CEdO565 Week 5 - Completing the Change

This week we finished our change simutlation.  We also received several more handouts in the class work that helped us plan for better activities.  As a result our team made much better progress on the change board this week.  We were able to get everyone through the awareness phase, and several people made it all the way to the end of the board.  This game was a good simulation of some of the problems that we will run into when we try and implement changes in real life.  Among them:

• Involve the administration early and often.  Several times we tried to do an activity but were unable to because the administrator did not have enough knowledge of the situation.  When trying to change you can not over-communicate, especially to the people at the top of the ladder. 
• Don't waste too much time on the resistors.  We know early on who our resistors were, and we tried several activities to bring them along.  They would not move, and only changed once we had a cinved most of the others to move.  Then they had no choice, because the organization was changing without them.
• Know your social network.  Identify early who in the organization has the most contacts, and use them as early adopters.  Get them invovled and have them start talking about the change.  Then others will naturally follow.
• Plan your activities in a logical order.  You can not make a vision fo rthe future until you have looked at what is working now, what isn't, and compare it to best practices.  Then you can make an action plan based on your vision.

These are all lessons that I can apply to my job as I try and get changes enacted where I work.