do with education, I was a Youth Counsellor. I was also helping run a Life Skills program as a facilitator for a group of teenagers. Its purpose was to educate youth that was struggling with transitioning to adulthood. We were covering a variety of topics, from mental health and job search to budgeting and filing taxes. All of the educational materials existed on paper only. One week we were meeting in person, then the next week we started meeting through Zoom. Nothing else has changed. In June I left the company. Last week, I received a call from my former manager who asked me if I am interested in helping to create an online curriculum for a Life Skills program. She remembered that I was studying instructional design and thought we might be useful to each other. I am not sure what lessons I can take away about introducing rapid change. All I have is questions, such as why now? What, using the term from Lewin’s model of change, led to this unfreeze? Was there a reassessment of “whether the organization has the human, financial, material, and informational resources necessary to implement the change well?”(Weiner, 2009, p. 4) Regardless of which change management method is being used by the leadership, it is clearly on step 1 at the moment.
As I have never been an agent of change in a digital learning environment, I don’t have my own approach yet. Although while reading about the various model of changes, I noticed that some of them, such as the ERA (evaluation, re-evaluation, and action) method, are customer-oriented and others, such as Lean Thinking, are more organization-oriented. It seems to be an important distinction because in non-profit organizations changes are rarely driven by customers. It might just be my cynical view based on experience but non-profits have no incentive to adapt to customers’ needs when customers don’t pay for services. Changes are usually attached to new funding and either come from newly introduced government policies or from newly written grant proposals that aim to capitalize on a fresh approach to an old problem.
Most change methods seem to require a leadership role to execute them. Since it is unlikely that I will be given any authority, I wonder how useful it is to develop my own approach before I learn about how limited the resources are, what the timeline of this project is, how much influence will I have and so on.
What role does leadership play in managing change?
While Antwi & Kale suggest that “there are clear limitations to managerial action in making change”(2014, p. 8), they do play a role of a “Change Implementer” as defined by Kanter’s “Big Three” Model of Organizational Change (2003).
Biech (2007) provides a great list of responsibilities for the leader
Develops the vision Provides input to the business case (probably irrelevant in non-profit ) Establishes a sense of urgency (good for the organization, not always good for the team) Shows credible and unwavering commitment Displays endorsement in actions and words Responds to emerging issues Directs the change implementation team Communicates the vision constantly Supports actions addressing reactions Approves metrics Holds others accountable to attain metrics Delivers implementation plan Holds others accountable to implement Supports practices to institutionalize change Implements rewards and consequences (if i assume an unpaid role, what consequences can i suffer?) Stays the course Removes barriers in the system (i love this one the most)
Antwi, M., & Kale, M. (2014). Change management in healthcare: Literature review. https://smith.queensu.ca/centres/monieson/knowledge_articles/files/Change%20Management%20in%20Healthcare%20-%20Lit%20Review%20-%20AP%20FINAL.pdf
Biech, E. (2007). Thriving through change: A leader’s practical guide to change mastery. American Society for Training and Development. https://royalroads.skillport.com/skillportfe/assetSummaryPage.action?assetid=RW$1544:_ss_book:22651
Kanter, R. M. (2003). Challenge of organizational change: How companies experience it and leaders guide it. Simon & Schuster.
Weiner, B. J. (2009). A theory of organizational readiness for change. Implementation Science, 4(1). https://doi.org/10.1186/1748-5908-4-67