Can You Influence Change?

Posted by: Cory Plough | July 17, 2008 | 7 Comments |

I joined Scott Mcleod’s Summer Book Club and we are currently reading Influencer: the Power to Change Anything. I haven’t blogged about it yet, but some things in Chapter 6 really hit home with me so had to comment. Scott prefaced the book club by saying, this is one of the best leadership books he has read in awhile, and its perfect for change agents (paraphrasing). I want to be a change agent.

I’ve been trying to frame this blog all day and my original thought was to call it Being Change without Being in Charge, but that isn’t quite right. Besides, the only thought I could come up with under that title was……..

Back to the book. Here are some important things I learned about being a leader and being able to influence change, with a little commentary.

1. The Power of One

Remember learning about Stanley Milgram? The social scientist who had ‘teachers’ shock ‘learners’ when they didn’t get answers right, and even though learners kept messing up, 65% of the teachers kept shocking them, to near fatal levels. The final limit was 450 volts where most were presumed dead or passed out as a result. However, if scientists added one person to the teacher’s room that said things like “keep going, its okay” that number went up to 90% of the teachers shocking to a deadly level. But, if that same 1 person said “I’m not going to do this anymore” then the shocker stopped shocking. The idea is that the power of one is all it takes. One other person can influence us to do great or horrible things.

2. Opinion Leaders, not Innovators bring about change
Innovators are often thought of as the misfits who are disconnected from the rest of their environment. They aren’t respected because they are on a different plane. However, early adopters / opinion leaders are connected to and respected by their peers and others in their community. If you want real change, you have to be (or have to find) an early adopter. You have to be connected to your peers. You have to be respected by them. Then, when the innovators come in with their cool new tools, you decide whether they are worthy and promote them.

This one takes some self-evaluation. I have one other person at my school that would be considered the innovator. He got me excited about Web 2.0 and the possibility of engaging students on a whole new level. He has introduced some amazing ideas to our staff. However, most haven’t taken to changing their style of teaching to meet the demands of today’s students. He is an amazing learner. That being said, I don’t what I AM? I don’t think I’m an opinion leader because I’m not vocal enough about the emerging technologies that I’m using or the impact they are having on the select kids using them. In some instances I’m helping kids get excited about school again. That is a good thing. I need to be more vocal about it, but it’s hard, especially when you don’t respect so many people in your organization. That has to change.

3. Influence agents have to engage the chain of command
“Smart influencers spend a disproportionate amount of time with formal leaders to ensure that the leaders are their social influence to encourage vital behaviors.”

Basically, if you want change then align yourself with the people who can make it happen in your community. For most of us, that is our bosses who are automatically given the title of leaders when they take the job. For those of us that have bosses that are ineffective at bringing about change, we need to pick people in our organization that can (people who are the head of cliques), and try to show them what we are doing. If they like our ideas then they will take it to their small groups and change will spread.

4. To become an opinon leader/ early adopter:

You must be knowledgable about the issue you are trying to change
You must be trustworthy, people have to respect your opinion
You must be generous with your time

This hits home really hard. We have a knowledgable administration. However, not all are trustworthy. Most of our faculty does not believe our administration will handle situations appropriately. They don’t trust them to do the right thing. Some of our administration is very generous with their time. Others can never be found. Do your leaders fit these three criterion?

5. Make the undiscussable, discussable
There has to be a public discourse over the issues that are hurting your organization the most. The elephants in the room.

Power to change comes from the ability to force undiscussable topics into the public discourse. Long settled beliefs are suddenly opened to question and discussed at every corner, workstation, and shop- and eventually reshaped

We can’t sit in our classrooms, complain on our PLN’s, and just talk to our spouses about what is wrong, what needs to change. We have to get our ideas moving, make them kinetic, make them a fabric of our community.

In an ideal workplace, you have an “environment where formal and informal leaders relentlessly encourage vital behaviors and skillfully confront negative behaviors. When this happens, people make personal transformations that are hard to believe”

What are you doing to influence your environment?

under: at-risk, charter schools, education, frustrated, high school, school 2.0, school reform
Tags: 2008castlebookclub, administration, change agents, influence, influence power to change anything, leadership, opinion leaders, school2.0, teachers

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I have the great opportunity to be a change agent in my district this year… in other words, I’m going to stick my neck out more than I ever have. Perhaps I should read Patterson’s book before I start having those difficult conversations.

The point that resonated with me from your summaries is getting to those elephants in the room. A lot of us sit and complain about them, but there has to be some action if those elephants are ever going to disappear. Great post!

By: Michelle Baldwin on July 18, 2008
at 12:50 pm

Re: #2 and #3, the most powerful learning I took away from Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point was that you have to focus on people that others will listen to. They may or may not be in positions of formal authority. In schools we usually pick leadership teams based on role (i.e., we need the counselor, the dept. chair, the assistant principal, etc.) rather than on influence. That’s gotta stop.

What if the people that others listen to in your organization are naysayers? Well, you’ve still gotta get them on board because otherwise their influence will work against you every step of the way. That’s a guaranteed loser…

By: Scott McLeod on July 18, 2008
at 1:26 pm

@ Scott- That is one of the main ideas I got out of this chapter as well. If there are cliques or sub-groups in a school, you have to find the leaders of those groups and get them on your side. If you dont, like you said, your mission will fail.

By: mrplough07 on July 18, 2008
at 7:14 pm

@michelle – I’m glad your role is that of a change agent. Some people (I’m not one of them) get designated with titles that automatically put them in a position to influence. You can use it for good (confronting those deadly elephants) or you can take the easiest route through the woods. Do good !

By: mrplough07 on July 18, 2008
at 7:16 pm

Cory,
Nice post; it’s definitely got me thinking. Having people above you who get those titles with auto-influence power is something we can all appreciate. As in your comment to @Michelle, I am also “not one of them.” But, there are always people above us who don’t see things the same way we do. Being in a very large district, its very difficult to affect change. I’d like to think that in my small way (through edtech teacher trainings, project roll-outs and district-wide awareness programs), I am making small but effective changes. That is the reason I left the classroom to be in district admin after teaching for 20 years. I thought perhaps I could help make some positive changes that would impact more teachers than the few at my school. (We have over 12,000 teachers though so I try to be realistic.)

Unfortunately, politics in any large organization plays a big part in how things get done or if they ever do get done. As @scott mcleod said … focus on the people that others will listen to… That’s the ticket. The bigger ticket is to get THOSE PEOPLE TO LISTEN TO YOU!

By: Lee Kolbert on July 19, 2008
at 7:40 pm

Cory – Change is everywhere and always. The trick of the modern day is to make everything predictable! This mindset has been around over a hundred years hence Darwin, Einstein and Freud are so regularly taught – yet their theories are mostly incorrect or at least have never been proved. All of a sudden e-learning appears like the hippies of the 60s. The old anti-change argument is why fix it if it ain’t broke? Who said that system ever worked? At least efficiently and effectively as the statistics of numeracy and literacy show, which have a strike rate of about 3:4 the rest fall between the big cracks. We have progressed from the archaic pedagogy thru andragogy and now in heutagogy – http://ultibase.rmit.edu.au/Articles/dec00/hase2.htm – which is still struggling to be recognised as the new teaching or learning methodology – search it on ask.com – it derives from http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Heuristic – in this Brave New e-World. Of course this new flow is not going to be recognised or embraced by the stagnant! The screaming need for e-learning and change I think is due to the chronic shortage of teachers in a population exploding world. The quotas for teachers went into IT and other vocations many years ago. If there is a real attempt to educate the masses then e-learning must be a supplementary method of teaching. My stats and those of Prof Michael Wesch are that about half the student population today prefer the online interactive distance learning scenario. For many students the cost of travel for F2F classes is becoming too high is another factor driving towards e-learning. Just like pizzas were not around before the hippie revolution, the student needs of today will demand the collaborative and continually improving services of e-learning. As you can clearly see the demands of today socially, economically, politically and environmentally are all demanding change. I can only wish that all this essential change happens in time and without violence. What has to change is the established rigid control system which inevitably will lead to the loss of power by many in this current system of establishment. Change is a rule that has been forgotten – it encourages innovation, creativity and flexibility – it is now beginning to be remembered, and learned. Wishing Well – Stony

By: Stony River on July 20, 2008
at 2:05 am

@ Lee -
Our charter school is sponsored by the 5th biggest district in the country. All of the students and almost all of the teachers come right out of the Clark County district (las vegas) and most have been let down by that system. I understand about big districts, and it’s sad.

It’s almost impossible to make systematic changes (maybe that’s the plan) when they get too big. So, you if you can’t be an influencer at the top, then you have to try affect small groups. Like you are doing, like Scott says, and like Influencer states, you have to disproportionately target the leaders of those groups so you can at least get change going at the ground level.

By: mrplough07 on July 20, 2008
at 9:19 am