Now that I’ve come to the end of a course on change leadership in digital learning environments, I’m inclined to look back on how my perspective has shifted throughout the process. For the most part, throughout my career, I’ve been a very independent worker. I’ve often held positions, including my current role, which require very little supervision, and my interactions with coworkers is largely transactional. As a result, I’ve spent surprisingly little time thinking about leadership outside of the context of those in supervisory positions over me. When I worked with Patrick Guichon, Mike MacKay, Jonathan Carpenter, and Cheryl-Haley Nix at the beginning of this course on a blog post on leadership attributes, it was from that personal supervisory perspective that I initially approached it (Carpenter et al., 2021). I pictured what qualities I would value in someone in a managerial position to whom I would report.
Now, in hindsight, I recognize that leadership is so much more than managing people or supervising. It’s not only about motivating people to see how their work benefits the success of the organization in addition to their own personal objectives, but how they can frequently be the same thing. When individuals can be provided the insight that their own personal goals align with the goals of the organization, those individuals are motivated into action. As a result, as someone who looks to move into more of a leadership position following my current studies, I need to better understand the motivations of my colleagues and how I can assist them in achieving success. I need to think more about my place in the organization, as a part of the whole, rather than an individual working toward a unique goal.
It was my pleasure to recently work with Cheryl-Haley Nix, Jonathan Carpenter, Michael MacKay, and Patrick Guichon on the development of a toolkit to be used to guide decision making in the implementation of educational technology in resistant organizations. Feel free to watch the above video for an introduction, then take a look at the following PDF to get a more in depth look.
I was recently involved in a project to increase engagement in an upcoming learning space, currently under construction at my place of work. The idea was to increase awareness of the space and the philosophy behind its existence and planned use. I was temporarily teamed up with a small group of colleagues from various areas of the college to develop the engagement plan under the leadership of a manager more closely associated with the learning space.
While the engagement plan we developed showed promise, our recommendations to secure resources for its execution were never really considered and the resulting plan was never executed. Looking back, having explored some of the literature on change implementation and project management, I now recognize that while we got some elements of the planning process right, there are some ways I would have approached this project differently.
To begin on a positive note, we did a good job of identifying the main stakeholders of the project and those who would benefit from being more engaged in the learning space. We spent a lot of time considering who I now understand Murray-Webster and Simon (2006) would have called Saviours; those people who, once engaged, would act as the project’s cheerleaders. We developed a profile of their interests, motivations, and connection to the college. That profile was then used to build an interactive program to be delivered through Zoom which would build awareness of the space, deliver actionable instructional tools, and engage participants in a series of collaborative exercises. Additionally, while we didn’t officially complete what Watt (2014) identified as a feasibility study, we did consider what resources those people who would execute the project would require to move forward, and made the appropriate recommendations. Unfortunately, those recommendations were not seriously considered, and it was this that led to the project’s failure.
On the other hand, there was much we could have done better. We did not have what Watt (2014) would have described as a critical path; a plan for the project including timelines identifying steps to be completed or risk holding up the entire project. If we had taken the time to develop this path and followed it closely, almost certainly we would have recognized much earlier that nothing regarding the acquisition of the necessary resources was being done. Another mistake we made was to not determine quantitative objectives that would have determined successful implementation of the project, as Watt recommended. While the project didn’t get to the point where those quantitative objectives could have been measured, if it had, we would have eventually run into problems trying to measure the project’s success. Having said all that, the largest downfall of our project, in my estimation, which led to its failure was our leader’s lack of understanding of the system in which we were working. Conway et al. (2017) observed that a leader has to have a strong understanding of their system in order to arrive at the most appropriate solution for the problem. Our leader’s lack of such an understanding is what led to our recommendations to acquire resources being ignored and when it was time for our small team to step back and hand off the project for implementation, there was no one in a position to hand it to.
I look forward to making use of the skills I’ve recently learned about change leadership and project management. I will have countless projects ahead of me and I will increase the likelihood for their success if I take a little more time to take a systematic approach.
