Managing Innovation in
Educational Organisations
Andy Hockley, Hox & Erix SRL
Quest Conference, Iasi
June 2009
Agenda
Innovation and Change – introduction
 Why do people resist innovation?
 Strategies for dealing with resistance
(ADKAR)
 Educational Innovation
 Managing innovation in educational
organisations
 Introducing multilingual programmes – a
discussion
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Change and Innovation
What comes into your mind when you hear the word
change? People have different responses to it.
In the world today change seems to come at us from
all directions and our response to it may be partly
determined by whether:
we think the change is a good idea
the reason for the change is clear
we feel we have the resources to deal with the
change
 we are involved in the process
 we are confident that the change will be introduced
successfully.
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Your attitude to change
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How do you normally respond to change?
Which of these words do you prefer – change or
stability?
Do you tend to see situations as opportunities,
problems or challenges?
When was the last time you adopted a new way of
doing something?
When did you last learn a new skill?
How committed are you to becoming the best
educator/manager you can be?
Think of a recent technological innovation e.g. mobile
phones or MP3 Players. How quickly did you adopt it?
Reasons for resistance
Activity
 Give some of the reasons why people
resist change
Reasons for resistance
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lack of support from key people
purpose of change not made clear
details of change poorly communicated
people affected by the change not involved in
planning change
change introduced too quickly or too slowly
key job characteristics are changed
fear of failure
people affected feel change reflects badly on their
past performance
lack of confidence in people’s capacity to
implement the change
A way of dealing with resistance
ADKAR Model
 Awareness
 Desire
 Knowledge
 Ability
 Reinforcement
A way of dealing with resistance
ADKAR Model
 Awareness - Why do you think the change is
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happening?
Desire - Do you support this change?
Knowledge - Do you have the training you need?
Ability - Are you having any difficulty
implementing these skills and knowledge? If yes, in
what areas?
Reinforcement -Are you getting the support you
need? Is there adequate reinforcement and support
for the change going forward? In what areas do you
need additional support or reinforcement?
Educational Innovation
Reasons for Failure (Fullan)
 Believing that complex problems can be
solved quickly
 Adopting innovations which have only
symbolic benefit
 Responding too quickly to fads
 Misunderstanding resistance as an attempt
to block, rather than as indicating a need for
help and support
 Allowing pockets of success to fail through
lack of support
Educational Innovation
Strategies for Success (Fullan)
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Change is a learning process (and therefore needs to be
regarded as such)
Change is a journey, not a blue print – it involves not just
one-off solutions, but continuous planning and adjusting
Problems arise from the change process; these are natural
and expected and must be identified and solved
Change is resource hungry
Change requires local power to manage it; it can't be
managed by remote control from a central power source
Change is systemic: it involves linkages and
interconnections among many systems and issues in the
organization.
Managing innovation effectively
Activity
Consider a change management process
that you were part of.
 How effective was it?
 What could have made it more effective?
7 steps to disaster...
How to make change fail:
1 Create a climate in which people are afraid to make mistakes
2 Practise mushroom management and only communicate via email
3 Don’t explain why change is necessary or desirable
4 Make sure staff don’t have the time, skills and resources to carry out the
change
5 Act yourself in a way that is contrary to the proposed change expected of
others
6 Introduce new change initiatives daily
7 Focus on the blame/problem rather than the solution/objective
Managing innovation effectively
Vision
 Implementation
 Reinforcement
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Communication
Different people want to know the
answers to different questions.
 What is this about?
 Why is this important?
 How can this be done?
 What are the implications for me and
others?
Discussion
Introducing a multilingual programme
Based on what we have seen and
discussed here, how might we go about
introducing a multilingual programme in
our organisation?