I thought I look for some new modelsls of change management that I haven't used before and see how they'd go in this week's assignment. One thing I've noticed, or rather - one opinion I have formed looking at all of these models is that there is no one model that is perfect. For example Rogers' model does not seem to address pre-change management, whereas Lewin's does. But Lewin's model is quite simplistic and does not really reflect modern. dynamic businesses and schools. You could almost say that Lewin's model could almost be described as an umbrella model, under which Rogers' and others could co-exist.
I came across Jeffrey Hiatt’s AKDAR model and liked it. It is simple, easy to remember and practical as it focuses on the individual, not just the group. I’ll look at how my school implemented the moodle system using this model as a lens.
1 Awareness
We all saw the benefits of a centralised LMS but the original system was unusable and costly. Rather than continue down a path that was doomed to failure, most employees saw the need to change to a better system.
2. Desire
Frustration and wasted time with the old system, as well as constant down time and poor management of the systems software and hardware infrastructure. However, in this criteria, the desire was not strong. Teachers had seen too many flawed and abandoned projects before to fully buy into this new moodle idea. Here is where the change management starts to fall apart. there were, as Rogers would call them, ‘early adopters’ for the new moodle, but the pace of general adoption has been slows and limited to pockets of teachers, rather than the entire staff.
3. Knowledge
Little or no time was actually give to teachers to learn the new system or migrate their information from thew old one. Hiatt suggests that ‘coaching, forums and mentoring are a;; useful’ in spreading knowledge about how to change, but this did not happen with enough force or time at my school. Hiatt’s two types of knowledge relate to ‘how to change’ and ‘what to do one the new system is in place’. We failed in giving staff either of these knowledge sets adequately - the proof is in the limited interest and uptake of the new system.
4. Ability
Hiatt says ability stems directly from knowledge, once knowledge is gained the individual must be supported in putting this into practise. I guess that would be in the form of rolling traininag and time given in appreciation of content creation on moodle. I’d also suggest that exemplars of good practise and allowing teachers from differing departments to talk and feedback on moodle ideas and successes. This has not occurred in my workplace. Teachers are too busy and those in change of implementing ICT never really follow through with meaningful assistance - it tends to wanting tokenistic use of the platform so they can show their superiors that they are doing their jobs. The quote from ‘Dave’ comes to mind: They are so busy trying to keep their jobs, they forget to actually do them.
5. Reinforcement
In this stage, Hiatt suggests that efforts to sustain the change are vital. Some of the ideas I had above would certainly achieve this, but more importantly teachers need to see the commitment by management and other staff to moodle use.They must understand that they will all have to use it sooner or later so they may as well get started now. But this has not happened - a lack of suppirt from management means that teachers are able to simply disregard the platform and continue in their own traditional way. There is no measurement or strict monitoring of outcomes from moodle. We do not measure where we are now or provide targets for use in the future.
So my organisational readiness for the change propsed may look something like this on a scale where 1 is on ready and 10 is very ready. It's clear to see how each step in the process impacts an organisation's ability to be ready for the next step. What we draw from this is the fact that if change management does not fully develop one stage, the next stage may very well fail.
Reference:
Connelly, M. 2011. ADKAR: Simple, Powerful, Action Oriented Model for Change.
http://www.change-management-coach.com/adkar.html
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