(in Leading Innovation and Creativity in University Teaching: Implementing Change at the Programme Level)
To cite this work: Phipps, L and Lanclos, D (2022) Leveraging Change in Higher Education, in Nolan, S., & Hutchinson, S. (Eds.). (2022). Leading Innovation and Creativity in University Teaching: Implementing Change at the Programme Level (1st ed.). Routledge.
Introduction
We, the authors of this chapter, have been working together in digital leadership professional development since 2015. One of the core priorities about the digital leadership initiative at Jisc was to accelerate the understanding of digital in the minds of leaders, where a leader is anyone involved in a change programme or taking initiative on any activity within an institution. To get an understanding of something that is so broad has always been a challenge, and it follows that defining digital leadership is also difficult. In the initial iterations of the Jisc Digital Leadership programme we developed, we looked back at Dearing and his recommendations (Dearing, 1997). The Dearing Report made 93 recommendations concerning the funding, expansion, and maintenance of academic standards. In a chapter about the fundamental importance of technology in institutions Dearing made recommendation 42:
“We recommend that all higher education institutions should develop managers who combine a deep understanding of Communications and Information Technology with senior management experience.”
The recommendations from this chapter of the report, covered strategy, copyright, physical connectivity – this was the single recommendation about people and it emphasised that we need to grow our own capability.
During the pandemic, the migration of practices into digital spaces accelerated – skills and capabilities were developed and honed under pressure, leaders across the education sector had to deal with a new reality; and support their staff through rapid change.
Education happened, the media rhetoric of “we must open our universities, our colleges, our schools” ignored the reality. In a time of crisis, institutions stepped up, and moved online. It wasn’t always pretty, and it was by no means consistent, but it moved online, and education happened. And while in higher education we might not yet have fully realised Dearing’s recommendation of “a deep understanding of Communications and Information Technology with senior management experience” there is no doubt that the pandemic emergency moved the needle. The upheaval in the pandemic that everyone experienced is an example of how the processes of change happen, across institutions, and to the people within those institutions. In this chapter, we will discuss the ways that institutions can not just experience change, but engage in leadership practices to leverage change, to shape what is happening. It is in managing change that leaders can create specific futures, not be handed one by someone else.
Digital Leadership and change
There will not be a leader in education who is unaware of the centrality of digital to the education experience, even if we returned to pre pandemic practices, planning would be happening to ensure that for the next emergency we were better prepared. But the reality is that we won’t bounce back to our old practices. Staff, and students, have found new ways of working; though not across the board, efficiencies have been found, outcomes have been improved, and as of this writing, a lot of work is happening to identify what we need to keep.
So what does that mean for digital leadership? The shorthand “digital leadership” covered many facets, in some ways it was a trojan horse to highlight the importance of change management. Most of the work that we do when we talk about digital in universities and colleges is about the change process and the cultures we see in education.
In the context of workshops, we pose the question “who wants change?” and almost everyone raises a hand. When then we ask the question “who wants to change?” the response is often more subdued. Even when it is recognized that changes are broadly necessary, the specifics of what practices (and whose practices) need to change can be opaque, and people can be not just reluctant, but unable to see what might be different (Lanclos and Phipps, 2019).
If you have worked in higher education for any length of time you will have seen change programmes, and the longer we work, the more we see. For some people the idea of a new initiative or process of change can be worrying, or worse. Change programmes in the middle of crises such as the pandemic we are currently experiencing can also be experienced as damaging, as asking too much of people who are just trying to keep their heads above water. Others may see changing contexts as an opportunity. We all react differently to change. And one of the key things that many people will be worried about is what will the change mean to me?
This short chapter aims to pose questions that anyone embarking on change in a learning and teaching context may want to ask, ask of themselves as well those people around them. We do not propose to tell people reading this that we have solutions to a lot of the things that come up in change. All we have are our own experiences and what they have meant to us. So we will describe some of these experiences, provide prompts for reflection on change, and hope to start to equip readers with a basis for navigating change in their own institutional contexts.
Reflection 1
The first thing we want for the reader to do is think about a change they want to see in the practices of an individual at their institution. Start by focusing on your immediate work setting. If that individual changed their practices in the way you wanted, what would the impact be on your own work?
When we ask for this in workshops, we hear:
“I wish people would turn up to meetings on time.”
“I wish people wouldn’t reply-all.”
“I wish people would complete their [fill in bureaucratic task here]”
And the impacts they are hoping for if these changes happen sound like:
“Then I could have more time to do my part of the project.”
“My inbox would be less busy and I would experience less stress.”
“I wouldn’t have to chase people for information.”
The changes people are asking for at this individual level are behavioral. They target behaviors in others that tend to directly impact the work they have to do. Nothing institutionally happens in isolation. The first thing that we have to recognise when we start thinking about change is that somewhere, someone will be impacted.
Leadership and change
Leadership and change do not always sit easily together..Woodrow Wilson said, “if you want to make enemies, try to change something.” (Peterson, 2021). And that is true at all levels of leadership, whether it is at the top of the organizational chart, or at the most junior level. The idea that incipient change inspires anxiety and even animosity is an old idea:
And it ought to be remembered that there is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, then to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. (Machiavelli translated by Bondanella, 2005)
Machiavelli often gets a bad press; to be Machiavellian is to be cunning, scheming, and unscrupulous. While Machiavelli may have been those things in pursuit of his political ideology, he had studied the nature of people and he knew how they would react to “the new order of things”, the change, and so he was able to prepare and plan for those reactions.
When we start a process of change in universities we are not going to be loved, we are not going to be held aloft and carried through the corridors, into the common room, despite what some films might depict.
Compassion and Change
For change to be sustained and sustainable, we cannot be Machiavelli, who manipulated people ruthlessly because he knew he was right in the changes that needed to happen. It is necessary to recognize the legitimate reasons that people are anxious about change, and for leaders to support people through the process.
Change Projects
In most institutions change is managed through a project or programme. The basics of project management come down to four elements (Mesly, 2016).
- Planning the work and preparing for different scenarios;
- the Process you take in delivering the changes or project outputs, and how they are governed;
- how People work together and communicate; and
- who is in positions of Power, making decisions, implementing policies etc.
The first two elements, the planning and the approach to the process are where we see most work in project and change management “products”. Prince2, MSP, Agile, Lean and whatever subset and new “tools” that become available often cover those two elements. It is the elements that involve the people and the power structures that often make things difficult, and that require far more work if institutions want their change programmes to succeed
Paying attention to people, and power dynamics, is the key to effective change. The following elements are strategies we have found effective in leading and managing change. Institutions should do these things, and mean them. This is not meant to be window-dressing as a way of avoiding the responsibilities they have to their people.
Sponsorship
In any process of change it is important to get the right people backing it. An institutional change needs a senior, and relevant, sponsor. The sponsor needs to know why the change is happening, how it is happening and who is delivering it. They also need to be seen to be talking about the change in a positive way. They should be capable of building a trusted relationship with the people who are most likely to be impacted by the change.
Communication
Change can make people nervous, so good communication about the change is essential. Where possible use the project sponsor for the wider overarching statements about the change. The key to successfully communicating is to get the message right, at the right time and in the right format through the right channel. The message should be aligned to what matters to the audience you are communicating with. Messaging should be consistent, and also sincere.
Coaching, Mentoring and Staff Development
Coaching and mentoring staff through a change process will greatly increase the chances of the change being embedded. Coaches and mentors can work directly with staff that are most affected, they can listen to their issues and help communicate the benefits of change in their context. Most importantly staff involved in the change will be listened to, and have their concerns taken seriously.
At the same time, staff development programmes should be put in place to ensure that staff will have the opportunities to develop relevant skills and capabilities for any required changes. Anticipating the needs of staff and developing a program to support those needs is key– far too many change programmes end up retrofitting this work after the fact, only once once the change happened. Consult with the staff involved, identify what their needs will be and prepare a programme to meet those needs. If possible, during the staff development process look for opportunities for reward and recognition for those most affected by the change.
Reflection 2
Think about a time when you were required to change your practices. What was your immediate reaction? How did you feel after some time had passed? Now try to put yourself in the shoes of someone whose practices you are trying to change.
Recognizing and Managing Resistance
When anyone is asked to change what they are doing, it’s often the case that their first reaction is , “Why?” In our experience, people often then jump to “What is going to change?” Between the Why and the What, resistance can start to build. People play out in their minds what can go wrong, what will feel different, and many times, they aren’t necessarily thinking of potentially good things that could happen around the changes. This is where it is necessary to have a strategy to recognize, manage and alleviate resistance.
There are also several things that can be done to manage resistance. The first is to plan for it, anticipate that resistance will happen. What will your key messages be to respond?. The second is to ensure that you have identified why the change should happen and documented the benefits that the change will bring and communicate that effectively at every opportunity. In addition, have open and transparent conversations about the changes with the staff involved. Listen to their concerns, react to what you hear, and then listen to the reponses. This process must continue until the change is embedded. And even when the change is embedded, continue to communicate why the change happened and what the benefits are.
One of the key elements in persuading people that the changes are worthwhile will be the credibility of the person driving the change, or the change sponsor. They must be both trustworthy, and believe in the change. They must be willing to listen to the people who resist, and be capable of recognizing the reasons for their resistance.
Sometimes we see resistance as something to overcome; we have planned and prepared for this change programme, and now someone is trying to put a stop to it, or dragging their feet. In this section we have outlined some strategies to be deployed to manage and overcome resistance, but a good change manager must also be able to look at resistance as an important data point. Why are those people resisting the change? Is there a legitimate reason for their concern? Sometimes people resist on an instinctual level and are unable to articulate why in the moment, and only later do we realise that their concern had merit. For example: the deployment of a new system that won’t work with something else, or the new practice may have a negative impact on a process that hasn’t been considered.
Perhaps some of us have been the people resisting changes. People resist change for many reasons, and in learning and teaching situations those changes are often seen as an impact on the individual’s own practice. Anxiety and fear of what will happen, the institution’s own history of change, and what has happened in the past will all contribute to resistance. Some resistance comes from legitimate concerns about their well-being, or that of their students, or colleagues. Any ethical change programme will take seriously resistance emerging from a place of care (Lanclos, 2019).
Change and Culture
When we talk about making changes, modifying how people behave, what they do, and how work is done, we are asking people to change the culture. What do we mean by culture? People tend to think of an institutional culture as “how we do things around here”. When anthropologists talk about “culture,” they understand it from a holistic perspective, encompassing the entirety of human behavior.
“Culture…taken in its broad, ethnographic sense, is that complex whole which includes knowledge, belief, art, morals, law, custom, and any other capabilities and habits acquired…as a member of society.”
E.B. Tylor, 1871
One of the simplest and most effective models we have found when we discuss culture in the context of our work is Schein’s Model of Organizational Culture (citation). We have used this model to illustrate and surface culture in many of our workshops, and in digital leadership courses we have run.
Schein’s Model of Organizational Culture is often visualised as an onion with the layers representing different aspects of an organisation. While the outer layer is fairly easy or open to change; the deeper we go into the layer, the harder change becomes both initiate and sustain.
Organisational Culture After Schein and Schein, 1986
The outermost layer, the Artefacts, consists of the material components of any organization: dress code, architecture, bureaucratic structures, symbole (mottos, mascots), and so on. The next layer, Values, consists of how the organization is represented, both internally and externally. It might include statements of intention and strategy, or beliefs. It is the consciously communicated agenda of the institution.
At the core we find the Tacit Assumptions. These are the things that are taken for granted, and often unspoken. They constitute the essence of the organizational culture. They are so well-integrated that it’s difficult to see or recognize as behaviors, and can serve as barriers to outsiders who are trying to find a way into the organizational culture. Tacit Assumptions can also create problems if there is dissonance between them and the stated Values of the organization. In our work, drawing out that dissonance is key to effecting change programmes.
Reflection 3
Take a moment to think about how you or your peers talk about learning and teaching. Think about the conversations you have when things aren’t going as well as they could.
What are the things about teaching and learning at your organization that it is only possible to know after you have been working there for a while? What do people have to experience, because it is not explicitly stated anywhere?
Think about your organization’s learning and teaching strategy. What are the Values explicitly communicated in that strategy?
Do the stated Values of your organization align with the Tacit Assumptions indicated by the actions, policies, and instructive silences that shape the experiences of teaching and learning? Why or why not?
Facilitating Change
Understanding and measuring the dissonance between the Values of an organization and the Tacit Assumptions of its people is a way of evaluating what level of a change programme is required to embed change throughout the institution. The greater the dissonance between the espoused Values and the Tacit Assumptions, the greater the chances of derailing any change initiative. Listening to staff, understanding their Tacit Assumptions, and accounting for and helping to shift what they believe to align with the stated Values of the organization will ensure greater levels of success for the change programme.
Our experience is once you directly engage with what staff believe, and genuinely react to the Tacit Assumptions with mitigating actions, staff can see that you are addressing their concerns. This is the key to facilitating change
For example, when we say “teaching is important” but staff believe that research is seen as more important, we need to directly address that concern, and put things in place that demonstrate a genuine concern for teaching. If we do not address the beliefs, and do not reward teaching, and continue to reward only research, it is difficult to get staff on board with what we state in institutional Values.
Sustaining Change
Once we achieve momentum in the change we seek, we need to sustain it. Small, successful changes can be key to this. One way of thinking about this is through Dave Brailsford’s approach to cycling. His philosophy of “marginal gains” involved the constant measuring and monitoring of various elements of an athlete’s activity and the equipment they used looking for areas that could be improved, even if only a small amount (Slater, 2012). The idea is that even small changes, when accrued, can lead to larger benefits. Many change programmes in higher education teaching often look at wide scale strategic change and are not as successful as their aspirations; but programmes focused on smaller incremental changes appear to be well received and are more successful (Trowler, Ashwin and Saunders 2014). Small changes that yield immediate benefits, no matter how small, will help to build the credibility of the wider change programme you are delivering, and in turn will give it momentum and allow the change to be sustained until it is embedded.
Embedding Change
How do we know when a change is embedded? This is a key question when looking to measure the success of any programme. The first thing we need to know is what the situation was before the change, so keep a record, document the situation before you embark on any change programme. When the change is embedded you will see those practices and processes that you wanted to introduce are accepted and demonstrated by the majority of people in the organisation. The culture has changed. It’s really that simple. The difference between what was and what is.
But to get to the stage where it is embedded you need to enable the change in the component of the culture that impacts on the new behavior. And that comes down to individuals. In reflection 1 we asked you to “think about a change you want to see in the practices of an individual at their institution.” But we are part of that new behavior that we need to make happen. Quite often change is something that appears to be done to someone. The rhetoric of change, the unspoken tacit assumptions might be that “we are being made to change, but no one else is”.
Embedding change is when the culture has changed. And if we are to change the culture of an organisation it must be managed from the top of the organisation. In university teaching that might be at school or faculty level, or it might be at executive management level. But it needs consistent messaging, and those at the top must model the changes and be seen to believe the change.
The final part of our change process is cultural alignment. To ensure that the change that you want to implement is successfully embedded requires analyzing what the culture of the institution is, understanding what’s going on and then aligning or adopting practices, processes or systems to match the change you want.
Reflection 4
In reflection 1 we asked you a question around what changes do you want to see in other people? We now want you to think about a change that you would need to make, or that you want to make in your immediate departments or a more senior level.
Think about how you can model the culture change you need for the change that you want to make. How would you model that change from a position that you’re in and also what would need to change at the institution for that to happen?
Cautionary Tales
We end this chapter by offering three cautionary tales to illustrate the importance of culture to change initiatives in institutions.
Story One: Terra Nullius
In the work we do, we have encountered a troubling pattern. We started referring to it as the terra nullius framework for digital. We would note that it’s possible to push this metaphor a bit too far, and do not want to suggest that that justifications for digital change initiatives are the same as the justification for colonization, dispossession, and genocide, as was the original terra nullius doctrine in Australia under British colonization. But we are struck by the number of times we have been asked into a room, or encountered people within a particular room, and heard “we need to become digital” “People don’t do digital around here.” “No one here is engaged with [insert digital thing here.]” And then, over the course of the workshop, or conversation, or research project it becomes obvious that people are in fact engaging in and within digital platforms, places, and tools. That engagement might not look the way that institutional leaders assume they should, or that marketing folks recognize as valuable practice, or that lecturers recognize as legitimate educational behaviors.
When leaders, managers, lecturers, or consultants, or indeed anyone suggests that there are no valuable digital practices in their particular context, they set the stage for the wholesale import of a set of practices. They ignore what is actually there because it’s more convenient, or more politically useful, to suggest that there is no pre-existing landscape of behaviors that deserves attention. The political reasons for such an approach are clear: people brought in to effect and manage change often want to be able to point to significant “progress.” as evidence of success. And then they can move on to the next post, on the back of their record of “effective change.”
The terra nullius approach to digital takes away at least two things: 1) the ability to recognize and encourage good practices, and 2) the ability to recognize and change practices that do not currently serve anyone particularly well.
Making the assumption that there is no useful existing state of affairs, means that during any change process you will be leaving people behind; and whatever emerges from the process will also have meant leaving any pre-existing effective practice and culture behind too. A terra nullius approach does not recognize or value people.
In our work we offer mapping practices (Lanclos and Phipps 2019), and then communicating the content of those maps, facilitating conversations that emerge from the mapping, as one antidote to the problematic assumptions of a digital wasteland, empty of good things. It is an approach that values the people in those workshops, that recognizes their presence in their organizations, and the value of their work.
Any “leaders” or “change agents” who assume that the people in their organization are lacking, and have been until the moment the new leader showed up with their all-new plan, are acting in violent ways towards the people who work for them. Why assume people aren’t doing anything that works? Why assume there is no reason for practice to look the way it does? Why assume people don’t know things?
It’s also worth asking who might get to continue doing what they are doing, after the change initiatives take place. Whose practice gets valued? Is it only one kind of person? What structures of power, of racism, of sexism, of other discriminations, are shot through organizational assumptions around what people are doing, and whether or not it is worthwhile?
Story Two: Dead Birds (by Lawrie Phipps)
The thing with cats is that they think we are puny humans, and whilst they enjoy the small offerings we give them from a tin, at heart they are all hunters and killers roaming their jungle. Occasionally cats look at us and think, “you look a bit pale, and weak, I will go and hunt for you and bring you an offering.”
I have walked into my home office to find a dead pigeon on my keyboard, and my cat looking very proud. The cat is trying to prove that they are a great hunter, and they love you so much that they want to share what they have caught with you. For your cat, this is the ultimate devotion they can show a fellow creature.
Veterinarians suggest dealing with this situation in very particular ways, because while your first impulse might be to scream and yell at the cat, that is in fact the last thing you want to do. The proper way to handle the situation is to remain calm. Do not make a horrified face, or cringe, because cats can read body language too. Thank your cat very kindly for the gift, distract them with a special toy, catnip or a treat, and only after the cat has left, dispose of the dead bird’s body.
I have often been called in to project meetings where the institutional team are presenting their final project outputs to senior management, or their peers. They are inevitably very proud, they have delivered most of what they promised in a given project. I have sat through the meetings where the senior managers hear all about the project. And then project team, stop and stand back proud of their accomplishments, of the report they delivered, or the slide deck they presented. After the presentation, the senior managers stand, remain very calm, thank everyone kindly, and then make a comment about other meetings to get to, and leave.
The senior managers head back to their office holding the dead bird their team so proudly presented them with, looking for a way to dispose of the body.
Working in isolation, from your colleagues, from your managers, and especially from the institutional aspirations and strategy will not create widespread change, in any context. It will produce just another dead bird.
Effective and relevant change should be grounded in what is happening in the organization, what is needed, and in particular what peers and senior managers actually want. Without this grounding, all that is produced is dead birds. Change programmes should not create a problem out of solution, or solve something that isn’t a problem.
Story Three: Gardening (by Donna Lanclos)
My parents used to live in Southern California, and they had been in their house since 1983. My grandfather grew flowers and fruit in his yard in Louisiana, where my mother grew up. I remember visiting him and eating satsuma and kumquats off of his trees, admiring his tulip tree, taller than his house, and eating the marigolds (well, when I was very small) from around the lamp post not far from the swing set. My family moved into the Southern California house when I was 13, to citrus trees, plum trees, one white nectarine tree (that fruit tasted like heaven) and a whole lot of other plants my mother did not really like very much. Since then she has been planting, digging, replanting, and this is what she had to show for it.
These amaryllis came from my grandfather’s yard in Louisiana.
My mother’s gardening philosophy consists of: plant what you think might work.
If a plant dies, there are two lessons to learn:
1) don’t plant that again
2) plant something else
Far too often, organizations in the throes of uprooting practices in the course of change programmes don’t manage to plant anything else. They miss out on that crucial step; the reason they tried something new in the first place was that they realized something different needed to be done. That original situation hasn’t changed, even if the first thing they tried to plant is dead. Plant something else.
One hazard of being in HE organizations is there are people who have been around for so long that they remember all of the plants that have died–some of them keep lists. And that list of dead plants can seem like reason enough to never plant anything new again, and serve as a barrier to initiating change. Such list-keepers can be good reminders of history, but should not be the ones to derail attempts to initiate and iterate institutional changes.
There are a couple of important addenda to my mother’s gardening philosophy. Sometimes, the plants die and it is your fault. Perhaps you did not water them enough, or you put them in too much sun, or too much shade. The things you change always exist within a larger context. Successful change programmes provide enough space to reflect, so that there is a fighting chance of figuring out why things did not work. After reflection, that is the time to try something else.
And finally: the garden you plant creates the conditions for the garden you will have to tend in the future.
Sunny spots become shaded by the tree you put in. Shady spots become sunny when you cut back that shrub. So the things you planted in those spots might no longer thrive, even if they did before, because of how things have changed. Things that changed because of what you put in, in the past. You cannot treat the garden as a constant. Nor can you treat your organization and fixed, once change programmes are complete.
References
Dearing, R. (1997) Higher Education in the Learning Society. The National Committee of Enquiry into Higher Education. http://www.educationengland.org.uk/documents/dearing1997/dearing1997.html
Lanclos, D. and Phipps, L. (2019) “Trust, Innovation and Risk: a contextual inquiry into teaching practices and the implications for the use of technology”, Irish Journal of Technology Enhanced Learning, 4(1), pp. 68 – 85. doi: 10.22554/ijtel.v4i1.53.
Lanclos, D., 2019. Listening to Refusal: Opening Keynote for #APTconf 2019 | Donna Lanclos. [online] Donnalanclos.com. Available at: <https://www.donnalanclos.com/listening-to-refusal-opening-keynote-for-aptconf-2019/> [Accessed 13 October 2021].
Machiavelli, N. (2005) The Prince. Translated by P. Bondanella. London, England: Oxford University Press.
Mesly, O. (2016) Project feasibility: Tools for uncovering points of vulnerability. New York, NY, USA: Productivity Press.
Peterson, M. 2021. Woodrow Wilson Quotes — Woodrow Wilson. [online] Woodrow Wilson. Available at: <https://www.woodrowwilson.org/blog/2019/1/21/woodrow-wilson-quotes> [Accessed 28 September 2021].
Trowler, P, Ashwin, P & Saunders, M 2014, The role of HEFCE in teaching and learning enhancement: a review of evaluative evidence. The Higher Education Academy. <https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/sites/default/files/downloads/The_role_of_HEFCE_in_TL_Enhancement_final_report.pdf>
Schein, E. and Schein, P., 1986. Organizational culture and leadership. 1st ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Slater, M., 2012. Marginal gains underpin GB cycling dominance. [online] BBC Sport. Available at: <https://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/19174302> [Accessed 11 October 2021].
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