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After good leadership, Kotter, has 8 key elements that need to be acknowledged and addressed.  The first element is to create a sense of URGENCY. In order to gain support for a change initiative members of your team and organization must feel that changed has to happen, that a crisis is coming and needs to be averted or a opportunity is being presented that needs to be grasped.

After good leadership, Kotter, has 8 key elements that need to be acknowledged and addressed.  The first element is to create a sense of URGENCY. In order to gain support for a change initiative members of your team and organization must feel that changed has to happen, that a crisis is coming and needs to be averted or a opportunity is being presented that needs to be grasped.  A strategy we have often used to create urgency is to discuss the "brutal facts" throughout the organization. Members of your organization need to feel that the status quo is no longer acceptable and that it is urgent that change occur.

The next step is to create a CREATE A GUIDING COALITION. The coalition is the group that is going to lead the change. The Guiding Coalition must have enough power to lead the change. Additionally the group need to work as a TEAM. Guiding Coalitions are usually fairly small in terms of membership numbers but often have significant authority within the organization.

Once the Guiding Coalition is created they must develop a GUIDING VISION. The vision must direct the change. It is about the path you will take to implement your change and the desired end result once the change is completed. The group should also develop strategies on how to achieve the vision.

After the vision is fully agreed upon it need to be communicated to the organization. This step is called COMMUNICATING THE VISION AND DEVELOPING BUY-IN.  Members of the Guiding Coalition must use every vehicle possible to communicate the new vision and the road map or strategies to achieve that vision.  The Guiding Coalition must lead and teach new behavior by example. They can not espouse Do As I Say Not As I Do.

Step Five: EMPOWERING BROAD BASED ACTION. It is critical that the Guiding Coalition remove any obstacles to change. Any current systems that seriously undermine the new vision must be changed or eliminated. Lastly the Guiding Coalition must empower other to facilitate the change. They need to encourage risk taking and nontraditional ideas, activities or actions.

Step Six: GENERATING SHORT TERM WINS. Significant milestones need to be identified and celebrated during the change process.  Often significant change takes a long time and team can become discouraged or loose their way.  Reaching milestones along the way and celebrating them as wins helps to motivate the team and keep moving in the right direction.

Step Seven:DON'T LET UP. This means to stay the course to your vision even if things get tough, look bleak or you hit a wall. The group needs to: use increased credibility to change systems, structures and policies that don't fit the vision; Hire, promote, and develop employees who can implement the vision; Reinvigorate the process with new projects, themes, and change agents.

Step Eight: MAKE CHANGE STICK. The organization has finished the journey and change has been realized.  But a constant danger is to slip and slowly revert back to the original state. The Guiding Coalition must be aware that backtracking can occur and implement strategies to preserve the change.

After managing a number of change initiatives addressing all of these issues has been a key to success. Will you always succeed no but you will significantly increase your odds. For more information check out Leading Change by Dr. John Kotter.

Meeting Challenges and Celebrating Successes was the theme of this years’ AESA Annual Conference held in Savannah, GA. This was their 25^th ….. and my first. According to the current President of AESA, Dee Alarcón, the intent of the annual gathering was to “…provide many ideas on how to leverage resources by partnering, collaborating and sharing ideas”. Ironically, attendance at this conference was way down, most likely due to cutbacks related to the down economy.  Budgets are getting tight as fund sources shrink or disappear and in times like this, it is better to keep your head up and your eyes open rather than adopting the “bunker” mentality. When you’re in a bunker, your vision is very limited and vision is what is needed to survive the tough times.

Meeting Challenges and Celebrating Successes was the theme of this years’ AESA Annual Conference held in Savannah, GA. This was their 25^th ….. and my first. According to the current President of AESA, Dee Alarcón, the intent of the annual gathering was to “…provide many ideas on how to leverage resources by partnering, collaborating and sharing ideas”.  Ironically, attendance at this conference was way down, most likely due to cutbacks related to the down economy.  Budgets are getting tight as fund sources shrink or disappear and in times like this, it is better to keep your head up and your eyes open rather than adopting the “bunker” mentality. When you’re in a bunker, your vision is very limited and vision is what is needed to survive the tough times.

Vision was the focus of the breakout session present by Andy Pechacek, Deputy Executive Director for Region 4 ESC of Houston, TX entitled “The Future Role of ESA’s – In Search of Blue Oceans”.  From Wikipedia:  “Blue Ocean Strategy is a business strategy book first published in 2005 and written by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne of The Blue Ocean Strategy Institute at INSEAD, one of the top European business schools. The book illustrates the high growth and profits an organization can generate by creating new demand in an uncontested market space, or a "Blue Ocean", than by competing head-to-head with other suppliers for known customers in an existing industry.^[1]  . This was a nice introductory look at the concept put forth by the book – a book now on my reading list!

Another session I attended was “The New Paradigm for Cooperative Purchasing: On Line Reverse Auctioning” presented by LEARN Regional Education Service Center of Lyme, CT. A reverse auction is nothing more than a web-enabled RFP process that provides a method for vendors to actively lower their bids based on real-time bids of other participants.  Based on the stated savings profiled, this would be a great budget-stretcher, especially if employed in conjunction with a purchasing cooperative – the power of economies of scale. The trick is to find an Auction host a reasonable price.

“Survivor: The Island of Safe, Cost-Effective Student Computing” was another presentation by LEARN Regional Education Service Center of Lyme, CT and was all about a partnership  with a company called Grace Global to provide an e-Classroom environment via networked teachers and studenst issued custom-built notebook computers. The ‘take-away’ from this for me was the notebook PC. As soon as I saw this compact, feature rich, standards based, hardened machine I thought not of students, but of our Itinerant Therapists. We currently issue them full-sized laptop’s that often take quite a pounding due to the …well...itinerant nature of their users. The real kicker was the price – about $500 each! This is definitely an alternative to consider.

The last session I was able to make was “Shared Technology Services: How ESA’s Can Be the Missing Piece in the Puzzle ” offered up by Josh Sumption, Manager of Information Technology, SW/WC Service Cooperative of Marshall, MN. He outlined their model for providing  technology  support for participating school districts and providing a full service “complete IT Department”. In my opinion, this is – or should be – one of the key fundamental concepts for the ESA’s moving forward. Technology is such a specialized, rapidly changing field that relegating this responsibility as a secondary duty for teachers or other district staff doesn’t make sense. Benefits include purchasing power, shared common projects, standardized implementations and research and development. I definitely see this as a “Blue Ocean”.

So..on my last blog we took a brief look at Kotter's work and his 8 reasons for change to fail. Now that we have identified the errors, what according to Kotter do we need to do to find success? 

The first thing and probably most important, according to Kotter, is to have strong leadership throughout the change process. It is important to note that Kotter views Leadership very differently from Management. Management means enforcing policies and procedures, scheduling, and in general making sure the trains run on time… Leadership is about creating and successfully communicating a vision. It is about insuring people to follow that vision to achieve change or dramatic results. Management is often something that is appointed to us - by our job title or position. Leadership is something that must be earned. It is important to realize that sometime the true leaders in a organization are not the best managers or are not the people with the title or officially in charge. In my opinion to be a truly great Technology Director, you must have a appropriate mix of leadership and management. I  always tell my managers that they need to have their feet firmly on the ground but their head in the clouds looking forward. 

According to Kotter: Successful change is 70 to 90 percent leadership and only 10 to 30 percent management. Yet for historical reasons, many organizations today don't have much leadership. I tend to agree with Kotter, strong leadership is the first key ingredient in successfully managing change.  How do we become great leaders? I believe through experience, watching successful leaders, study and internal drive. I great resource that has helped me work towards becoming successful leader is the book: The Feiner Points of Leadership by Michael Feiner. Within his book Feiner address The Fifty Basic Laws That Will Make People Want To Perform Better For You.

Examples of Feiner's Laws include:

• The Law of Building a Cathedral: Leaders convince their people that they're building a cathedral, not cutting stone.
• The Law of Class vs. Style: Never...Ever...Ever...EVER Treat Your Boss Like A Bumbling Old Fool (Even If He Or She Is One).
• The Law of Winning Championships: No matter how talented the team, team members have different agendas -- and leaders know what they are.
• The Law of the Silent Sinner: If you can't tell anyone what you're doing, don't do it!
• The Law of the Onion: High Performance Leaders look beneath the surface -- and never assume anything.
• The Law of the Tombstone: Remember what's really important -- and that your net worth won't be noted on your final resting place.

Give Feiner's book a look and reflect on your own leadership. In your own organization what role has leadership or lack of leadership played in managing change? You can find more on Feiner's book at http://www.feinerpoints.com/about.php. In addition I have bookmarked a article in the Profession Resources section on K12IT.

Next week we will continue our discussion on the successful elements of managing change.