Leading change is never easy, but it’s easier to do if you know the 4 core steps of change leadership. Read Professor Samuel Bacharach’s full article on Inc.com.
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Tag: change leadership
I’m excited to share that in addition to our Summer Session of the Cornell-BLG Leadership Academy this coming June, we’ll be offering a Fall Session this October.
The BLG Academy offered through Cornell University’s Institute for Workplace Studies (IWS), is an integrated face-to-face public program that trains individuals in the skills of pragmatic leadership. It is intended for managers and functional specialists with at least 5 years of supervisory or managerial experience, and is comprised of four courses:
- Change Leadership
- Proactive Negotiation and Persuasion
- Engaging and Leading Teams
- Enhancing and Coaching Others
These skills include rallying people around ideas, forming coalitions, engaging teams and enhancing and coaching others. The Cornell-BLG Academy is committed to that end, to providing skills you need to execute your strategic vision.
Both sessions will be held here in New York City at the Cornell ILR Conference Center. Learn more about the BLG Leadership Academy here, or for more information send us an email or call us at 607-280-2642.
Universities and colleges are faced with unprecedented challenges. Institutions of higher education cannot be managed by wishful thinking or the belief that everything will “work out.” For years, this traditional mindset allowed academic institutions to perch on an isolated peak in the midst of an oasis. This idyllic state can no longer be sustained.
The reality is simple. Resources are limited. Expansion is restricted. Technology is changing the core pedagogy. Students and their parents are no longer complacent consumers. In this context universities and colleges must change while adhering to their core mission of excellence in research, teaching, and outreach. They must become agile, entrepreneurial, and creative.
However, the very processes and structures that have allowed universities and colleges to expand in earlier times and under different circumstances are now sources of deep inertia and resistance to change. It may be the case that it is harder to drive change in institutions of higher learning than in private-sector organizations. What are the underlying factors that cause universities and colleges to resist change?
Intransigent culture
Institutions of higher education have long taken pride in their culture. From the biggest Ivy League school to the smallest private institution, individual traditions have drawn students, engaged faculty and staff, and sustained the interest and support of alumni. However, culture and traditions that have been useful in building a sense of community may be a source of resistance to change.
Turf protection
Universities and colleges are riddled with artificial divisions. Questions of turf arise in schools, departments, and fields. Collaboration and cooperation are the first casualties of turf battles. Lasting change cannot be put into place when people are overly worried about losing ground, personally or professionally.
Administrative and faculty divide
Administrators have a distinctly different role in than faculty do, and these roles sometimes clash. Administrators are usually more concerned with the bottom-line and maximizing income and faculty are first committed to excellence in teaching and research, and not as obsessed with how the bills are paid. It is important to recognize the potential conflict that can be caused by differing administrative and faculty mindsets.
Power pendulum
The power pendulum swings with regularity in the university setting. Sometimes higher ed gets on a “centralization” kick, where core support functions (IT, HR, Finance) are done by a single office. Other times higher ed goes in the opposite direction, and gives schools and departments more latitude in how they operate, and allows more decisions to be made on a local level. Both centralization and decentralization pose different obstacles to change.
Duplication of structures
What is the mission of a university? Ask a dozen people and there will be a dozen answers. Multiple missions within the university can lead to a duplication of administrative structures—and therefore, a greater acreage of turf that needs to be protected.
It is clear that the 21st century will usher in great change for universities and colleges, and no one is certain what this “change” will look like. There are built-in obstacles that make change difficult (some may say impossible), but by first recognizing what stands in the way of change, administrators and faculty can begin to deal with the factors that stand in the way of change, and clear the way for the next generation of students.
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Occupy Isn’t Enough
You can dream and dream, but unless you focus on what you want to get done and how you want to get it done—it’s not going to happen.
It’s all nice and good that our friends on Occupy Wall Street are above institutional politics. It’s fine that they want to maintain a Don Quixote air and struggle with windmills. It’s great that they have a vision and have hope in a dream.
But nothing burns out more quickly than a vision. A vision unrealized becomes a hallucination.
Occupy Wall Street has been successful in rallying people around an amorphous vision—now the question is, can that vision be translated into tactics, goals, and agendas?
The reality is that the world changes through institutions and organizations. And as much as you want to ignore it institutions are the mechanisms by which we change the direction we move. Intuitions and organizations are effected by pragmatic politics.
In any organizational or institutional setting, weather you’re an entrepreneur, a mid-level manager, a CEO, or a political activist, leadership is about getting beyond being occupied with your vision and dealing with nuts-and-bolts.
If you want to change the school district, if you want a better education for your kids, get involved in school politics.
If you want the pot holes covered in Brooklyn, see your city councilmen.
Politics is the way we impact change through institutions and if there’s a lesson that Occupy Wall Street should learn from the Tea Party—it’s that occupying without leadership gets you nowhere.
The Tea Party has achieved its success not simply because of its ideology, but because it was pragmatically savvy. This pragmatic political savvy is somewhat lost on Occupy Wall Street.
Put it simply, what’s needed is a concrete agenda that’s directed at specific individuals or institutions that can make a difference. This emphasis on leadership as a pragmatic skill seems to be lost in many sectors in our society. It’s as if we believe that vision and aspiration will move things ahead.
Steve Jobs has often been cast as a wondrous visionary. But it wasn’t his vision alone that brought us the ipod, the powerbook, or the ipad. It was his pragmatism. It was his ability to create coalitions, persuade people, manage his projects, and move things ahead.
In corporate settings as with political movements the challenge is to know how to move your agendas ahead. It’s an art that we don’t see exercised in Washington and it’s an art that few of our young entrepreneurs appreciate. It’s an art that we have to bring to the forefront if anything is going to get done.
Until then we’re all just be occupying space.
