Connecting the Dots to Making a Change

Over the past three months, I have been figuring out what it means to be an effective leader and how to execute changes within our organization. A  leader is often viewed as the one responsible for making the most important decisions and carrying those through without necessarily rallying their team for collaboration.  They’re also the person their team looks to for ultimate reassurance or guidance in decision-making. However, what I have learned within this last course, Leading Organizational Change, is that leadership is far more intricate than this. I definitely have a deeper appreciation for my principals!  To start with leaders have to think about their “why”. Leaders need to have a crystal clear vision of why they are doing what they do in order to develop and implement a successful change in their organization.  Every course in this program thus far has helped me develop and refine my why and the changes I want to make in my organization. Not only this but also how and why I want to make this change. The program really helps you take a look beyond the surface level of creating a change. Up until this point, I have never really realized how much goes into creating a successful change and becoming a leader in the organization.  This course, Leading Organizational Change, helped me further analyze by developing an action plan for executing Project-based learning (PBL) at my school. I developed a sense of urgency by appealing to the hearts and minds of my team first and then outlining in detail how I planned to implement these ideas with the support of my team.   

To be a leader I must keep a level of composure in the midst of my daily “whirlwind” and stay focused on my goal while also leading and supporting my team members.  For this to happen, I must gain the trust and respect of my colleagues if I want to execute innovation within my organization and also gain the support of my team. I know that to do these things, I would need to learn how to use the six sources of influence to my advantage. After reading Influencer (2013), I know that the best way to achieve this is to determine who the key influencers are in my organization and leverage their support. Key influencers are people within your organization who are held in the highest regard, trusted among peers, and achieve their goals no matter what their “whirlwind” entails. Even though they have the same amount of time and stress in their workplace, they manage to successfully reach their goals routinely. Due to the key influencers' popularity and social hierarchy, it would allow me to reach more people to potentially influence them with my innovation plan than if I were to attempt it alone.

However, acquiring the assistance of the key influencers would not be enough to ensure the success of my innovation plan.  I have to break down and be explicit in my goal so that it is manageable, straightforward, and relatable for people within my organization to comprehend and get behind.  After this, I need to establish the vital behaviors that would influence my goal. However, I need to stick to only two or three vital behaviors rather than overload myself with too many. I know that if I overload myself or my team with too many tasks, it can ultimately cause my plan to fail and I will not reach my goal. This is why it is important that I only focus on two to three vital behaviors that will influence my goal.  I highlight all of this in my Influencer Strategy. My Influencer Strategy plan summarizes and clarifies how I plan to utilize personal and social motivation to increase the probability of my plan’s success. My plan also assisted me in predicting where there may be frailty, resistance, and setbacks during the implementation process and how to refocus when required. If I can determine ahead of time where problems may arise, it helps me prevent these misconceptions or setbacks in the first place. This will also help me resolve issues or problems before they impact the success of our plans.

Influencer (2013) also assisted me in identifying and clarifying my W.I.G. (Wildly Important Goal) and contemplating the two to three vital behaviors that would influence that goal.  Additionally, we were asked to read The Four Disciplines of Execution (2012) aka, 4DX.  4DX taught us about the five stages and four disciplines of executing the change in our “whirlwind”. I established my lead and lag measures to remain focused on my end result. Although Influencer (2013) and The Four Disciplines of Execution (2012) are written by two different authors, they do a great job of complimenting each other on how to achieve successful change in your organization. The 4Dx model focuses on how to physically make the changes in the organization while Influencer focuses on how to influence the behaviors of others to make the physical changes and get them to run smoothly. 

Both of these readings helped me create a clear strategic plan to follow so that I can successfully implement my overall innovation plan. Another important detail in my strategy was to create a scoreboard that helps my team track progress in a simplistic, encouraging, and a bit of competitive manner. The scoreboard helps to remind us of our “why” and encourages us to keep focus on our daily “whirlwind”. It is easy to get off-task among all of the daily stress of our personal and professional lives so it is important to keep a visual in someplace that we will often see, like the lounge or workroom. The last step in implementing change is to develop a “cadence of accountability.”  This is intended to help the team by staying focused, collaborating to find improvements that can be made, and increasing the overall morale within the organization. People are more likely to follow through on their duties when there is a sense of accountability within the plan, especially if others are involved and can see when someone drops the ball. This also makes it so that everyone works as a team and it is not all put on the shoulders of one particular person. This plan encompasses teamwork, which helps establish a culture of learning and successful innovation ideas. My 4DX plan helps me to feel confident about beginning the change process in my organization this year. I am excited to see the change play out and the learning that will take place along the way!

Inevitably there will be some resistance to my innovation plan. This is where I have learned through my current course that I need to be a self-differentiated leader and have crucial conversations with colleagues to stay in a position that allows me to focus on the overall goal.  To be the kind of leader who stays focused and collected, I have to comprehend and practice Crucial Conversations (2012).  A self-differentiated leader conducts uncomfortable conversations so that others feel valued and hold important connections while not losing focus on their own goals. These crucial conversations are currently encouraged in my organization and I have witnessed them provide positive results within the workplace, therefore increasing the overall morale. This also fosters a growth mindset when we are inclined to step out of our comfort zone and approach crucial moments with grace and sincerity. This ultimately cultivates a culture of community. We all know that if we feel as though we are not valued, that will add stress to our lives and get us off task. This will throw a wrench in our overall plan and create unwanted drama within the workplace that causes the focus to shift from the plan. If everyone is felt heard, and valued, and knows they make a difference, they will work harder to help the plan work. Crucial Conversations organizes an approach to making high-stakes conversations that risk becoming emotionally charged.  The explicit steps to these high-stakes conversations are, “Start With the Heart, Learning to Look, Making if Safe, Mastering Your Stories, State My Path, Explore Others’ Paths, and Move to Action.”  Each of these steps is important in alleviating anxiety and assisting all parties involved to feel valued and important. If leaders do not take these steps it is easy to lead the conversation with your emotions and feelings. This makes it hard to continue with the plan because others feel attacked and will ultimately get off focus which will lead to a downward spiral in the plan.  Self-differentiated leaders understand this is a vital part of conducting communication with others. When partaking in crucial conversations, the goal is to be able to move forward with a collective viewpoint.

When implementing my innovation plan, I will use crucial conversations to help my teammates feel comfortable in implementing PBL. I plan to lead us in creating a collective opinion that creating a significant learning environment is key to cultivating life-long learners within our school.  I plan to hold these conversations in our weekly PLCs, weekly staff meetings, and even conversations with parents. 

I know that I have a long, tedious road ahead of me but I am thrilled to see it all play out. I now feel even more prepared to conquer this task since I have learned and critiqued my plans and strategies over the last eight weeks. This course has been valuable to implementing my innovation plan within my workplace. It made me think and analyze aspects that I would have never even thought of beforehand. Not planning for these aspects would have ultimately caused my innovation plan to fail and I would have been lost when trying to implement it. I am so thankful to have gained this knowledge and expertise. I know that with this knowledge it will make my plan more likely to succeed. However, I know that I will still be faced with hurdles but I feel as though I am more ready to tackle them now than before.