Archives For proactive

How to Proactively Limit the Whirlwind

Dwayne Harapnuik —  June 2, 2017 — 3 Comments

Have you every had a situation where you thought something would only take a few minutes to complete but ended up taking a couple of hours? To make sure this post doesn’t turn out this same way I will get to the point. This morning my co-instructor and I needed to send out the announcement to our new group of students. No problem…I have an announcement script in my trusty Evernote so I told my colleague this will just take a few minutes; I just needed to update the script to reflect the fact we are co-teaching, change the dates and then I can post it. Or so I thought.

Rather than explain in full detail the challenges that arose and how they were addressed I will summarize my experience in the following list:

  • IT folks didn’t give me access to my own course – sent IT a message but got no response so after a series of Google Hangout messages with my co-teacher we explored other options to add me to the course.
  • Noticed I needed to add the latest two chapters and the most recent article my colleague and I have recently written to the list. Only one of the articles has been “officially” released so I added the URL to the publication and then went to the other 3 publication to create “In Press Draft” PDF files for our students.
  • Noticed that each of the files was formatting differently and while the double-spaced text is required for the publisher and their proofing the documents are much more readable with 1.5 spacing so I changed the formatting on all 3 document. OOPS… this also lead to changing some tables, adding page breaks and many other formatting issues that could have been avoided if we were using the full power of Word. Make note….need to talk to colleague out standardizing our writing formats.
  • Uploaded the 3 draft publications to the course storage and updated the reading list, linked to the draft documents and linked to the published article on the Journal site. Also uploaded the files and made the same updates to the Master Course.
  • Finally got to updating that course announcement script and created the new announcement with updated information.On the final proof read I noticed that there were some formatting and spacing issues with the announcement in the BlackBoard (BB) editor and pulled the HTML formatted content from BB editor and put it into my text editor to scan for and remove the extra “” and “” formatting that BB adds to the file when you save it. Did the search and replace and cleaned up the HTML content and pasted it back into the BB editor and FINALLY got an announcement message that I could post/send to our students.
  • While I was pulling together the draft documents I also realized that I needed to move these documents and related research files and folders to the same location in on my drives and then add these draft documents to my website so before I forgot and rather than add this to my ToDo list I re-organized some of my research files and related articles and chapters for publication.

By the time I went through the above process which included many other smaller steps too tedious to mention the few minutes to update the announcement message took just under two hours to complete. The authors of 4DX point to the day to day whirlwind of just getting your work done as one of the major factors that prevent significant change from taking place in most organizations. Most people are very busy just doing their work so adding anything new or looking to innovate is very challenging in the busy work that we live in. While this is true I also believe that we can add to that whirlwind by being reactive rather than being proactive. Let me explain. The steps above detail one reactive measure after another and if I would have been more proactive I could have eliminated or limited most of these steps and saved myself some time and frustration. Consider how I could have been more proactive:

  • When I emailed back and forth with the IT person who was involved in managing my course copy I informed him that even though I was not “officially” listed as the instructor on the course I was going to be co-teaching the course and needed to be added to the course as an instructor once it was copied. He said sure, no problem. In my second email exchange, I asked him to confirm that I was added and IF I needed to jump through the new formal request process. I was willing to fill out the necessary forms and jump through all the hoops but still hoped I didn’t have to. He said it wasn’t needed. Mistake two was when I didn’t check the course site until this morning rather than the night before—I wasn’t added to the course.
    Proactive countermeasure – don’t trust IT, jump through their time-consuming processes and check and double check to see if they have actually done what they say they will do.
  • Rather than wait until documents accumulate and pile up it makes better sense to format your documents for your specific audience right at the point where you are also submitting them for publication. It takes months for articles, chapters and books to be published so there will always be a need to create an “In Press Draft”.
    Proactive countermeasure – while the current document is being worked on for publication use page breaks, spacing, and all other formatting features that are built into the word processor that will enable you easily move the document from one format to another.
    Proactive countermeasure two – while the current document is being worked on creating and format the“In Press Draft” PDF that you can share with your students and the rest of your audience.
    Proactive countermeasure three – move that document to where it needs to reside so that you can easily share it. This includes uploading it to your website, master course, or wherever else it needs to go.
  • Dealing with the BB editing issue will take too much time to address so I will leave that to another post.

I must acknowledge that even though being proactive will help you save some time you still need to actually spend the 2, 5,  or 10 minutes here and there doing what needs to be done. You can save same some time but more importantly, you can save frustration and anxiety. Human’s don’t function very well in a heightened state of anxiety. Frustration and anxiety will cause adrenaline to flow and will turn on our flight or fight response which redirects our blood flow from our brains to our extremities. When things aren’t going well we don’t need blood being redirected from our brains to our limbs so this flight or fight state makes us even more unproductive. Ever noticed how the frustration just seems to build and it can take some time to calm down. This is just our physiology doing what it is supposed to do — get us ready to react and fight or take flight.

By being proactive we can not only save time but we can prevent moving into these states of growing frustration which we all know just kill our productivity. Being proactive will also mean that we can be much more purposeful and add to our work/website/ePortfolio on a consistent basis. The making of meaningful connections which are the essence of learning and growth are much more effective if we approach them incrementally. Creation, reflection, and revision and more reflection and revision require time… lots of time. If we are proactive we can leverage the hours we have and learn and grow more effectively.

More of my thoughts on being proactive:
The Paradox of Being Proactive
Why Create Significant Learning Environments
Sense of Urgency: Create It Now or React to It Later
How to Change Before You Have To
Pick Two – Innovation, Change or Stability
Practice Change by Living It

In Learning, Productivity , , , , ,
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How to Change Before You Have To

Dwayne Harapnuik —  February 19, 2016 — Leave a comment

Change before you have to
One of the key ideas we deal with in the Masters of Digital Learning and Leading program at Lamar University is change and how to use technology as a catalyst to bring about change in the learning environment. Reluctance to change is one of the most difficult challenges that most of us who promote the use of educational technology have to wrestle with. Ideally we would all like to work with only highly motivated colleagues and students but this is not the world we live in.

In response to a student request to share links to useful articles dealing with reluctance to change I did a quick search on my blog to find a couple really good articles or posts to share and I was surprised to notice that I have over 226 posts that are tagged with the word ”change” and dozens more posts that simply include the word change. I have several hundred notes in Evernote about change, dozens of links to articles on change in my Zotero reference database and I and hundreds more links related to change, reform, and innovation related to technology in education in my Diigo bookmarking tool. Can’t forget to mention the dozens of books about change I have in my hardcopy and digital libraries. This includes at least 6 books by John Kotter the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus, at Harvard Business School, who is widely regarded as the world’s foremost authority on leadership and change.

Out of all this how to do I find the just a couple of articles, posts or links that will be most useful. I started to review some my favourite academic articles and posts and after a few hours I was reminded by my wife’s caution

when people ask you for a recommendation they aren’t asking for a literature review and they more than likely don’t want to read all the books and articles that you have read…they are just looking for an answer to a problem.

So what is the problem that my student wants to address?

How do you deal with people who are reluctant to change?

The posts listed below are what I like to refer to as intellectual mash-ups because I take an assortment of ideas and combine them together to address the problem. Each post has many embedded links to the original sources so I am confident that the perspectives presented are supported by sound original insights.

The Head Won’t Go Where the Heart Hasn’t Been
This post points to the fact that while we like to believe that we make decisions based on rational thought the reality is that we are much more emotionally driven and as the title suggest that head won’t go where the heart hasn’t been.

People who like this stuff…like this stuff
In this post I point out the key factors for why people often reluctant to change and outline my 4 step process for organizational change which has become the foundation for the graduate course Leading Organizational Change I teach at Lamar University

The following three posts are also compilations of ideas that deal with the mindset one requires to embrace change. In addition, I address the fact that we often need to model or embrace change by living it.

Sense of Urgency: Create It Now or React to It Later

Pick Two – Innovation, Change or Stability

Practice Change by Living It

It is most important to remember that while change often is a constant part of 21st century living we don’t have to fear it or just react to it and let it adversely impact our lives. If we are proactive we can embrace change and use it as an opportunity for growth and development.

In Change , , , , ,
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Academics and Administrators live in two different worlds

Dwayne Harapnuik —  February 8, 2016 — 2 Comments

The data is in and confirms that:

UK academics and professional and support staff inhabit “two parallel universes that have little point of contact”.

The Times Higher Education’s (THE) poll shows there is a deep gulf between academics and professional and support staff. Teaching and research are the primary source of job satisfaction for academics but most are not proud to represent their current university and more than half feel that their job has a negative impact on their health.

university-workplace-survey-2016-graph
Source: THE University Workplace Survey 2016: results and analysis

In contrast, most professional (administrators) and support staff are not only proud of their current university they belief it benefits them and would recommend their institution as a great place to work.

Having worked as a faculty member and administrator in a variety of Universities across North America I am not surprised to learn that the survey reveals:

  • Most university staff find their jobs rewarding, but most academics feel overworked, exploited and ignored by management
  • A majority of staff feel satisfied with pay, conditions and professional development opportunities
  • Half of academics are worried about redundancies related to metrics-based performance measures
  • Half of academics think that their institutions have compromised undergraduate entry standards as competition for students has increased, and half feel under pressure to award higher marks.

I am also not surprised by the UK data and believe that it could be generalized and applied to institutions across the North America as well. I also see the two parallel universes in higher education here in North America because I have lived it.

Why is there such a split?

While the following attempt to explain and reconcile this split is not formally supported by any hard research I will however use the data from the survey, rely on almost three decades of experience in academia and will build on Simon Sinek’s argument in his TED Talk  “First why and then trust” to apply his ideas to this challenge.

Sinek argues that one of the most difficult challenges any organization will face is when the organization grows and becomes succesful the organizational “Why” or purpose separates from the organizational “What”. This “split” Sinek explains happens when an organization moves away from its original purpose and starts focusing on What they do without being grounded in Why they do it.

The data from the survey confirms that most faculty go into academic work because they truly enjoy the teaching, learning and research, so anything that interferes with this focus detracts from their experiences. Most educators firmly believe it is our responsibility to teach our learners to learn how to learn in order to prepare them for a world that is constantly changing. A very clear learner and learning centered Why or purpose.

Unfortunately, not all administrators have this same goal or purpose and this lack of a consistent Why or purpose is one of the primary causes for faulty distrust and the split. Too many administrators are not educators who are passionate about why we do what we do in education and are not learner and learning focused. Instead of the primary goal of serving our learners, too many administrators are focused first on the “What” on things like competition, measurement, costs, logistics and all too often change itself.

Sinek points out that when stress goes up and passion goes down, when the organization focuses more on what the competition is doing and less on what they are doing, when they start asking outsiders: “Who should we be?” and “How should we talk to you?” then you know that you have a split in your organizational Why and What and have strayed from your core values. The survey confirms that all these symptoms are present in the UK system and I from my experience would argue in our North American systems as well.

What can we do about it?

There is no denying, like so many other parts of our world, the educational landscape is being radically disrupted so there are significant changes happening with the way we learn, teach, and do research. These changes are inevitable but we do have the choice to be proactive or reactive. I have argued in the posts Sense of Urgency, Create it Now or React to it Later, Paradox of Being Proactive, and Pick Two–Innovation, Change or Stability that we need to be proactive and use disruptive innovation as a catalyst to enhance our learning environments. We have to start with the learner and the learning.

The key is to ensure that academics and administrators hold to the same Why or purpose. Not the vague or obtuse vision statement that most academic institutions have adopted as part of their business plans but the simple fact that it is our responsibility to teach our learners to learn how to learn in order to prepare them for a world that is constantly changing.

I believe we don’t have a choice but to bring together the two parallel universes we, unfortunately, see in our educational organizations. Fortunately, the steps for this unification are straight forward:

  1. Start with Why
  2. Identify and engage key influencers
  3. Install an effective execution strategy
  4. Enlist and empower self-differentiated leaders

In the post “People who like this stuff…like this stuff” I offer an explanation on how to expand on this four step process for organizational change.

In Change , , , ,
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Either Way You Win

Dwayne Harapnuik —  March 27, 2015 — Leave a comment

Win-win

If everything goes right, we get a good experience. If everything goes wrong, we get a good story. (Simon Sinek, 2015)

The challenge is to remember this when things do go wrong. Are you able to do this?

In Motivation , ,
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Sense of Urgency: Create It Now or React to It Later

Dwayne Harapnuik —  March 23, 2015 — Leave a comment

Every time I think about creating urgency at the start of a change process I immediately think about this old Fram commercial. You can be proactive and create a sense of urgency to start a change process or if you ignore the reality that change is the new constant and that all organizations are going to be forced to change then you will have to deal with the sense of urgency that will be forced upon you and your organization as you attempt to stay relevant.

The choice to be proactive and create a sense of urgency is ours but we often first have to get out of the reactionary rut. In the post Paradox of being proactive I point to the unfortunate fact that the busyness that reactivity spawns is rewarded because it appears that people are working hard to deal with the situation.

We need to stop reinforcing the incorrect reactive behaviors and start reinforcing the proactive activities that will enable an organization to really move forward. This requires the conviction of looking into the horizon and peparing for the technological and cultural issues that will be impacting your organization.

Pay me now or pay me later…Create the sense of urgency now or react to the tyranny of urgency later. The choice is yours.

Don’t take my word for this. John Kotter one of the world’s foremost authorities on change argues ignoring to create a sense of urgency is the biggest mistakes being made in leading change.

In Change, Innovation , ,
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