“Change management” is a phrase that’s picking up even more steam than usual in colleges and universities around the country as almost every department on campus is being swept up in higher education’s reinvention.
But outside of using a trendy catch phrase to encapsulate the many changes on campus—from system overhauls in IT to reimagined admissions and enrollment strategies—what does it really mean to manage the change culture?
Here, institutional leaders, researchers and higher education consultants discuss actionable steps and key considerations to not only successfully manage the campus constituency’s worries, but enact effective cultural changes that will resonate for decades to come.
Use the 5×5 Matrix for Planned Change
By Brent D. Ruben and Ralph A. Gigliotti, Rutgers University
As much as we would like there to be a simple algorithm for leading change in higher education, no such formula exists. That said, there are a number of core concepts that are instructive (Kotter, 2016; Ruben, et al., 2008). In our experience, successful change initiatives depend, first and foremost, on leaders who have a good understanding of the dynamics of change; forces that impede change; and strategies for overcoming sources of resistance, along with the willingness and ability to use this knowledge to develop and implement a systematic process for the change initiative. In fact, as we discuss in our recent book on the subject (Ruben, De Lisi, & Gigliotti, 2016), the ability to understand and lead change is a critical competency for leaders in higher education.
What follows is a five-step model for higher education leaders as they wrestle with the challenges of organizational change (Ruben, 2009). The first of these stages consists of gaining attention and clarification for the need for a change. The next step is the engagement of relevant internal and external stakeholders. Upon receiving a general acceptance of the proposed direction(s), the process moves forward with the critical stage of commitment. Next, commitment must translate into action—the stage where many leaders tend to begin, yet are often met with great resistance. In the final stage, a change must be accepted and fully integrated into the very fabric and culture of an organization, or else it lingers and ultimately fades from practice.
Five additional factors are critical in guiding planned change efforts. Each of these is cross-cutting—that is, these five concepts play a vital role in the tasks associated with each of the five stages of change:
- Planning: defining the change plan.
- Leadership: defining and designating appropriate individuals or teams to guide the change initiative through the five stages.
- Communication: designing and implementing a process of information-sharing, listening, and collaboration with those involved with, knowledgeable about, and/or affected by the planned change.
- A focus on culture: taking into account the organization’s language, history, norms, rules, and traditions that may influence the dynamics of change.
- Assessment: developing and implementing a systematic approach to monitoring progress and outcomes as the change process progresses.
Overlaying these five cross-cutting success factors (listed horizontally) across the five stages of change (listed vertically) produces a Five-by-Five Matrix for Planned Change, as illustrated below (Ruben, 2009; Ruben, De Lisi, & Gigliotti, 2016). The matrix displays the five stages of change as columns and the five cross-cutting success factors as rows. Each cell represents a point of intersection between the two sets of considerations, and each highlights an important area for attention by academic and administrative leaders as they undertake a change initiative.
Five-by-Five Matrix for Planned Change
We have found that the matrix provides an exceptionally useful framework for thinking about a planned change strategy, and also serves as a helpful tool for developing and implementing that strategy in higher education. This can be done by a single individual, but in general, the benefits are greater—both in terms of the quality of the finished product and the value of the process—if it is developed in a collaborative way by the team with responsibility for the change effort.
We have found that the MPC matrix provides an exceptionally useful framework for thinking about a planned change strategy, and also a helpful tool for developing a systematic approach to a planned changed strategy.
Brent Ruben, Ph.D., is executive director and Ralph Gigliotti is assistant director for Leadership Programs at the Center for Organizational Development and Leadership at Rutgers University.
References:
Kotter, J. P. (2016). Kotter’s 8 step change model. Retrieved March 5, 2016 from http://www.kotterinternational.com/the-8-step-process-for-leading-change/
Ruben, B. D. (2009). Understanding, planning, and leading organizational change. Washington, DC: National Association of College and University Business Officers. Online version (2013) available online at http://www.nacubo.org/Distance_Learning/Newly_Updated_Self-Study_Courses_Available/NACUBOs_Change_Management_Online.html.
Ruben, B. D., De Lisi, R., & Gigliotti, R. A. (2016). A guide for leaders in higher education: Core concepts, competencies, and tools. Sterling, VA: Stylus Publishing.
Ruben, B. D., Lewis, L. K., Sandmeyer, L., Russ, T., Smulowitz, S., & Immordino, K. (2008). Assessing the impact of the Spellings Commission: The message, the messenger, and the dynamics of change in higher education. Washington, DC: National Association of College and University Business Officers.
(Next page: Change management is about mitigating loss and the cloud)
It’s About Mitigating the Sense of Loss
By Karlyn Borysenko, Zen Workplace
Here’s what you need to understand about change management: People are NOT afraid of change. They are afraid of loss. Loss of responsibility, loss of time, loss of a process they may have spearheaded and take great ownership over—the list could go on.
Change management is the process of mitigating the sense of loss that results from an emotional connection to the work. The absolute best way that you can do that is to make sure that people have a chance to feel that their concerns have been heard, understood, considered, and explained within the overall context of the situation.
As the land of peer review and faculty governance, higher education is notoriously slow to change. This context is critical—it means that your only path for success is to plan for what may seem like a longer-than-ideal timeframe in order to give your faculty and administrators a chance to participate.
Transparency is crucial—if your leadership team goes into a closed-door meeting and makes inflexible decisions with no community involvement, you can expect to have a problem on your hands.
But transparency on its own does not lead to buy-in. You can hold as many town halls as you like, but if the audience feels they were just for show, then it will have defeated the purpose. People don’t need to have their ideas implemented to buy into a new way of doing things…but they do need to feel as though their ideas were heard and taken seriously. After all, you’re asking them to let go and “lose” things they may have worked really hard on and poured their passion into. There’s an emotional attachment there. Approach them as humans—not as an obstacle in your way of “doing business.”
After spending more than a decade in higher education, Karlyn Borysenko founded Zen Workplace, a consultancy dedicated to helping organizations create amazing workplace cultures that drive morale, productivity, and bottom-line results. Learn more at www.zenworkplace.com
Why the ‘C’ in Cloud Means Change
By Shelton Waggener, Internet 2
The emergence of cloud computing generated considerable uncertainty in IT organizations. Many were concerned: “How will we secure the solution? How can we guarantee the environment? Will we be locked into a vendor, who will control the technology and will jobs be outsourced?” While these were valid concerns, I was surprised at the depth of feeling by IT professionals. These are professionals who never saw an “on” button they don’t want to push, a Unix command they couldn’t master, or a scripting language they wouldn’t analyze. I hadn’t seen another technology platform generate this level of angst—so why now with cloud computing?
In a word: speed. Not the speed of CPUs, Networks, spinning disks or applications of which technologies are so accustomed. This time it’s the speed of change.
Perhaps more significant than the pace of change is the fact that this time it isn’t driven by the central or departmental IT organization—it is driven by the expectation that institutional IT should be responsive, dynamic, mobile, easy-to-use, and provide a “better” experience than IT departments have traditionally provided. The competitive or economic moats that may have existed previously are now falling by the wayside, as IT organizations are no longer the center of technology innovation or early adoption. Today, technology groupies span generations and the previously tribal language of technology has been infused into the common daily lexicon. Apple products (among others) are cultural phenomena, media coverage about innovation is everywhere, technology podcasts and YouTube videos regularly top the charts, and the “app economy” is now ‘bigger than Hollywood’. These trends are difficult to ignore. If you are an enterprise IT professional today, you face a new reality: accelerating change is happening and you must adapt or face irrelevance.
Today, the critical question for CIOs, IT leaders, technology professionals, and staff members is now: “Are you prepared to pick up the pace and embrace your own change?”
Shelton Waggener is the senior vice president of Internet2 responsible for the NET+ portfolio of services.
Harness the Power of Data and Analytics to Show What Could Be
By Darren Catalano, HelioCampus
Higher Education is at a tipping point. External and internal factors, including an increased focus on student success and decreased revenues from historically reliable sources, are putting pressure on institutions to become more efficient and show better results. As data professionals in higher education, we must make a compelling argument that we are part of the solution by highlighting our capabilities and showing the university “the art of the possible” when it comes to unlocking the value in our institutional data.
In order to facilitate meaningful conversations and to elevate our role, we must be more proactive and engage the university community in a new way. Before we would ask: what are your requirements? What do you want? And then build, test, and release. Those days are in the past. We can no longer show up to meetings with a blank sheet of paper. Now, we need to show what could be.
To achieve this, institutions should focus on building a data platform that connects disparate data from sources across the university enterprise and transforms the information into flexible data models. By combining datasets, we can analyze transfer, retention, and graduation rates in comparison with admissions data to see differences in profiles; combine prospective student and pre-enrollment data with retention data to spot significant retention impacting variables; and look at first-term class registration patterns to determine the impact on course success. Cloud vendors such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), enable sophisticated data modeling by providing cost effective computing power and scale that previously was not easily accessible by many institituions.
Analytics in higher education has never been more important and those institutions that thrive will use their data as a competitive advantage. Cultural change does not happen by accident but rather it is the result of a consistent intentional effort. In order to facilitate cultural change on campus, follow these five lessons learned:
- Invest in a solution
- Organize for performance
- Empower leaders to use data
- Embrace transparency
- Highlight success
Data has the ability to make transformational changes within an institution. Our job is to take the complexity out of the data and present it in an easily understood and consumable fashion.
Darren Catalano is CEO of HelioCampus and former vice president of analytics at University of Maryland University College (UMUC). Prior to working in higher education, Mr. Catalano honed his skills as a data professional in the private sector building business intelligence teams focused on finance, accounting, sales, marketing and customer operations analytics.
(Next page: Change management through bravery, culture creation)
Boldly Go by Mastering the Elements of Change
By Stephen Schoonmaker, Cross Country Leadership Solutions
Higher Education is an iconic part of society. For centuries we stood immovable as Plymouth Rock, preserving knowledge through traditions of scholarly transference elevating selective students to roles within a learned segment of citizenry. Our strength was reliability; reassuring amidst the turmoil of time and inevitable change. Higher Education leadership was focused on safeguarding campuses against change, and minimizing disruption.
Today’s Higher Education resembles the Starship Enterprise—its mission: to explore strange new funding models; to seek out new emphases on student success through integrated services, and new learning modalities relevant to today’s generation; boldly preparing students to go where no one has gone before. Today’s Higher Education leaders must be Masters of Change, not merely Preservers of the Past. To do this we must focus on six elements of CHANGE:
- Change requires Courage – visionary, innovative leaders are seldom popular on campus. To lead change you must move ahead to see beyond today’s horizon, but not too far that you disconnect from those leading alongside, or following.
- Change must be Holistic – never change for the sake of change. We must build upon the foundation of our campus’ mission, and strategic goals, for success and sustainability.
- Change involves Action – campuses love to talk. Enacting change takes strong leadership to get the campus community walking that talk towards the changes we seek.
- Change is Never-ending – it’s a process, not an event. Celebrate milestones along the way. Create times of rest to coast with our momentum, but never stop moving forward.
- Change engages Growth – Leading Change often means blazing trails that are untested, unfinished, and unrefined. Growing into change means being willing to risk making (and owning) mistakes, adjusting and correcting as we go.
- Change transforms Exponentially – we cannot compartmentalize change. By its nature change is systemic; therefore, we must think from a systems perspective to anticipate the far-reaching consequences of the changes we enact.
Change is inevitable for Higher Education in today’s fast-paced society. The longer we hesitate to embrace this culture of change, the further we fall behind; the more we risk becoming irrelevant. Leaders can learn to be positive change agents on campus; however, it’s a new role for a new paradigm in Higher Education which many still grapple with –and struggle to sustain.
Dr. Stephen Schoonmaker is a life-long learner and educator, who has led in colleges and universities for over 20 years and runs his own consulting firm, Cross Country Leadership Solutions, LLC.
5 Steps to a Culture of Change
By Lige Hensley, Ivy Tech Community College
Ivy Tech Community College of Indiana is one of the largest higher education institutes in the United States, with more than 175,000 undergraduate students. In 2014, Ivy Tech launched a comprehensive data analytics project on the Amazon Web Services cloud. From that process, here are five things we learned about managing your culture of change:
- Know what the goal is. Clearly understanding the goal is not as easy as it seems. Tactical goals can obfuscate or even conflict with strategic goals. Problems can mislead efforts from the true root cause. Deadlines, timelines, emotions and politics can all play a role in determining the goal of any change. It’s crucial that you and your team sift through all of the noise and understand the real goal of a change. Understanding what you’re trying to do is the first step to success.
- Understand how things work. This is where you ensure you’re not making things worse. You’ll need to get all your expert’s together and fully discuss how things work today and how a change will impact your operations. You’ll want the front line workers along with your best “world view” managers. If it’s a technical change, get your architects involved. If it’s a people process, make sure the most knowledgeable team members are there. Ask questions, poke holes, and beat things up.
- Plan, plan, plan. Discuss timelines, impacts, what-if’s and risks. But above all, communicate. Overt communication works better that convert communication. The more complex the change, the more communication and planning you’ll need.
- Collect feedback and data. Every engineer will tell you that a good system incorporates feedback. For example, if you’re adding a day care center to increase retention, you probably expect an increase in class attendance; or maybe more library patrons. Collect this data, get relevant feedback and see if your change is having the desired impact. If not, don’t be afraid to take that feedback and adjust your plan accordingly.
- Don’t be afraid to lead. Understanding your goal, having a solid, well thought-out plan, communicating that plan, executing it and then measuring your success will put you in the best possible position to achieve your goal. If things go sideways, figure out why and change the plan. Your team will respond positively a leader who is engaged and willing to respond thoughtfully.
After implementing a few changes, you’ll get better at it. If you’re not careful, you may end up with a culture where your team embraces change!
Lige Hensley has been the Chief Technology Officer at Ivy Tech since 2010. Previous to Ivy Tech, he has worked in IT in a variety of industries such as manufacturing, telematics, health care and information security consulting.
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