Anticipating & Minimizing Resistance - Session 8

While improving assessing & improving readiness can help reduce resistance, it is rare that change can be brought about without facing some resistance. In my work at NYU's Office of Global Programs (OGP), I have seen many examples of resistance to change. In many instances, I think this resistance can be attributed to the simple fact that all change involves the "loss of what was and a transition to what will be" (Spiro, 2011, Loc. 274). Many of NYU's study abroad centers have been around long before NYU's centralized OGP was created. For example, the NYU Paris program was founded by the French Department back in 1969. NYU Paris was later taken from the French Department by the OGP. Since the program was originally run by the French Department, the traditional leadership has often resisted changes made by the OGP.

Over the coming year, the OGP leadership hopes to ensure that all Global sites' academic calendars are meeting Middle States accreditation standards. Since the NYU Paris calendar is currently well short of the required 14 weeks of classes, their calendar will have to be changed. Even if proper steps are followed to maximize readiness, the OGP leadership should recognize that resistance from the traditional NYU Paris leadership in the French Department will be inevitable.

A couple of points from the chapter "Step 4 - Minimizing Resistance While Maximizing Your Tolerance for It" seem especially relevant for this situation. In particular, OGP leadership should take care not to assign blame for the current calendar, or focus on what is wrong with it. OGP should acknowledge that there were good reasons for the current calendar set up, but that closer scrutiny of the academic quality of the Global Network University makes it necessary to ensure all calendars meet certain standards.

Another key things OGP leadership should consider is to not try changing too many things at once. If they would like to change NYU Paris's calendar for future semesters, it should not try to initiate other changes at this time. There will definitely be resistance to changing the calendar, but it can be minimized if it is not accompanied by other changes, which would make the NYU Paris leadership feel that their successful program is being completely changed for no reason.

Lastly, OGP leadership needs to assess their tolerance for resistance before embarking on this effort. I think that without a doubt their will be resistance to this change. OGP leadership should anticipate this resistance, and be prepared to work hard to overcome this resistance if they wish to accomplish change.

Revisiting Readiness for Every New Action - Session 7

As the Academic Support Coordinator in NYU's Office of Global Programs, I help our leadership develop and expand the curriculum at our Global Academic Centers. In order to introduce a new course abroad, we need to work with departments here on the Washington Square campus who ultimately "own" their department's courses. I have seen our office fail to win a department's support in the past due to inadequately assessing and improving a department's readiness.

Our Vice Provost recently wanted to add chemistry and biology courses to the curriculum at NYU Tel Aviv. The departments were reluctant in supporting this effort however, and as a result, we still have not added these courses to the curriculum. The departments have not completely fought against adding these courses, but they have dragged their feet, and slowed the process down significantly. It is clear to me, that our office could have had much more success with this project, if we had focused on improving readiness beforehand.

We currently offer Biology, Chemistry, and Physics at NYU London. The departments here in NY that sponsor these courses are currently worried about the quality of these courses offered abroad. While it is not completely clear whether these concerns are justified, nothing has been done to thoroughly evaluate whether or not there are problems with these courses, and to address these problems should they indeed exist. Our office recognized that these concerns should be addressed, but wanted to first push forward with adding these courses to the curriculum in Tel Aviv. I think this was a major mistake, as we should have recognized, readiness is essential for each new action. If the departments were not ready to support a study abroad initiative, the initiative cannot succeed. We need to first address any concerns the department may have about NYU London, and ensure that they are ready to support efforts at NYU Tel Aviv. Only then, with full readiness, can we hope to achieve success.

Early Win - Session 6

I was really drawn to the idea of an "early win" in this week's reading/class. It was something I hadn't really thought about before, but made immediate sense. Part of the reason it makes so much sense to me is that I think it can be a useful strategy to use in one's personal life. I sometimes have difficultly dealing with stress in my life, especially the kind that comes from having too much work to do. When faced with too much work to do or a particularly difficult task, I've occasionally had the bad habit of shutting down and simply putting off the work. This of course only makes my stress worse and leaves me less time to do the work. To combat this tendency, I've tried to concentrate on giving myself an early win. If I have a variety of tasks to complete, some of which are easier than others - which is normally the case - I try to tackle the easier less time consuming tasks first. Completing one task boosts my confidence and decreases my stress enabling me to move onto the next task.

When thinking about creating a strategic plan for organizational change, it seems obvious that securing an early win is even more important. Organizations are made up of people, and can be helped by the momentum created from an early win just like people. When I've thought about getting Malawi Children's Village to create and implement a strategic plan, the task definitely seems daunting. I think of so many things that would need to be considered, and major changes that would need to happen in order for the organization to succeed. I now realize that whatever strategy the organization seeks to use, we should make sure that it includes an early win. I'm not quite sure what that would be at this point. I'm also a little confused with how an early win would match with a divestment/retrenchment strategy. One of the things I think MCV might decide to do would be to close down its clinic and form a partnership with the clinic down the road. It's hard to think of this as an early win however. Won't people be disappointed to see a long standing program shut down? Perhaps it could be turned into an early win by having some sort of signing ceremony with the partnering organization? As I said, I'm not really sure what the early win would be at this point, but I'm glad I now know to keep this in mind if we go forward with a strategic plan.

The importance of changing Behavior & Culture - Session 5

I think that the section "The Real Goal - Change in Behavior and Culture" in Leading Change brings up a really important point. Changes in programs, policies and procedures have very limited effects if there is not a real change in the behavior and culture of an organization. My previous experiences have shown me how important an organization's culture can be. I spent a couple of years as a NYC public school teacher. One year, my school on the Lower East Side had an inexperienced principal that made some poor choices, and upset some of the teachers. The teachers (myself included) responded to this poor leadership with lots of complaining and negativity. Later on, when certain our administrator tried to introduce new programs or strategies, they failed because teachers did not make enough effort to get behind them.

When I look back at my time at that school I really blame a lot of our struggles on the negative culture that we let set into the school. While I think most of the teachers were individuals that would generally consider themselves as motivated to work hard and focus on the kids, we all found ourselves instead focusing on the parts of our job that we didn't like, and complaining whenever we thought that some new policy was going against the union contract. When I look back at some of the things I fought against, I don't think I agree with some of my actions at the time, and I attribute that to the culture that had settled in at the school. It's clear to me that if any real improvements were to be made at that school, more effort first needed to be made to try and change the culture.

Portfolio Analysis - Session 4

I really enjoyed Kearn's chapter "Analyzing Your Organization's Portfolio" this week. In my Marketing for Nonprofit Organizations class this summer we spent a lot of time going over how to do a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities & Threats), but we did not talk specifically about doing a portfolio analysis. The portfolio analysis instantly appeals to me, because so many non-profits (and companies in general) have lots of different programs. If you don't separate the programs out and analyze them one by one, it is much harder to analyze either the internal or external environment. Separating out the programs and examining them one by one makes it easier to see the different competitive environments your organization operates in, and also allows you to be more critical and decisive in your analysis. By analyzing things one by one it is much easier to see exactly what programs are working well, what programs need to be improved, and which should be discontinued altogether.

As usual, I found myself thinking a lot about Malawi Children's Village (MCV) as I read this chapter. Before, if you had asked me to identify MCV's competitors, I would have a hard time saying who they were. When I look at MCV's portfolio on a program by program basis however, it becomes very obvious. MCV's health clinic competes with Koche Hill Clinic down the road, MCV's secondary school competes with other schools in the area, MCV's village out reach program competes with organizations that care for orphans in orphanages.

The various portfolio analysis matrixes that Kearns describes seem like they would be particularly useful in doing a portfolio analysis of MCV. I like these matrixes because they take into account things like social value and program attractiveness in addition to financial or competitive success (p. 119 & p. 124). For MCV, these things are critical to keep in mind when analyzing our programs. For example our outreach program has been struggling lately, but the fact that it would rate highly on "program attractiveness" and "social value" would eliminate suggesting it as a program that we should divest. On the other hand, MCV's health clinic doesn't necessarily rate as highly on "program attractiveness" because it isn't essential to our mission, so we could think about ending this program and instead relying on a partnership with another organization.

Thinking about program attractiveness helps you to remember an important thing to keep in mind when doing a portfolio analysis. That you need to tie it all back together at the end. As Kearns says "all of [your programs] should work in concert to support the organizational strategy." (p. 111) This makes a lot of sense and helps make sure that you stay focused on your mission when conducting your portfolio analysis. For example it wouldn't make sense for MCV to discontinue the health clinic if we decided as an organization that the mission should focus primarily on the health needs of the orphans.

I hope to encourage MCV to do some strategic planning in the future, and I will definitely advocate that we analyze our internal strengths and weaknesses one program at a time by doing a portfolio analysis.