In my first blog post I want to talk about two books that had a profound effect on me as an organizational leader.
The books are “Leading Change” by John P Kotter and “The Heart Of Change” by Kotter and Dan S Cohen. As an administrator and executive director of residential treatment programs and schools I have always been fascinated by how some efforts to change the way we do things succeed and some fail. In these two books Kotter and Cohen talk about what they believe are the essential components or stages to a successful organizational change.
Over the past 10 years I have used Kotter’s 8 stages to facilitate successful organizational or as I like to call it “culture “ change across the country with agencies serving adults with mental illness, residential treatment programs for at risk youth, juvenile detention facilities and in numerous school systems throughout New Jersey. Sometimes the change was about improving morale, or moving from institutional care to more family care, from punitive approaches to more rehabilitative and therapeutic approaches or adopting an organizational approach like being a trauma informed organization. Whatever the change learning about Kotters stages in the change process, creating a guiding team and utilizing an implementation plan was crucial in actually making the change occur.
The first thing I do when I am asked to help facilitate a culture change in an organization is work with leadership to create a Guiding Team. The team must include the ED of the organization. There are three criteria for the rest of the team. First there needs to be a team member that represents each of the disciplines in the organization.
For example in a school there should be the principal, a teacher, a paraprofessional, a social worker, guidance counselor, nurse and an LDTC and possibly more or less staff depending on the change desired. Second each member should be an early adopter. That is a positive and motivated staff that is excited about being on the ground floor of an important change. Lastly each member needs to be highly respected by the group they represent.
We then complete an implementation plan, which follows the remaining 7 stages and identifies which staff is going to do what within each of the stages. The team then meets regularly to check on the progress of the plan, confirm everyone is doing what they were assigned to do and addressing obstacles that need to be addressed and any changes to the plan. For more on the stages please see the following link http://www.kotterinternational.com/the-8-step-process-for-leading-change/
