{"id":447,"date":"2021-02-14T09:40:59","date_gmt":"2021-02-14T17:40:59","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0160\/?p=447"},"modified":"2021-02-14T09:55:09","modified_gmt":"2021-02-14T17:55:09","slug":"managing-change-lessons-learned","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0160\/managing-change-lessons-learned\/","title":{"rendered":"Managing Change: Lessons Learned"},"content":{"rendered":"

Photo by Paul Talbot<\/a> on Unsplash<\/a><\/p>\n

“We are living today in a constantly growing global business environment, where change has become the norm for organizations to sustain their success and existence.”<\/em>
\n(Al-Haddad & Kotnour, 2015, p.1)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Al-Haddad & Kotnour’s statement is relevant for 2015, and it is particularly poignant for the pandemic era. In exploring the change theories and model literature for this course, I have gained critical perspectives on leading and managing change in my institution, digital learning environment, and personal growth. In reviewing and reflecting on our response to COVID, last March and how rapidly we shifted to remote learning and working from home. I have drawn out three personal learning moments and lessons to share:<\/p>\n

Lesson 1:<\/strong> Make BIG BOLD Decisions.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nelson Mandela once said, “It always seems impossible until it’s done.” Without a doubt, each of us has witnessed something impossible, in education and life, in the last eleven months of the pandemic. In March 2020, I got to witness Algonquin College pivoting our 357 Ontario College programs to remote learning within one week. As a supportive staff and instructor. I also got to experience working from home and shifted my own courses to teach remotely within a few days, which I never thought to be possible. According to Winston (2004), a leader is a person who makes sure that the organization is heading in the right direction. Indeed, the leadership team played a critical role in making change possible and successful. It was also the people (faculty, support staff, and learners) who were collectively involved and got onboard with the change. Thus, Anderson & Ackerman-Anderson (2010) suggest that the main three aspects of a comprehensive change are content, people, and process. Content<\/em> are the strategy, systems, technologies, and work practices; People<\/em> are the humans involved in the change; Process<\/em> are the actions and procedures carried out to implement the change. Additionally, Al-Haddad & Kotnour (2015) highlighted other qualities that enable success such as knowledge and skills<\/em>, resources and commitment<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Lesson 2: Resiliency. Keep On Pressing On.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In 1973, Holling defined resilience as “a measure of the persistence of systems and of their ability to absorb change and disturbance and still maintain the same relationships between populations or state variables.” (p. 14) Building on Holling’s work, resilience is now often defined by Weller & Anderson (2013) as “the capacity of a system to absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change, so as to retain essentially the same function, structure, identity and feedbacks.” (p.3) As I pressed on the importance of adaptability and resiliency in a previous blog post, “adaptability and resiliency have been timelessly desired as effective leadership qualities. However, they are now unequivocally needed during the pandemic as we all need to adapt to the new way of teaching and learning.” (Tran, 2021, para. 4) Thus, I am looking forward to hearing how scholars will define resilience for 2021.<\/p>\n

Lesson 3: Ready or Not, Change is Required.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Algonquin College is a mature institution with many strong leaders who are proactively anticipated change to move online as the future of education progressed. In retrospect, I think we were more ready to work and teach remotely than we thought, as we already have the content<\/em>, people<\/em>, and process<\/em> in place. As I reflect on Weiner’s question (2009), what circumstances are likely to generate a shared sense of readiness? The answer is the pandemic, it was merely the only option, and we all shared a sense of unreadiness but did it anyway. As we approach the one-year mark, many of us have somewhat adapted to the new way of working and living; I often question how this change will impact the future generation of learners.<\/p>\n

As such, there were and still, many learning moments navigating through change. However, I am grateful to be part of a leading institution, work with many inspiring and forward-looking leaders who consistently and continuously communicate in support of the changes.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.<\/em>\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014Charles Darwin<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n

References:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Al-Haddad, S., & Kotnour, T. (2015). Integrating the organizational change literature: A model for successful change. Journal of Organizational Change Management<\/em>, 28<\/em>(2), 234\u2013262. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1108\/JOCM-11-2013-0215<\/p>\n

Anderson, D., & Ackerman-Anderson, L. S. (2010). Beyond change management (2nd ed.)<\/em>. 323.<\/p>\n

Holling, C. S. (1973). Resilience and Stability of Ecological Systems. Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics<\/em>, 4<\/em>(1), 1\u201323. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1146\/annurev.es.04.110173.000245<\/p>\n

Tran, V. (2021). Leadership: A Reflection<\/em>. https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0160\/leadership-a-reflection\/<\/p>\n

Weiner, B. J. (2009). A theory of organizational readiness for change. Implementation Science<\/em>, 4<\/em>(1), 67. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1186\/1748-5908-4-67<\/p>\n

Weller, M., & Anderson, T. (2013). DIGITAL RESILIENCE IN HIGHER EDUCATION<\/em>. 16<\/em>(1), 15.<\/p>\n

Winston, A. W. (2004). Engineering Management-a personal perspective. IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management<\/em>, 51<\/em>(4), 412\u2013413. https:\/\/doi.org\/10.1109\/TEM.2004.836586<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Photo by Paul Talbot on Unsplash “We are living today in a constantly growing global business environment, where change has become the norm for organizations to sustain their success and existence.” (Al-Haddad & Kotnour, 2015, p.1) Al-Haddad & Kotnour’s statement is relevant for 2015, and it is particularly poignant for the pandemic era. In exploring […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":177,"featured_media":450,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-447","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lrnt525"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0160\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0160\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0160\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0160\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/177"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0160\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=447"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0160\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":452,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0160\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/447\/revisions\/452"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0160\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0160\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0160\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/malat-webspace.royalroads.ca\/rru0160\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}