Leading Change Successfully

Organizational leadership often requires directing change efforts.  At times the efforts are reactive and required by outside forces. While leading a reactive change can be difficult, doing so requires less skill and exposes the leader to less risk than change of a proactive nature. Proactive changes are driven by shifts in stakeholder desires and often result in a changed vison and structure. In a reactive change, driven by changes in revenue or legislation, the leader’s primary task is to communicate and monitor; stakeholders know the change must take place regardless of the leader. In proactive change, the leader must do more than communicate, she must analyze power dynamics while developing and adjusting complex strategies.

Analyzing Power

Too often leaders do not consider the nature of power deeply enough.  As Prusser and Marginson  (2012) noted, “the time is right to more deeply consider the nature and sources of power” (p. 91). An incomplete understanding of power may tempt a leader, especially in educational organizations, to rely too heavily on position or coercive power without understanding the limits of these forms of power (French & Raven, 1959). At times, leaders, realizing that “power is the ability to produce intended effects,” may be intimidated by their potential (Pussser and Marginson, 2012, p. 91).  Leaders do well to remember Foucault’s assessment of power: “We have to stop describing power always in negative terms: it excludes, it represses. In fact, power produces; it produces reality” (Foucault, 1975, p. 12).  The responsibility of leaders is to wisely craft the changes that produce new realities.

Limits of Power

While an educational organization often can be described in a traditional pyramid structure, the power dynamics are often much more complex and look more like “freewheeling coalitions rather than formal hierarchies” (Bolman & Deal, 2013, p. 190).  A failure to understand these coalitions will limit the leader’s ability to enact change. Even in settings where the leader has tremendous power change can be difficult to lead, as evident in the Chinese government's failed efforts to change a culture of copyright abuse (Bolman & Deal, 2013).

Exercising Power Pragmatically

One of the first tasks of a leader charged with implementing change is to survey the current power dynamics through a “force field analysis” (Levi, 2017, p. 231). The leader must measure the support and opposition to the change, while realizing that “organizations are inevitably political” (Bolman & Deal, 2013, p. 190).  Typically, in such organizations, change will be resisted, and the leader must anticipate opposition, because key stakeholders will only recognize power as the “actor’s ability to impose his will in spite of resistance” (Pusser & Marginson, 2012, p. 91).

In these political settings the leader will be well served by using referent power to build capacity, by increasing the number of individuals who support the change, because they desire to join the growing group (French & Raven 1959).  Establishing referent power will only happen when the leader understands how to function in settings where “conventions, words, practices and knowledge are more important than legal decrees” (Pusser & Marginson, 2012, p. 93).  Knowledge, in particular, provides excellent potential for the leader to increase in power, because in dynamic situations, a person who learns and communicates fastest will inevitably be conferred a greater degree of expert power to shift the paradigms of members of the organization (French & Raven, 1959). Communicating the leader’s knowledge in these settings, requires the leader’s to develop and cultivate informal networks (Bolman & Deal, 2013, p. 198). In informal networks, leaders are advised to be aware of the symbolic dynamics at work in an organization because all stakeholders are motivated by values and a desire to seek out significance (Bolman & Deal, 2013). Relationships are the only avenue for identifying moments where the intersection of circumstance, a deeper sense of values, and a desire for significance leave an individual open to accepting a change (Lamar, 2012).

  

References

Bolman, Lee G. & Deal, Terrence E. (2013). Reframing Organizations. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

French Jr., John R. P. & Raven, Bertram. (1959).  The basis of social power. In Shafritz, Jay M., Ott, Steven J., & Jang, Yong Suk. (Eds.), Classics of organization theory (pp. 311-320). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.  

Lamar, Kendrick, 2012. Dying of thirst. On Good kid, M.A.A.D city. Los Angeles, Top Dawg.  

Levi, D. (2017). Group dynamics for teams. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE

Pusser, Brian & Marginson, Simon. (2012). The elephant in the room: power, politics, and global rankings in higher eduation. In Bastedo, Michael N. (Ed.) The organization of higher education. (pp. 86-117). Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.