Navigating the Course of Change

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Navigating the Course of Change

• Overview of the Change Process

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And the day came when the risk toremain the
same was greater than the risk to change It
is, after all, the only hope for the cocoon to
become the butterfly.
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Presentation Overview

• Establish the need for change
• Consider the type of change needed
• Match response using appropriate leadership skills

• Consider the process of change
• Suggestions for leadership
• Realities for consideration

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Pressure Points for Change (Texas)

• AEIS
• DEC on Demand
• DEC on Schedule
• Bilingual Audit
• Corrective Action Review
• PAS

• DAS
• FIRST
• Compensatory Education
• Accreditation

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Pressure Points for Change (Local)

• General public school criticsfailing in higher
  order skills, declining test scores, increased
  drop-out rates
• Concerned parents
• Special interest groups

• Community interest groups
• School boards
• Superintendents
• Principals
• Students

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Pressure Points for Change (Student Learning)

• Jensen Teaching with the Brain in Mind
• Caine Caine Making Connections
• Gardner Multiple Intelligences

• Lazear Eight Ways of Knowing
• Shinsky Students with Special Needs
• Wiggins and McTighe Understanding by Design

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Types of Change

• First Order Change

• Second Order Change

Examples
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Types of Change

• First Order Change
• Requires Transactional Leadership

• Second Order Change
• Requires Transformational Leadership
• See Fullan, Mathew Miles, Phillip Schlecty,
  Thomas Sergiovanni, James McGregor Burns.

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Why Is Change Difficult?

• Personal Resistance
• Loss
• Challenge to Competence
• Confusion
• Conflict
• Change we want in others is called growth.
• Change others want in us is called loss.

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Why is Change Difficult?

• Organizational Resistance
• Culture of the school
• Psychological security
• People grow more conservative with age
• Designed to maintain the status quo

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Other Organizational or Personal Inhibitors

• Readiness and resistance
• A mature faculty
• Midlife issues
• Mid-career issues

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Leadership Assumptions

• Newtonian Physics
• The world is an ordered place, events have a
  cause and an effect, linear laws, everything can
  be understood provided enough information is
  available.

• Quantum Physics
• The world is composed of relationships, fields
  of influence, ideas and culture, open systems
  that continue to adapt to their environment.
• See Margaret Wheatley Leadership and the
  New Science

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Tasks of Change
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Tasks of Change (contd)
Robert Evans The Human Side of School Change
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Continuum of Growth and Performance

• High Growth No Growth
• Key Member Contributor Stable and
  Stagnant Deadwood

See Phillip Schlecty Inventing Better Schools
and Robert Evans The Human Side of School Change
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Tools We Can Use

• Develop Purpose and Followership
• Consider Transactional and Transformational
  Leadership
• Bartering
• Building moral authority based upon values
• Bonding ways to fulfill higher order needs
• Banking Servant Leadership of followers

See Burns and Sergiovanni
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Leadership Imperatives

• Trust
• Authentic (True-to-Yourself) Leadership
• Firm personal ethical standards (Integrity)
• Build on your core values
• Bring your experiences to the job
• Establish clarity and focus
• Model
• Use Top Down and Bottom Up
• Gain optimal participation
• Use recognition
• Use some confrontation

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Vaills Envelope of Optimal Realism
Region of instant gratification and too much too
soon
Ideal
Region of realistic progress envelope of
optimal realism
Performance
Region of business as usual, gradualism
Current
Now 5-10 years
Time
See Vaill Managing as a Performing Art
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Personal and Organizational Myths

• People act first in the best interests of the
  organization.
• People want to understand the what and why of
  organizational change.
• People engage in change because of the merits of
  the change.
• People opt to be architects of the change
  affecting them.
• 5. Organizations are rationally functioning
  systems.

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Personal and Organizational Myths (contd)

• Organizations are wired to assimilate systemic
  change.
• Organizations operate from a value-driven
  orientation.
• Organizations can affect long-term, systemic
  change even with short-term leadership.
• Organizations can achieve systemic change without
  creating conflict in the system.

See Jerry Pattersons Coming Clean About
Organizational Change
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Realities about People

• 1. Most people act first in their own
  self-interest, not in the interests of the
  organization.
• 2. Most people dont want to genuinely understand
  the what and why of organizational change.
• 3. Most people engage in organizational change
  because of their own pain, not because of the
  merits of the change.
• 4. Most people expect to be viewed as having good
  intentions, even though they view with suspicion
  the intentions of those initiating organizational
  change.
• 5. Most people opt to be victims of change rather
  than architects of change.

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Realities about Organizations

• 6. Most organizations operate non-rationally
  rather than rationally.
• 7. Most organizations are wired to protect the
  status quo.
• 8. Most organizations initiate change with an
  event-driven rather than value-driven mentality.
• 9. Most organizations engage in long-term change
  with short-term leadership.
• 10. Most organizations expect the greatest amount
  of change with the least amount of conflict.

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Realities about People and Organizations

• 11. Most people and organizations deny that the
  other ten realities are, in fact, their own
  realities.
• 12. Most people and organizations do have the
  capacity to develop resilience in the face of the
  other 11 realities

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Take Care of Yourself

• To maintain followership, a leader must extend
• Caring,
• Clarity,
• Choice,
• And hope
• within the organization.

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Take Care of Yourself

• Leadership is sometimes painful.
• Head pain
• Thinking through what is best for the
  organization
• Loneliness gets worse
• Back pain
• Being blindsided with surprises
• External influences you did not recognize
• Heart pain
• Bringing pain to others
• Knowing that pain within your organization will
  increase if you dont do your job

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Take Care of Yourself
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Take Care of Yourself (contd)
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Take Care of Yourself (contd)
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Take Care of Yourself (contd)