As I approach the conclusion of my 18th year at Baylor University, I am fortunate to have had many opportunities for personal and professional growth. These opportunities include on-campus workshops, national conferences, and more online webinars than I could possibly count. Out of all of these professional development opportunities, I’ve probably learned the most—and grown the most—from interactions and conversations with my colleagues and supervisors. Yes, the day to day chit-chat is great, but the crucial conversations are the ones that I’m really thinking about. These are the tough conversations that have helped me grow from “The Mac Guy” doing computer lab deployments, to “The Blackboard Guy” running our institution’s LMS, to most recently the Assistant Director of Learning Systems. They haven’t all been pleasant, and they certainly haven’t all been easy, but they have all helped me grow and become a better person.
A little over five weeks ago when I first got the book list for this course, EDLD 5304 – Leading Organization Change, I was most interested in Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes are High by Patterson et. al. The authors of this book indicate that a conversation is crucial when the stakes are high, the opinions differ, and if the emotions are strong (Patterson et al., 2012, pp. 1–2). “Our research has shown that strong relationships, careers, organizations, and communities all draw from the same source of power – the ability to talk openly about high-stakes, emotional, controversial topics” (Patterson et al., 2012, p. 9).
One of the most significant aspects of having crucial conversations is to fill the pool of shared meaning. My innovation plan involves providing access to ePortfolios to undergraduate students at Baylor University. One of the ways that I’ll be doing this is by helping faculty incorporate the use of ePortfolios into their courses. Specifically, I want to see faculty in Baylor’s New Student Experience (NSE) program use ePortfolios with the incoming freshmen or transfer students who are taking one of the NSE courses. Each of the people that I will be working with comes to the conversation with different backgrounds, experiences, and desired outcomes. Some of these crucial conversations will be with Associate Vice Presidents who can make or break my plan by providing or withholding funding. Others will be with faculty who will be early adopters as teachers in the NSE program. Still others will be influencers and culture busters in the Academy for Teaching Learning. By engaging in crucial conversations with each of these participants, we can build a common framework and understanding from which future action can take place.
“Each of us enters conversations with our own opinions, feelings, theories, and experiences about the topic at hand. This unique combination of thoughts and feelings makes up our personal pool of meaning. This pool not only informs us, but also propels our every action” (Patterson et al., 2012, p. 24).
By asking the following four questions, I can help approach difficult or crucial conversations in an effective manner (Callibrain, 2015):
- What do I want for myself?
- What do I want for others?
- What do I want for the relationship?
- How would I behave if I wanted these results?
By starting with the heart, I can set the stage for the rest conversation, and by learning to look at the situation objectively, I can ensure that it remains a safe space for continued discussion. When the conversation begins with listening and understanding, it provides natural opportunities for me to share my story. In this case, my story is why I want to provide ePortfolios to undergraduate students at Baylor University. Realizing that my path isn’t the only one is equally important. Different people at the institution have different areas of expertise and focus. By understanding their path and story, I am more likely to move successfully toward action.
“Change occurs when we’re able to make good decisions and move our crucial conversations from talking to action” (Vital Smarts India, 2012).
Finding Why
The hardest part of my organizational change strategy was actually the very first step. When Simon Sinek discusses the Golden Circle in his 2009 TED Talk, he asks three basic questions in this order: why, how, and what? He suggests that by starting with “why” in the center of the circle, “we can think, act, and communicate from the inside out” (Briginshaw, 2013). Having a clear understanding of why we want to do something can shape how we do it and ultimately determines what we do. My innovation plan is about providing access to ePortfolios to undergraduate students. Undergraduate students often leave college unable to articulate what they have learned and connect it to workforce needs. The following are my why, how, and what statements:
Why – I believe that we must prepare undergraduate students to enter the job market with the digital skills necessary for success.
How – To do this, we will provide access to ePortfolios that will help our students articulate what they have learned and showcase their work to future employers.
What – We prepare students to enter a modern workforce in a digitally connected world.
For my innovation plan, I want to convey why it is important for faculty to use ePortfolios with undergraduate students in order to help create that sense of urgency. Students need to engage with their ePortfolio, understand its purpose, and be able to use it for job applications or graduate school applications. By modeling an effective use of my ePortfolio, I will be able to help faculty understand the purpose and function of ePortfolios as a way to build digital fluency, increase personal visibility, and to collaborate with others around the world. Involved faculty can turn many of their course assignments into opportunities for students to post on their own ePortfolios or websites.
Influencer Strategy
Identifying specific vital behaviors is critical to successfully getting people on-board with any sort of major change. Grenny et al. (2013) states, “master influencers know that it only takes a few behaviors to create big changes in the results they care about” (p. 62). To promote my innovation plan about providing access to ePortfolios to undergraduate students at Baylor University, and to influence key stakeholders at Baylor to take action on it, I identified my desired results, specific measures, vital behaviors, and my organization’s influencers.
The next step after identifying the vital behaviors that will help reach my desired result is to examine the six sources of influence (Grenny et al., 2013). While some people may respond to only one source of influence, combining multiple sources of influence together can have a much greater impact in achieving the desired behavioral changes.
“Those who understand how to combine all Six Sources of Influence™ are up to ten times more successful at producing substantial and sustainable change” (Grenny et al., 2013, p. 3).
To incorporate all six sources of influence in my plan, I looked at both the Motivation and Ability domains along with the Personal, Social, and Structural categories to determine ways that I can help influence others in my organization. Within each category of the chart below, I identified specific ways that I could exert just a little influence over the faculty I hope adopt ePortfolios. Some of these items are right in my wheelhouse as Asst. Director of Learning Systems like engaging the Structural Ability, but others will need to have a bit of peer pressure applied from opinion leaders under Social Motivation. By combining all of these sources together, I will have a greater chance for significant change.
Influence is a powerful tool in creating organizational change, but it can be hard to identify how to use it effectively. To help define my influencer strategy’s vital behaviors and achieve my desired result, I’m considering all four of the vital behavior search strategies described in Influencer (Grenny et al., 2013).
Installing 4DX
Unfortunately, daily life often interferes with the best of intentions and stops us from meeting our goals. McChesney et al. (2016) calls this phenomenon the “whirlwind” (pp. 6–9). This whirlwind of our jobs and daily lives consists of all the urgent things that come up which distract you and interfere with your attention on the important goals in life. “The whirlwind is urgent and it acts on you and everyone working for you every minute of every day” (McChesney et al., 2016, p. 7). Like a tornado, the problem with the whirlwind is that it can consume you if you let it. Urgent matters constantly arise which compete for our time, resources, and energy.
“When urgency and importance clash, urgency will win every time” (McChesney et al., 2016, p. 7).
The 4DX model (McChesney et al., 2016) helps overcome the urgency of the whirlwind of distraction by providing four very specific disciplines to help implement my goal:
- Discipline 1: Focus on the Wildly Important (pp. 23-43)
- Discipline 2: Act on the Lead Measures (pp. 44-64)
- Discipline 3: Keep a Compelling Scoreboard (pp. 65-76)
- Discipline 4: Create a Cadence of Accountability (pp. 77-102)
Each discipline focuses in on one specific facet of this this model. Discipline 1 is about defining exactly what your goal is, but not just any goal. This discipline is about identifying the one or two wildly important goals (WIGs) that will drive my innovation plan forward. Discipline 2 helps clarify what the specific actions are that will help achieve the WIG by creating lag and lead measures. Lag measures are essentially measurements that can be used for tracking progress toward the WIG, and lead measures are the “most high-impact things your team must do to do reach the goal” (McChesney et al., 2016, p. 12). Lead measure are both predictive and influenceable because they represent behaviors that the team can act upon. In this way, acting on lead measures causes the lag measures to show change and ultimately progress towards the WIG.
Disciplines 3 and 4 are about engagement and execution. In the third discipline, you define what it means to make progress toward a goal by finding a way to keep score. “The highest level of performance always comes from the people who are emotionally engaged and the highest level of engagement comes from knowing the score” (McChesney et al., 2016, p. 13). By creating a scoreboard, my team can easily see how our actions are influencing the defined measures and the WIG. The final discipline is about execution and accountability. By meeting regularly with the team to review the scoreboard, the team members hold each other accountable. The regular cadence of accountability meeting is for the team members to report on whether or not they met the previous week’s commitments and to set their commitments for the coming week. My 4DX plan will help me lead my team toward our goals and avoid the whirlwind.
Both the Influencer and the 4DX model are directly focused on achieving specific goals through a desired result or a wildly important goal, and both models focus on creating change in our organization. As they relate to my innovation plan, I will use the Influencer model to help identify and motivate my culture busters, and I will install the 4DX model to help my team avoid the whirlwind and build a culture of change. By using both models together and understanding my why, I will see my plan succeed.
Organizational Change Components
References