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Straight A Fund Impact_ Managing Change, Lessons from Peers
- 1. 2/26/2016 Straight A Fund Impact: Managing Change, Lessons from Peers
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Check out the latest news and resources from the Straight A Fund evaluation team!
Straight A Impact
Connect Engage Empower Inform
Managing the People Side of Change
Why Organizational Change is So Hard
"Tell me in 100 words or less how to help our change occur more smoothly," a project
leader may ask. Tall challenge, but here it goes.
Seventy percent of change efforts fail. Common reasons include lack of visible leadership
involvement, no sense of urgency to change, lack of a clear stepbystep process, scarce
resources (time, money, training or technology), active sabotage (not common) and very
commonly, the absence of celebrating small successes. People adapt to change at
different rates some fast and some slow. But it all speeds up when people start to see
members of the group succeed.
So...identify where your team is struggling. If it's isolated patches, then most likely it is
time to share stories of success, to remind people why we're doing what we're doing.
Demonstrate the emotional hook, clarify where to get resources and show what small
success looks like.
How's that for an answer?
For more reading on the topic, we
suggest Harvard Business Review's 10
Must Reads: On Change Management.
The featured article is, Leading Change,
by John P. Kotter who has written
extensively on how to lead change and
why change fails. You may have free
access through your library or through
the Harvard Business Review website.
Another interesting perspective is
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Video review of Switch
offered by Chip Heath and Dan Heath in
Switch. Chip is at Stanford University
and Dan is at Duke University. They
offer a researchbased, practical
approach to leading difficult
organizational changes. See the book
review on YouTube in the above link.
If you have questions, want additional
information or want to talk about what
you are experiencing, contact Charles
Hauser at chauser@insight.rr.com to set
up a time to talk. We also encourage you
to visit our LinkedIn Discussion Group to
share thoughts and connect with each
other on this topic.
This is an adventure, and we're glad to share it with you.
Partnering for Classroom Innovation
Panelists Share Lessons Learned
On November 12, 2015, C H Smith & Associates hosted a lunch forum with presentations
from FY2014 grant initiatives Marysville Early College High School and Union County
Innovation Center, and the Milford/Cincinnati Public Schools STEM CaseBased
Learning Consortium.
Both projects used the Straight A Fund to advance programs based on partnerships with
local businesses. We kicked off the session with videos from The American Honda Motor
Company and on casebased learning deployed in Southwest Ohio. The panel fielded
questions about their partnerships and implementation of the Straight A grant, then
opened up the discussion to attendees. Here are the highlights:
A teacher pointed out that some of the best practices used to personalize learning
for students can also be applied to offering quality professional development.
Personalized, differentiated professional development based on what teachers
identify as needs could be significantly more meaningful than onesizefitsall
training.
While there is great emphasis on STEM, the humanities are not to be left behind. In
fact, some connections between STEM and humanities (increasingly referred to in
the field as STEAM with an A for Arts) are being made. As one teacher in the
forum stated, "reading and writing is a design cycle," and innovation in the
classroom is often interdisciplinary.
Businesses of all sizes can form meaningful partnerships with schools. The
American Honda Motor Company's partnership with Marysville included investment
in equipment, instructional support and a pipeline to employment. Yet a small
Cincinnati company, Madison Gelato, provided a realworld business case for
middle school students to develop and sell a new ice cream flavor. In both
partnerships, teachers commented on the value of sitting side by side with business
representatives to understand more about the field and contextualize learning for
students. These partnerships were more than a "one and done" activity, and were
well integrated into the curriculum approach and business needs and interests.
The weight and impact of standardized testing is still uncertain for professionals in
the field. Teachers are finding that personalized, contextualized learning seems to
