Influence and Vital Behaviors:
Implementing an ePortfolio Initiative
Since I began my graduate studies at Lamar University, I have been working to create, refine, and implement an innovation plan to enhance my District’s instructional strategies and help to prepare our students for a future in a globalized and digital society. The initiative I felt would be most easily executed and beneficial to the future success of our students was the adoption of an ePortfolio movement across the District.
The process of building my innovation plan began with crafting a proposal, conducting research, compiling my results through a literature review, creating an implementation outline, and establishing a “why” or rationale for this particular strategy. After completing all the legwork to gain a true understanding of what this new digital shift might entail, I am ready to move into what may be one of the most challenging aspects of leading organizational change: influencing all stakeholders to both support and embrace a journey into new territory.
Fortunately, my professor introduced me to a new piece of literature to help me in my endeavors, Influencer by Joseph Grenny (2013). This life-changing read discusses the importance of connecting with people emotionally before proposing change, and once relationships and trust have been established, vital or critical behaviors must be outlined. After organizational patterns are identified and analyzed, “six sources of influence” must be drafted to help move the initiative into its implementation stage (Grenny, 2013). The Influencer flowchart is included below to provide readers a visual understanding of the process (Grenny, 2013).
After completing my book study over the last three weeks, I decided to apply the above model to the innovation plan for my District. I connected both vital behaviors and the "six sources" (Grenny, 2013) to the ePortfolio push, and the results I arrived at can be observed as follows:
Even though the above visuals provide promise and inspiration, please understand this is a work in process. As with any educational advancements, there must a process of monitoring feedback from District stakeholders and adjusting procedures to best meet the needs of all those who are involved in the implementation. There will never be a one-size-fits-all solution to anything as people are continually changing and evolving.
References:
Grenny, J. (2013). Influencer: The new science of leading change. New York: McGraw-Hill.