A CHANGING WE WILL GO

Organizational change is its own area of study.  I have in this blog shared with you some of my understandings concerning this area.  I have looked at change strategy types – indicating a preference for normative-re-educative type – the mental processes a person dealing with change experiences and, in the last posting, reviewed some concerns a change agent should consider when dealing with the environment in which change takes place – particularly with the planning of change.  By planning, I am specifically referring to the social interactions which generate the actual strategic approach the change parties will employ and the logistical steps they will perform.  This posting will briefly review the phases that entire process can include.  As with the mental operations of the individual, I will present these phases in a logical order, but one should not think I am saying that this is the order the actual process will take.

The phases are:  problem identification, staffing, “unfreezing,” rule making, information gathering, negotiation, testing, evaluating, conflict ameliorating, and finalizing.  As those who engage in the activity can tell you, this process involves a lot of going back and forth as conditions change, goals and aims are altered, experiences reveal unforeseen problems (including interpersonal antagonisms), and even the introduction of previously unplanned technologies.

If the normative-re-educative type strategy is being used, an overarching goal is to achieve, among the participants, an attitude in which those involved will be ready, willing, and able to implement a change.  Such a goal presupposes participants who are principled, willing to negotiate in good faith, and willing to participate in finalizing the process.  Of course, not everyone can be described as such.  Part of the challenge is to get people to choose to be these things even if it’s not their usual way of acting.  Each of these sub goals is often blocked or delayed by hidden agendas among the participants.  The job of the change agent is not to devise the change, but to facilitate the planning of the change and its implementation strategy.  What follows is my take on what facilitating means in each of the phases I listed above.

Identification of the problem can be done by the person in charge, an underling, or an external agent.  In order to generate the concerns associated with change theory, the problem has to be sufficiently serious.  For example, this blog has attempted to document serious problems associated with our efforts in civics education; that is, due to the quality of those efforts certain consequences have resulted which might not be totally the fault of our civics instruction but that it can, at least, be considered an enabling force.  In short, I have made a case that our curricular approach to civics needs to change, along with some other changes, if the problems are to be met.  I have suggested that basically what we need to include in our change plans is to shift from relying on the natural rights construct to guide the content of our civics instruction to relying on federation theory to provide that guidance.  This blog has been dedicated to that prescription.

In terms of staffing, what I am specifically suggesting is that such a change needs an in-house specialist in curriculum and a cadre of teachers who have special training in change tactics and theory.  In addition, a school would be well-advised to hire a consultant in organizational change who can function as a professional change agent.  This might be too expensive for some schools or school districts – especially if the need to change is seen as district wide.  I need to warn you that what is being proposed – a fundamental curricular change to one of the core subjects – is time consuming and would be experienced more as an evolution than a revolution.  Progress would need to be defined in long-term steps and probably imperceptible on a year to year basis.  As such, a change agent would not be at the school all the time unless he or she can “double-up” in performing other functions at the school.

“Unfreezing,” the next identified phase, occurs when selected staff members are cognitively and emotionally “shaken up” so that they are somewhat dislodged from viewing their school and its curriculum as it is now.  They have to feel, not just know, how dysfunctional their present curriculum is.  This is not to say they have to believe that every aspect of the curriculum is faulty, but that those aspects related to the identified problems are problematic and that it is mandatory that changes take place.  In addition, they have to see how their current knowledge, beliefs, attitudes, accepted norms, values, and emotions might be relevant and detrimental to any change effort.  This will probably call for a great deal of introspection on the part of the participants.  It also calls for a great deal of honesty, because what is needed is more than a verbal agreement; it is a true commitment to change.  This is a chancy proposition because only through subsequent behaviors does the person or those around him/her know if such a commitment has been made.  There are techniques that smaller change groupings can use to get to the position where such commitments can be achieved.  Perhaps a series of unfreezing sessions with various small groups can be scheduled throughout a school year as a preliminary set of training sessions to get a faculty ready to actively develop the change strategy it will then implement.

As part of the unfreezing phase, but of enough importance to give it a separate emphasis, is the need for groupings to develop rules of engagement.  The need for this rises exponentially with the presence of any conflict or variance of positions, emotions, beliefs, and/or values.  With any meaningful problem(s) this is likely and with any higher number of participants this is likely.  The longer an organization has been doing things in the way it has been doing them, the greater the need for rules.  Here, rules should obviously address processes, roles, and points of deference; they should be identified and accounted for.  Rules should also be sensitive to the concerns I addressed in the last postings which were organized as to whether the environments of change “places” resembled more an arena or a square; are they more areas of competition or “combat” or are they more areas of collaboration and accommodation?  These rules should be formulated early in the whole process and they should be respected.  They can change as different needs arise, but at any given time they should be followed as they exist at that time.  While there will be situations or sessions when it might be useful to have an “arena” sort of environment, to hash out hidden agendas or hidden animosities, a healthy process moves toward more of a square and this allows a more relaxed atmosphere and more informal interactions.  But until that takes place – perhaps several years down the line – rules take on a very important function.  They facilitate respect which is essential if honest collaboration is to take place and become a quality of how change proceeds.

Once the groupings actually begin to directly address the problem(s) and are ready to develop and implement change, the following begins to transpire:  information gathering, negotiating, testing, evaluating, and conflict ameliorating.  At this point, the participants are developing the change plan.  This takes the gathering of information, the ability to negotiate interest conflicts, the testing of tentative plans, their evaluations, and the ability to work out the inevitable conflicts that arise when it becomes abundantly clear that change really means change – people will have to do things differently and be willing to work through their own mental hang ups and clashes with others that will spring up.  Here is when the greatest challenge in the teaching profession becomes apparent.  Our history has been one in which teachers have been doing their jobs mostly in isolation.  One teacher and one classroom full of students has been the standard model.  It is the structural arrangement that a given teacher has experienced not only all of his/her career, but also experienced as a student when he/she was younger.  This is the way it has been.  Change does not necessarily call for a change in this arrangement – although some change strategies might call for some sort of team teaching – but the mere idea that some outside party will suggest, much less demand, changes in what or how a teacher teaches, can be very threatening to many, if not most, teachers.  This phase of the change process can be filled with a great deal of anxiety if the changes do not truly follow the goals of a normative-re-educative strategy; so much so that if they are not achieved, the whole project will be for naught.

Of course, the final phase is “finalization.”  Here, a new “way of doing things” is instituted and teachers and other staff members see it as the normal – not the new normal, but just the normal.  A successful finalization allows the change process to begin being a memory.  Let me remind you that the drift into the natural rights prominence took many decades to complete.  Now we just see it as normal.  This is so much the case that any change effort needs to raise the consciousness of teachers and other staff members, that such a mindset was itself the product of change.  This change happened as a result of other changes in the society and was not purposely planned necessarily by those in charge.  It came about over time as social forces in the culture, the economy, the political realm, and the like interacted with schools.  For example, the heightened divorce rates that grew dramatically in the latter part of the twentieth century had enormous influence on schools in what they taught and on how they were run.  Another influence was the number of mothers who entered the workforce.  Related to this latter development has been the explosion of opportunities women have gained in the job market – not so many talented women have to depend on teaching jobs today. 

All of these changes out there caused changes in our schools.  Instead of being the recipient of so many forces, schools should find the ways in which they can manage and direct what happens in schools.  That includes being conscious of how change takes place.