Gen­er­at­ing short-term wins is a pretty straight for­ward part of Kotter’s eight stage process, but yet it is often over­looked.  I can say that as a prin­ci­pal, teacher, and coach, this step is some­thing that I often over­looked.  As a big pic­ture thinker, I failed to rec­og­nize all of the short-term wins that were all around me.  Unfor­tu­nately, fail­ing to rec­og­nize short term wins can have dread­ful results on your long term goal. 

Kot­ter lists three char­ac­ter­is­tics of short-term wins.

1)  It’s vis­i­ble; large num­bers of peo­ple can see for them­selves whether the result is real or just hype.

2)  It’s unam­bigu­ous; there can be lit­tle argu­ment over the call.

3)  It’s clearly related to the change effort.

Com­mu­ni­cate these wins to edu­ca­tional stake­hold­ers so that every­one can see that there is progress being made.  By com­mu­ni­cat­ing and rec­og­niz­ing those wins, you will be much more likely to keep every­one on board for the long haul.

In chap­ter one of Lead­ing Change in Your School, Dou­glas Reeves writes about obsta­cles that at times get in the way of change.  The chap­ter is appro­pri­ately titled, “Pull the Weeds Before You Plant the Flow­ers.”  Reeves talks about remov­ing some of the bar­ri­ers that may get in the way of change.  One way to go about remov­ing those bar­ri­ers is to take a close look at all of the ini­tia­tives that a school has imple­mented.  Reeves encour­ages schools to list all of the ini­tia­tives and pro­grams that have started in the past five years.  He then tells schools to make another list of all of the ini­tia­tives and pro­grams that have been dis­con­tin­ued in the past five years.  I’m sure all of you can guess which list is longer for most schools! 

Reeves-“Educators are drown­ing under the weight of ini­tia­tive fatigue-attempting to use the same amount of time, money, and emo­tional energy to accom­plish more and more objectives.”

In Lead­ing Change, Kot­ter also focuses on the obsta­cles that get in the way of change.  Those obsta­cles are struc­tures, skills, sys­tems, and super­vi­sors.  All of us at one time or another have encoun­tered those obsta­cles.  Some of us have prob­a­bly even been one of those obsta­cles to change!

So how do we empower peo­ple to effect change? 

Kot­ter lists 5 key components

    –Com­mu­ni­cate a sen­si­ble vision to employees

    –Make struc­tures com­pat­i­ble with the vision

    –Pro­vide the train­ing employ­ees need

    –Align infor­ma­tion and per­son­nel sys­tems to the vision

    –Con­front super­vi­sors who under­cut needed change

From con­ver­sa­tions that I have had with one to one lead­ers, one of those com­po­nents jumps out to me as being extremely impor­tant.  Pro­vid­ing the train­ing that employ­ees need has been a huge invest­ment that has paid enor­mous div­i­dends in the roll out of the one to one ini­tia­tive.  It has eased stress, but more impor­tantly it has given teach­ers the basic tools they need to be an effec­tive edu­ca­tor in an edu­ca­tional land­scape that looks much different.

In order to have sus­tained broad-based change, remov­ing bar­ri­ers is a very impor­tant start­ing point!

Kot­ter defines vision as “a pic­ture of the future with some implicit or explicit com­men­tary on why peo­ple should strive to cre­ate that future.”  In edu­ca­tion, it is quite com­mon to throw around mis­sion and/or vision state­ments.  Those state­ments can be found posted all over most build­ings, but yet they are some­what mean­ing­less to many.  Because most vision state­ments for schools are nearly iden­ti­cal, they become pretty mean­ing­less.  A vision state­ment of “do good” would be just as effec­tive as many cur­rent vision statements.

Jim Collins lists three basic ele­ments that make up an organization’s vision.

1) An organization’s fun­da­men­tal rea­son for exis­tence
(often called its mis­sion or purpose).

(2) Its time­less unchang­ing core values.

(3) Huge and audacious—but
ulti­mately achievable—aspirations for its own future.

Kot­ters says that “If you can­not describe your vision to some­one in five min­utes and get their inter­est, you have more work to do in this phase of a trans­for­ma­tion process.”  That state­ment res­onates strongly with me because your guid­ing coali­tion will be respon­si­ble for com­mu­ni­cat­ing the vision to stake­hold­ers.  With­out a strong vision state­ment, it will make the com­mu­ni­ca­tion process very difficult.

I absolutely love that vision state­ment that the state of Maine has made.  It reads that “Maine stu­dents will be the most tech­no­log­i­cally lit­er­ate in the world.”  This state­ment is crys­tal clear, and it truly com­mu­ni­cates one of the pur­poses of edu­ca­tion in Maine.  In 2002 Maine put out an infor­ma­tional let­ter to schools stat­ing the things that were required on each school’s tech­nol­ogy plan.  One of the cri­te­ria was a vision state­ment.  The expec­ta­tions for the vision state­ment is listed here. 

Vision  - Estab­lish a vision state­ment link­ing
the tools of tech­nol­ogy with areas such as cur­ricu­lum con­tent, instruc­tional
prac­tices, pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment strate­gies, and enhanced services.

Maine’s require­ment is a good guide for schools.  The guide is very appeal­ing to me because it ties the tools of tech­nol­ogy to learn­ing.  It doesn’t just focus on tech­nol­ogy for the sake of technology.

I must warn you that as you craft your vision state­ment, there are lots and lots of poor mod­els out there.  Don’t be one of the schools that cre­ate a bor­ing blan­ket state­ment with no meaning! 

Cre­at­ing a guid­ing coali­tion to work with through­out the devel­op­ment and then imple­men­ta­tion of the one to one plan is crit­i­cal in sus­tain­ing long term suc­cess as a school.  One of the most impor­tant parts of devel­op­ing that coali­tion cen­ters around the selec­tion of the group.  Like any com­mit­tee in edu­ca­tion, it is impor­tant to decide who the stake­hold­ers are that you need on board.  With a move as big as putting lap­tops in the hands of every stu­dent, all stake­holder groups should be rep­re­sented on the guid­ing coali­tion.  That includes teach­ers, admin­is­tra­tors, par­ents, stu­dents, board mem­bers, and busi­ness representatives.

One com­ment that I have heard from one to one admin­is­tra­tors is that they wish they would have involved stu­dents more in the entire process.  These admin­is­tra­tors shared that because they didn’t involve stu­dents in the entire process, and stu­dents hadn’t gone out and toured a one to one school, stu­dents were some­what appre­hen­sive about the move to one to one.  They were a lit­tle unsure what the move would mean for them.  If you can get stu­dents deeply involved in the process, they will pro­mote the ini­tia­tive with par­ents, grand­par­ents, friends, and other com­mu­nity members.

In addi­tion to find­ing the right peo­ple, cre­at­ing trust and devel­op­ing a com­mon goal are the two addi­tional com­po­nents Kot­ter lists for devel­op­ing a suc­cess­ful guid­ing coali­tion.  There is no sin­gle recipe for cre­at­ing trust with a guid­ing coali­tion, but being trans­par­ent is a key to build­ing that trust.  Another way to build trust is to be cer­tain that com­mit­tees truly are deci­sion mak­ing bod­ies that con­tribute to the process.

The final com­po­nent of cre­at­ing guid­ing coali­tions is devel­op­ing a com­mon goal.  The devel­op­ment of a goal that will stay with the school through­out the entire change process is very impor­tant.  When things get tough, hav­ing estab­lished a com­mon goal will help your orga­ni­za­tion focus on what is important.