This past week I had the good fortune of traveling in Thailand with an Organizational Psychologist, and U of C professor, Dr. Joshua Bourdage who is currently on sabbatical, as well as Michelle Stiphout, a senior researcher with AHS, and Alison Leathwood who is a high school Physical Education teacher and chair of the Wellness Committee at SSIS where I work. We discussed a number of topics around leadership and digital learning environments while sharing our professional experiences as educators during Covid.
Change leaders are people with creative visions, who are able to foresee a new reality and how to get to it. Change leaders have to understand how their employees perceive change and ensure they accept the change and are ready for it. They have to motivate employee (sic) to take responsibility and be an active part of the change. (Al-Haddad & Kotnour, 2015, p. 6)
We all agreed that strong leadership was imperative to individual success during the pandemic. Those who were given clear objectives, whose concerns were addressed by leadership, and who took advantage of the various training and supports offered by their organizations stepped up to the challenge, while those who resisted the transition from face-to-face to online learning did not. Ms. Leathwood noted how she took the change as a challenge to deliver new and engaging lessons, to learn new tools, and noted all the sharing of ideas and resources within the professional PE community. Dr. Bourdage further opined that self-determination theory (Ryan and Deci, 2000) distinguished those who thrived versus those who merely survived during this time.
Organizational readiness for change is a multi-level, multi-faceted construct; organizational members’ shared resolve to implement a change (change commitment) and shared belief in their collective capability to do so (change efficacy). Organizational readiness for change varies as a function of how much organizational members value the change and how favorably they appraise three key determinants of implementation capability: task demands, resource availability, and situational factors. (Weiner, 2009, p. 1)
One theme that came up was a complete lack of organizational readiness for change during the pandemic, that everyone was in a reactive state, and that it is happening again with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI). We agree that no one is certain how this will impact teaching and learning, that different organizations in the education sector have wildly different policies on the issue, and everyone admits it is a revolutionary tool and a game-changer; so much so that some of our colleagues are choosing retirement over another disruption in an otherwise stable career.
We discussed how Lewin’s change management model (1947) of unfreezing, changing, and refreezing no longer applies in the digital age as technology continues to evolve. We noted that we work in 3 very different sized organizations, and how there is no single change management model appropriate for all. We concluded that McKinsey’s 7-S model (Waterman et al., 1980) or Kotter’s 8-step model (1996) would be the most universally applicable with their soft elements and iterative/compounding approaches, but that a new model would be required for the digital age. While we didn’t discuss what that model would be; however, after listening to the “Voices” interview with Sandra Norum I would expect something that acknowledges the individual and UDL within the organization.
References:
Al-Haddad, S., & Kotnour, T. (2015). Integrating the organizational change literature: a model for successful change. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 28(2), 234–262. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOCM-11-2013-0215
Dolley, S. (2011, March 8). A Brief History of the 7-S (“McKinsey 7-S”) Model. Tom Peters. https://tompeters.com/2011/03/a-brief-history-of-the-7-s-mckinsey-7-s-model/
Norum, S. (n.d.). Voices | LRNT525 [EDUTECH 2023-1 OL] Jan 22 2024. Retrieved February 18, 2024, from https://malat-coursesite.royalroads.ca/lrnt525/schedule/voices/
Waterman Jr, R. H., Peters, T. J., & Phillips, J. R. (1980). Structure is not organization. Business horizons, 23(3), 14-26.
Weiner, B. J. (2009). A theory of organizational readiness for change. Implementation Science, 4(1), 67. https://doi.org/10.1186/1748-5908-4-67
PS: all my APA formatting was lost by posting to the blog
02/23/2024
Hi Matt,
Nicely done on the blog post, well thought out and very interesting to be able to ‘hear’ the conversation between you and your colleagues on the subject of change management.
I agree with the reactionary response to the pandemic, and found it interesting to compare it to the current reaction to AI; particularly the comment of folks choosing to retire in lieu of dealing with the disruption to their career. Do you feel those electing to avoid vs. embrace are the anti-change leaders? And do you see a way to help ensure change is seen as opportunity instead of disruption for those uncomfortable with change? I have had discussions lately with my colleagues regarding how much knowledge and experience is being lost when tenured employees chose not to adapt to the new tech.
02/26/2024
Thanks for the thoughtful question Jessica. I think everything is context specific so it’s hard to say if a leader should emerge from the anti-change crew.. but if your trusted leaders have a problem with a proposed change, then it’s certainly something to consider and work out.
I think the way to deal with it is to acknowledge the only real constant in life is change. As time goes on, change occurs, and having that awareness could be built into strategic plans. The blog by Zettlemeyer makes a case for building analytics into the strategic plan, but that could just be one way that change occurs within an organization. There are also changes when new members are added and old members depart. And it’s true a lot of organizational knowledge is lost when people leave, there’s always a human side to all these transactions. Having authentic understanding, or empathizing with someone’s resistance to change should help to ease these transitions, either by supporting them to join along or by mitigating the damage of the loss.
https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/a-leaders-guide-to-data-analytics/
02/25/2024
Well done on your info-graphic, Matt! I am happy for you regarding your fantastic week away with colleagues. I am sure learning from them will be an experience you will never forget.
Your comment about “strong leadership being imperative” certainly resonated with me. Mainly because I can quickly reflect upon all the failed attempts I have seen when leadership was not strong. For example, in a past position where I led a global corporate training team, we would work with customers to deploy our technology throughout their organizations. This deployment could entail implementation on every continent around the world. Within five years of working together, the training team got to the point where we could identify if the rollout had a fighting chance simply by a leader’s personality. Was the leader considered to be someone who people were following? For instance, if this leader got the latest and greatest technology, did everyone else want it too? We would then describe the outcome as a network effect ensuing enterprise-wide or, as my colleague described, the “Tipping Point” (Gladwell, 2000, p. 7). With the tipping point, Gladwell (2000) emphasized the importance of the “Stickiness Factor,” which involves packaging to “make it irresistible” (p. 132). I am curious about your thoughts on how or if organizations should improve on ensuring that this “Stickiness Factor” is part of their change processes.
In addition, I was thinking about you as I reread parts of a book called Leadership and the New Science from a previous course I was involved in years ago (Wheatley, 2006). Specifically, a chapter in the book focuses on change and systems. The chapter made me reflect upon our project last summer when systems thinking was being explored. You may want to check it out.
~M
References
Gladwell, M. (2000). The tipping point: How little things can make a big difference. Back Bay Books.
Wheatley, M. J. (2006). Leadership and the new science: Discovering order in a chaotic world. Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc.
02/26/2024
I do enjoy Malcolm Gladwell, and I’ll be sure to check out the Wheatley resource as well. In answer to your question, I refer back to my previous blog on leadership takeaways, which is simply that leadership has little to do with a job title, it’s an action. I also refer back to my values in a leader post that has vision at the top. Motivating a community to buy into it, that’s the ‘stickiness’ I think you’re referring to. I think if you’re forcing a change on someone, it’s unlikely to stick. Attempting to resolve resistance is often more insightful, and could help from wasting money on expensive solutions that nobody needs.