Given the increasing pressures and new challenges facing VET providers, innovative ways are needed to improve organisational performance. One way is described below, by a leader of an award-winning RTO, Neil Black, Director of TAFE NSW North Coast Institute, in an interview I conducted recently:

What strategies have helped the Institute become high-performing?

We have had a very deliberate strategy that goes back a number of years, to position ourselves to be the high performing organisation we are today. One of the things we did in 2000 was to develop a strategic plan, using a scenario planning process that identified what were the key environmental factors impacting on the institute. Of course those factors included the national training system and the changing expectations of industry and business, the impact of changing technology and the ageing workforce. From that we devised our strategic goals and our priorities.

Then we asked: Are we equipped to achieve those goals? So we undertook a process – the capability platform – which is based on the concept that there are key elements to an organisation’s capability platform, that is the culture, the structure and systems, the experience and competencies of the workforce, but most of all the organisation’s people. When we looked at the capability platform we identified that we had tremendously strong people: people who were highly committed, creative, experienced, technically strong and well qualified. But the other areas of the capability platform were potentially inhibiting us from being a high-performing organisation.

How did you address these gaps?

We put in place an organisational improvement strategy that was based around changing our structure and putting the right people in the right positions, particularly middle-management, because no organisation can be high-performing if it doesn’t have the right people in the right positions. Then we determined what sort of culture we wanted and worked on developing that culture, but that is an ongoing process, which has to be supported by resources. We reviewed our systems as well, and through working with the staff we looked at whether there were inhibitors to them doing their jobs more effectively and efficiently: whether there were bureaucratic barriers or too much paperwork. We put a lot of effort into building our online capability. We doubled our staff development funding and put in place a $250,000 research and development fund, to support the sorts of changes we needed to make.

What are the critical success factors for organisational improvement?

There must be a context for organisational development and improvement and that context is your strategic plan. But the strategic plan must be developed and owned by your staff and your stakeholders, otherwise that context is not very effective. Organisational improvement needs to be strategic, in that you need to determine what you want to change and improve and then the various initiatives need to support where everyone knows you are going. I’ve seen examples of where people put in place ad hoc strategies, like projects for morale boosting, without any framework for it. Another thing I have learnt is the value of involving the key unions upfront and throughout the change process. I’ve found that if the unions are part of the process and know where you want to go, they will provide excellent support. You must also be prepared to resource the change process, so that staff  know you are serious about change.

Is there one key to high-performance?

The key to a high-performing organisation is its people and its culture. There is absolutely no question of that, in my opinion. Getting the right people on the bus and in the right seats on the bus has to be the first organisational improvement strategy because you can waste a lot of time and effort if you have a lot of blockages in your organisation. At middle level management level, blockages can be totally destructive. So you’ve got to have all the people, particularly your leadership and development people, all committed and enthusiastic about this sort of culture you’re trying to cultivate and the direction you’re trying to head in. Then it’s a lot easier to support organisational improvement because everyone’s rowing in the same direction.

The full interview is provided in my ‘Inside VET’ column in Campus Review, October 2005.

There is a multitude of challenges for VET practitioners implementing an industry-led, high-quality, national training system. Two fundamental challenges are changing providers’ structures and cultures so they are client-driven not supply-driven, and assisting enterprises to identify the way accredited training can be customised to assist with the achievement of business outcomes.

One way to meet such challenges is for VET practitioners to develop expertise as change agents. The term change agent is taken to mean anyone involved in initiating or implementing change.

However, research shows that the change agent role in VET is not to be under-estimated, as change agents need the ability to adopt a range of roles which could include being opportunists, diplomats and networkers. To effectively assist the change process, change agents also need an advanced range of skills and knowledge, as well as courage and sensitivity.

Over the last three years, thirty one VET practitioners have undertaken a sub-program on change agency within Reframing the Future, the national staff development and change management program now funded through DEST. The sub-program is called National Training Change Agents and annually involves around ten practitioners, drawn from across Australia. I am the sub-program’s mentor.

The sub-program supports internal change agents who are staff members of VET organisations, who operate as change facilitators within their own organisations. The sub-program also caters for VET practitioners operating as external change agents, working outside of their own organisations, for instance brokering training arrangements between industry groups and providers.

Challenges for VET change agents include:

• The volume of changes occurring in VET
• The ambitious, multiple goals of providers
• The differing nature of each separate industry
• The complex interdependencies of providers and industry
• The differing perceptions of VET stakeholders about what needs to change
• The varieties of resistance to change within VET
• The raised expectations of VET change agent.

I explore these ideas further in my column ‘Inside VET’ in Campus Review, 12 October 2005.

How innovation can be fostered in large training providers is the focus of my ‘Inside VET’ column in Campus Review, 14 Sept 2005.

For the column, I interviewed Box Hill Institute of TAFE CEO John Maddock, following his Institute being awarded, for the second year in a row, Victoria’s Large Training Provider of the Year.  Some excerpts from the interview follow.

How does innovation start in your institute?

Innovation springs from the way we manage the whole of the institute and the way people within the institute operate and behave. The innovations are supported at all levels, but the ideas come from our people and they get developed up and it’s really a team effort. We go out of our way within the institute to set up mechanisms for individuals and teams to get the opportunity to put forward new ideas and then we look for ways to provide support. We strive to create a climate where all staff are leaders.

How do you involve your clients in innovation?

The staff become extremely passionate not only about the innovation but about the client group they’re doing the innovation for, and that passion then starts to flow over to our client group who also start to become passionate. And then what happens is that the relationship between the individual staff members in the institute and our client base or the enterprise or the community or the student becomes more powerful: it creates an energy that is very hard to describe, and that is what we are trying to achieve all of the time.

Do you have a planned, systematic approach to innovation?

Our planned approach to innovation is deliberate. We believe that if we can set the plans in place at the front-end and make sure we have a balance between the management of the operation and the strategic directions we want to take, then what you’ve got is a platform for reacting when you need to react, for being opportunistic when you need to be opportunistic. But if you don’t have a good plan in place at the front end, what happens is that people continue to do the same things all of the time and they’re not constantly challenging what they’re doing.

How do you sustain innovations?

We work very hard to sustain innovations, and so do our partners. We look at what we need to do to reinvest. We don’t just look at a new approach and say it will be alright, for all time: the whole philosophy of continuous improvement is something we really believe in and we work hard at trying to do it. I talk to my staff all the time about the one-percenters, how important the one-percenters are and how each and every one of us has control over those one-percenters. It is that sort of philosophy and the hard work that staff do in identifying and then making it happen, in doing those one-percenters, that keeps the improvements going and sustains the innovation. 

From this interview and from my other research, I have found that innovation has the following benefits:

• Re-invigorates the organisation
• Refreshes its products and services
• Improves its customer responsiveness
• Delivers its customers superior value
• Demonstrates its staff capabilities
• Increases its uniqueness
• Underpins its sustainable competitive advantage.

One of the perennial quests for TAFE institutes in Australia is to find an organisational design that suits a demand-driven sector. A compelling new institute structure has just emerged which demands examination across the sector, because it challenges some long-cherished organisational designs in TAFE.

The new organisational model is all the more compelling because it is being implemented by the Large Training Provider of the Year in both 2000 and 2002, the Institute of TAFE Tasmania. This best-of-breed organisation also commands attention because, as CEO John Smyth points out, “In the NCVER report released last month, Tasmania was the only state where VET enrolments didn’t go down last year.”

While most TAFE institutes have many goals, TAFE Tasmania has just two, and the new structure is built around them. The two goals are, firstly, the provision of training that is driven by Tasmanian enterprises, and secondly, the provision of career courses aligned to Tasmania’s economic and skills development needs. John Smyth explains: “Rather than the traditional structure of a learning manager, a corporate manager, a business manager, we have two general managers, focused on each of the institute goals.” 

Features of the restructure include:

• customers, clients and the board are at the top of the organisational chart
• staff teams are in the middle of the organisational chart
• the CEO and support units are at the bottom of the chart
• some traditional layers of management are removed
• the 500 full-time teaching staff are organised into 80 enterprise-focused teams
• industry training is underpinned by research into each enterprise
• teams are empowered to negotiate directly with enterprises
• the 80 staff teams are supported by an Enterprise Development Team.

To achieve the institute’s goal of meeting the needs of enterprises, the institute abandoned the traditional faculties, department or school structures and organised the staff into numerous small teams, all with an enterprise focus. Each of the teams is a response to an identified industry need. This use of enterprise-based teams is “a thorough approach to repositioning the organisation to think about clients first,” says General Manager, Enterprise Development, Jules Carroll.

Carroll finds that identifying enterprise needs is challenging: “It takes some guts to look at the demographics, at the environment you’re servicing, and to really ask the hard questions about what’s important here, what’s going to make a difference, what’s going to support growth in this environment and how can we contribute to that.”

From this research it is apparent that attitudes within TAFE Tasmania are as follows:

• An agile enterprise provides learning opportunities that satisfy customer needs
• Foster a strong industry focus
• Make every customer contact matter
• Deliver a great learning experience
• Build a resilient business.

Compare these with the historical TAFE attitudes:

• A quality institution helps students to meet the teacher’s expectations
• Foster the institution’s reputation
• Ensure students appreciate our service
• Deliver a great teaching performance
• Build on our proud heritage.

I extended this story in my 'Inside VET' column in Campus Review, 17 August 2005.

Each year, over a quarter of a million secondary school students leave school before completing Year 12. Many do not re-engage with education and find themselves unemployed for the long-term. These early school leavers become disengaged for different reasons, including homelessness, substance abuse, financial hardship, low self-esteem, mental health problems or lack of basic language and literacy skills.

The scale of the problem is reflected in the following statistics:

• the number of teenagers not in full-time study or full-time work in Australia is higher than at any time in the last six years (Dusseldorp Skills Forum Key Indicators 2004)
• two-thirds of the 270,000 young people annually who leave school early will become unemployed, or employed only in casual jobs (BCA 2003)
• over 50,000 young people who leave school early each year will never gain further qualifications (BCA 2003)
• the cost to Australia of young people leaving school early is estimated at $2.6 billion each year (BCA 2003).

To identify the support required by disengaged youth to enter training or employment, the South Australian (SA) Department of Further Education, Employment, Science and Technology (DFEEST) undertook extensive research last year. Guided by similar initiatives by TAFE in NSW and Victoria, the research also investigated what related partnerships are required with the community and business.

The research focused on an initiative called  SA Works ‘Learn to Earn’, which offered youth the opportunity to participate in up to 1,000 hours of full time training in a trade-based area experiencing a skill shortage. The program went beyond trade skills, says DFEEST’s Project Manager Annie Fergusson: “The program set out to give participants employability skills as well as life skills.”

In the 2004 intake of 107 young people in the ‘Learn to Earn’ program, 74% were early school leavers. All were drawn from disadvantaged groups: 7% were disabled; 7% were from a non-English speaking background; 15% were Indigenous; 22% were long-term unemployed; and 35% were from rural areas. The program was conducted by TAFE SA at Whyalla, Gawler, Elizabeth, Port Adelaide, O’Halloran Hill and Tea Tree Gully.

A feature of the program was ‘project-based learning’, enabling participants to learn as the same time as contributing to projects that benefited the local community. For example, the O’Halloran Hill project pursued an environmental theme and involved the restoration of a trailer for a local wildlife protection organisation.

Fergusson’s research indicates that multiple strategies are required to address the needs of disengaged youth, such as the facilitation of project-based learning, the creation of “youth friendly” learning environments, the use of individual case management techniques and the development of durable partnerships. As training involves more than just mechanical skill building – in drawing on both values and emotions – Fergusson finds that one of the challenges for TAFE SA staff delivering programs for disengaged youth is “compassion fatigue”.

Going beyond the economic benefits and underlining the essential humaneness of assisting disengaged youth, SA Premier Mike Rann believes that “the best thing” about the program is that it gives young people “new skills, self-confidence and the ability to work constructively with other people.”

I explore this story further in my 'Inside VET' column in Campus Review, Wed 15 June 2005.

Simple ideas are often underpinned by sophisticated principles. This statement applies to a staff development initiative that commenced in 2004 at one of Australia’s high profile RTOs, TAFE NSW Northern Sydney Institute (NSI). The simple idea was to design, promote and conduct professional conversations among teaching staff.

Margaret Dix, the Institute’s R/Manager, Staff Learning and Development, explains the strategic need which led to the series of conversations: “Our Head Teachers expressed the opinion that there was a need for a greater emphasis on quality teaching and learning. Teacher’s practices needed to change and they particularly needed to embrace student-centred learning. But teachers were so busy actually doing their jobs there wasn’t time for learning how to do it better.”

Dix was also aware that teachers wanted to change, but lacked the time: “Practitioners have continually lamented that the quantity of planning and doing means that there is little time for them to check and act. There is little time to complete Kolb's experiential learning cycle by being what Schon calls a reflective practitioner,” she explains.

Having identified the willingness for change, Dix set out to find a strategy that would “allow teachers the time and space to talk to each other and to share their stories and practice across the Institute.”

With change agency funding from Reframing the Future and support from her Unit, Dix invented and implemented a strategy she called a “conversation space”, where members of the Unit regularly facilitate structured professional conversations at lunch time, around the Institute’s campuses. “The sparks that we use to encourage the conversation focus the conversation around topics that are current and sometimes challenging for VET delivery and assessment,” she says.

The conversations range over subjects such as holistic assessment, key competencies, the competitive VET market, funding, new qualifications and adult learning theory. 

There are immediate benefits, says Dix:  “Teachers feel energized. A conversation space introduces teachers to their peers and creates a network for sharing. It is reflective. It is based on goodwill. It enables teachers to review their practice about what they are doing and what they might do.”

Research and NSI’s experience shows that structured, professional conversations enable practitioners to:

• collaborate, reflect and clarify
• analyse challenges and identify solutions
• share successes and examine lessons learnt
• create the conditions for change and transform practice.

I extend this story in my Inside VET column in Campus Review, 16 February 2005.

One industry clearly affected by global change is the broadcast industry and organisations such as the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) are experiencing massive challenges. Jenny Ferber, Head of ABC Learning, says areas that are expected to experience the most change include media technologies, government requirements and audience expectations. “In response, we are quickly embracing digital technology and learning to use new tools to produce content for the new audiences which are coming through digital TV, the broadband internet and other platforms,” says Ferber.

Ferber believes that, in order to ensure its future, the ABC “needs to develop the capability to continually reinvent itself as a leading media presence.” This capability, she says, includes building a flexible and talented workforce, keeping up to date with new technologies and acquiring the skills to develop, deliver and broadcast leading-edge programs.

The ABC is a RTO, able to deliver fourteen different VET qualifications. Ferber considers that there is potential for an ongoing role for VET qualifications within the ABC, as the regularly needs new staff, many of whom arrive with university degrees, to develop technical skills. “We need the skills of knowledge workers combined with high-end technical skills. For instance, we might employ as a presenter someone with a PhD in agriculture, but the person needs to know how to conduct an on-air interview and operate  a control panel,” she says.

Ferber considers that the ABC and the VET system face similar challenges: “This need to identify competencies that capture soft skills, knowledge and attitudes and the need to allow for rapid change and flexibility are also the challenges that will be faced throughout the VET system over the next few years,” she says.

This story has many dimensions: for example, accommodating a national qualifications system within a progressive enterprise; and managing learning and workforce development within an enterprise affected by mammoth change. I expand on this story in my column in Campus Review, published 26 January 2005.

An issue currently on the VET stage is how best to support learners in acquiring competencies in language, literacy and numeracy (LLN). The issue is under the spotlight primarily because the conventional method of delivering LLN programs – using specialist LLN staff detached from mainstream training packages – does not suit either workplace learners or enterprises.

While researchers, policy makers and training package developers acknowledge that LLN need to be integrated with the delivery of each specific vocational program, such as engineering or tourism, leaders are needed to translate these good intentions into actions. One VET professional providing leadership in the integration of LLN programs with training packages is South Australian Technical and Further Education South Australia (TAFE SA) educational manager Wing-Yin Chan Lee, based at Adelaide City Campus.

Chan Lee promotes the concept of “shared responsibility” for LLN between enterprises and the deliverers of LLN. Chan Lee also promotes the concept of the “integrated delivery and assessment” of LLN in VET. Providing an integrated approach where LLN specialists collaborate with the deliverers of other vocational programs is also a challenge because it involves both parties changing their pedagogy.

Chan Lee provides the following advice on how to integrate LLN with vocational training:

• trainers and assessors as well as LLN specialists need to understand how LLN interconnect with vocational skills
• trainers and assessors as well as LLN specialists need to develop teaching and learning strategies that are appropriate for each learner and setting
• systemic resources and policies are needed to support collaboration between LLN specialists and vocational trainers.

I extended this portrait of a change agent at work, in my column in Campus Review, Wednesday 2 February.

Training organisations in Australian vocational education and training (VET) are under increasing pressure to become more agile and customer-focused, to meet the growing demands of industry.

A conventional response to such pressure on staff in RTOs is to provide professional development through one-off workshops. But the use of workshops as the primary strategy for professional development is no longer acceptable to some RTOs, especially in those RTOs where staff are distributed over very large distances.

As a result, coaching, rather than frequent workshops, is now a standard methodology for professional development within one TAFE Institute I profile in a coming article in Campus Review (edition 12 Jan 2004).

Over the last six months this Institute provided professional development for sixty of its line managers in the skills of coaching. For this Institute, coaching includes the following elements:

• involves the development of a trusting, structured relationship
• aims to facilitate learning and to foster and support change
• includes negotiated expectations and agreements
• respects the client’s self-determination
• requires coaches to have or to acquire specific competencies.

To ensure coaching is placed on a sound footing within the Institute, staff developed a range of documented tools including an explanation of coaching, a coaching agreement, a checklist of core competencies for coaches and a self-evaluation questionnaire for those to be coached.

Today I spent four hours in conversation with a good friend visiting from the UK who is the head of staff development in a very large international organisation. I had the pleasure of recently undertaking an assignment for his organisation in London, so I was keen for an update.

What struck me about this conversation was its similarity with a conversation I had yesterday with a Melbourne-based Australian in a similar role to him – a conversation which I summarized in my last weblog. This similarity indicates a number of things:

• that industries are becoming increasingly similar around the globe, so challenges in London are challenges in Melbourne or Sydney;
• that Australia is very much part of a global economy, so our work skills and quality levels and work outputs need to be world class, or we will fall behind. 

The conversation was invaluable for checking with him on the pressures on his organisation and the implications for learning and development. He indicated that the pressures on the creative industry in which he works are multiple and include the following:

• increasing competition from other suppliers
• increasing expectations from the government and other stakeholders
• increasing demand from customers
• increasing options made possible by new technologies.

A number of other points he made included:

• if his organisation stops innovating it will quickly become redundant
• creating new knowledge is critical to innovation
• to be innovative, organisations need to be driven by values and vision
• skill development is not a luxury in his organisation and in his creative industry: it is a necessity
• leadership continues to be a critical issue in his organisation, for without it the shared corporate vision will flounder
• change management that has 'heart' is essential in a vibrant organisation
• creating a coaching culture amongst managers is one of the most powerful ways of exchanging knowledge down the line.

He also commented on the value and success of coaching within his organisation – a major organisational focus over the last year. While he values mentoring and provides mentoring for a number of mentees, he sees a difference between coaching and mentoring:

“Coaching is non-directive, asking the person I am coaching to describe his or her goals, realities, options and likely responses and therefore owning the goals and targets by allowing the coachees to work it out for themselves. Mentoring is more about using your experience and knowledge as a mentor to help the mentee see the way forward and giving him or her the confidence to make different decisions or the breadth to see a more rounded context for work.“

The overall message from this conversation is that Australian organisations need to continue to improve both their skill levels and creativity, to ensure a viable future. Indeed skill development and creativity should go together: one is an indispensable adjunct to the other.

Indigenous organisations sometimes need to overcome challenges in order to obtain optimum benefits from the national VET system. The challenges often stem from the need to reconcile their organisations’ customary ways of operating with the compliance requirements of a nationally-regulated training system.

Two different but positive examples of Indigenous organisations developing new approaches to training that fit with the national system are provided by Goolarri Media Enterprises in Broome, Western Australia and the Nyangatjatjara Aboriginal Corporation, based around Uluru in the Northern Territory. Both organisations were involved in change management projects in 2004 as part of the Reframing the Future program.

Goolarri Media Enterprises has forty staff in Broome and operates a community radio station, a television station, a music recording studio and a live music and events venue. At the start of 2004, and as a newly registered training organisation (RTO), Goolarri wanted to prepare for its first quality audit for the Australian Quality Training Framework (AQTF), but without abandoning its uniquely indigenous culture.

A separate change agency project was undertaken in 2004 by Chris McAleer from Jobs Australia Ltd in Melbourne, who traveled north to work with a remote indigenous community organisation, the Nyangatjatjara Aboriginal Corporation. The Corporation has five business units, including a hospitality operation at Uluru, that generate a range of training requirements and has identified the need either to become an RTO or to partner existing RTOs.

As with the Goolarri project, McAleer focused on the need to align the requirements of the AQTF with the indigenous organisation, as the training needs to be culturally appropriate.

The development of these effective training models for indigenous organisations is the focus of my column in Campus Review, for publication on 15 December 2004. The positive stories counter the recent negative or controversial press on indigenous issues.

Assisting mature-aged workers to develop competencies is a new policy goal in many VET jurisdictions, but there are challenges in providing these workers with appropriate and timely training. Challenges arise for different reasons: the mature-aged learners may be unused to accessing structured training; enterprises may be unfamiliar with identifying the training needs of its mature-aged employees; and the VET provider may be inexperienced in customising training for this new cohort of learners.

In my column for next week’s Campus Review, I discuss a case study where a VET provider needed to accept these challenges and was also faced with demanding new targets from its State Training Authority for meeting the needs of workers over the age of forty four. The VET provider set out in 2004 to develop a model of how to partner with industry to target the training needs of mature-aged workers.

The educator within the VET provider who led the model-building was undertaking a change agency program, for which I am the mentor. To provide an initial theoretical framework she drew on her background with “community development theories and models, which are all about achieving engagement, empowerment and transformation, both at a personal and/or structural level”.

The change agent then developed a framework for managing change, based on an amalgam of existing change management theories. The framework included winning initial “buy-in” to the change process from her colleagues, establishing a sense of urgency, creating a readiness for change, forming a vision for the future, developing a strategic plan, gaining political support and generating short-term wins.

The article then describes the industry partnership which provided a short-term win. The article concludes by suggesting that all large VET providers need to develop an organisation-wide strategy for addressing the issues surrounding mature-aged workers as learners.

Today I drafted my column which will appear in Campus Review on 17 November, on the topic of continuously improving strategy. The article begins by asking how does a prestigious training organisation respond, the year after it wins VET awards for excellence? The response of TAFE NSW Sydney Institute in 2004 was to vigorously embark on a comprehensive range of strategy-making initiatives aimed at continuously improving its performance. 
 
After winning the large RTO of the Year Award in NSW and other key awards in 2003, the Institute was confronted by the need to amalgamate two very large colleges from the former TAFE NSW Southern Sydney Institute with the existing six colleges from Sydney Institute. This amalgamation enlarged the population in the Institute’s geographical area to 1.25m and greatly increased the range of local economic and community development issues. Meanwhile the Institute needed to continue to respond to the complex training needs of this global city in fields such as business, finance, insurance, transport, warehousing, logistics and tourism.

The article describes the way the senior managers at the Institute defined the strategic challenges within the organization, then planned a wide-ranging set of activities to meet those challenges. The Institute emerges from this article as the opposite of one might expect of the largest VET Institute in Australia: the Institute emerges as agile, responsive, creative, inclusive and decisive in its strategy-making.

I am have just completed a report for an Enterprise-based Registered Training Organisation (RTO) on how it might expand in order operate across a wider range of different organisations that recently merged to be part of the one enterprise.

As is so often the case, the structural functionalist issues, while complex, are easier to resolve than the cultural issues. The structural functionalist issues include who does what, when and how; who makes the decisions and how; and how will the funding be managed. Such issues are complex within this enterprise for the RTO, as the enterprise consists of many formerly independent bodies who were forcibly amalgamated. However, eventually it will be possible to develop formal agreements on the structural functionalist issues.

My research shows that the more difficult issues are cultural:

• Starting with the issue of trust, can one party be trusted to provide the coordination of training across the multi-site network?
• Another cultural issue is the resistance of local staff to any changes in the way training is provided, based on a fear that new approaches to training will not suit them.
• A further cultural issue is that of shared understandings: different groups of staff have shown that they have different understandings and expectations of what an internal RTO can provide.

Because cultural issues abound, change management skills are essential for those managing the repositioning of the RTO.

One of the key challenges for contemporary training organisations is to rid themselves of a demand-driven mentality and replace it with a supply-driven mindset. An outstanding example of a training organisation swapping the old mindset for the new, client-focused approach is provided by Drysdale Institute in Tasmania, an Institute specialising in tourism and hospitality training.

Drysdale is the focus of my latest column in the Campus Review, due for publication on 20 October. The story told in the column is of the tourism industry delivering a report to the training providers of Tasmania earlier this year, informing them that training was inadequate.

Among the key findings and recommendations were that:

• The shortage of trained chefs is pressing in regional areas and was being exacerbated by a leakage out of the industry of experienced cooks;
• There is a need for managers with business, leadership and human resource skills;
• Food and beverage attendants with sufficient skills levels and genuine career orientation are in short supply;
• Staff with gaming license and TAB and Keno skills are in short supply;
• There is strong demand for tour guides with interpretative skills in the eco-tourism sector;
• Across-the-board lack of staff with customer service skills and a service culture despite having required practical skills and formal qualifications;
• Concerns that any trained staff are not being made aware of the demands of the industry by training providers, leading to high attrition rates when they face the reality of the workplace;
• The industry may have to focus on training older workers to meet demand as school leavers, students and traditional part-time workers are attracted to other industries.
• Training in some areas such as cooking needs to be more “hands on”;
• Facilitate access of regional operators to training through regional learning centres

The above list is a very clear example of the demand-side view of life. The industry gave Drysdale six months to respond to its recommendations. Drysdale met all the recommendations in just under six months, and last week signed a MOU with the industry association, the Tourism Council of Tasmania.

The focus of my column is on the change management strategies used by Drysdale to change its structure and culture, in response to industry demand. The story shows that change management skills are vital to the sustainability of training organisations.

Yesterday, Tuesday 14 September 2004, I spent the day co-facilitating a group of ten change agents from training provider organisations around the country.

Change agency is a very complex undertaking, requiring the individual to have a clear understanding of his or her values, motivations, views of other people and expectations about how much change is possible over any period of time. The change agents I worked with yesterday were impressive in understanding their values, motivations, perceptions and expectations. This provides them with a stable foundation to undertake change agency.

Possibly the main learning that has occurred within this group of change agents is the acceptance that change is very hard to achieve. Change agents often need to temper their initial enthusiasm, modify their hopes and accept that many people resist change – for multiple reasons. Change agents need to put aside the pop psychology books on change agency which suggest that anyone can learn the tricks of change management and that if the change agent stays positive anything is possible. Life is more complex than that, particularly life in large organisations. The new documentary on at movie theatres, The Corporation, is a chilling reminder of the potential 'insanity' of many organisations.

Coupled with the acceptance that change is difficulty to achieve, the change agents I am mentoring have come to value the small wins, the little victories, the occasional conversions of previous sceptics and the incremental steps that will eventually add up to a substantial change.

But the main thing that these change agents have come to value is that they have attributes and strengths inside themselves that are more important to draw on as a change agent than the recipes or formulas for change agency that are available in text books. While it is very important to know about different theories of change – particularly so that the change agent can critique the shallow or unrealistic theories – it is more important that change agents know much about themselves, including:

• their capabilities
• their current limitations
• their preconceptions about people
• their attitudes to organisational change
• their biases and hopes
• their fears and suspicions
• their rich previous experiences
• their accumulated breadth of knowledge
• their abilities to work with other people
• and their confidence about who can provide them with ongoing support and encouragement.

On Monday this week, 13 September 2004, I co-facilitated a workshop for managers of twenty two training organisations from around Australia. The workshop focused on two areas: strategic management and change management.

A key reflection on the workshop is that the level of sophistication is rising in training providers in Australia, in relation to the use of strategic management and change management.

Regarding strategic management, a clear sign of this sophistication is the care taken by providers to collect and analyse data in order to identify the key factors in the internal and external environments. In many cases, the groups involved in the strategic management activities have taken 2-3 months to undertake this strategic analysis.

This is a significant change in approach, in that the tendency in the past was for groups to rush forward to determine strategic directions and options.

Similarly, with the groups undertaking change management, the tendency in the past was for groups to implement solutions before the problems had been fully diagnosed. A sign of such an approach in the past was the mechanistic following of a formula from one of the change gurus – the eight steps or the five steps or the nine steps to success – without sufficient analysis of the change issues. Note that most of the change gurus are from the USA and their models are proven for US corporate sector, but not for the complex environments of Australian training providers.

It takes considerable patience to carefully diagnose the change or changes required, as the temptation is to excite people about the benefits of a wonderful future. But experience shows that any effort applied to diagnosis will pay dividends. Following the diagnosis, a range of interventions can be considered and the most appropriate ones implemented.

A sophisticated strategic manager of a training provider has skills in collecting and analyzing data, clarifying strategic directions and making strategic choices, before considering or implementing new approaches.

A sophisticated change manager of a training provider has skills in diagnosing problems, identifying possible interventions and resisting the temptation to find a breakthrough solution.

On Wednesday last week, 1 September 2004, I enjoyed a long conversation with an outstanding VET practitioner who is a participant in a structured program I am currently mentoring. The practitioner is Margaret Dix, Manager Staff Learning and Development, Northern Sydney Institute.

Margaret set out for me the concept of a ‘conversation space’ that she has implemented in her very large TAFE Institute: ‘A conversation space is an opportunity for a professional conversation, for people with a passion for teaching and learning’. The features of the practice are as follows:

• In her Institute, a conversation space is created by offering colleagues the chance to discuss for an hour or so a topical issue in teaching and learning – while staff have their coffee and sandwiches.
• These conversation spaces are convened by the members of her Staff Learning and Development Unit and are attended by small groups of around 5-10 staff.
• The participants in the conversation space are normally challenged by a controversial quotation which sparks off conversation.

The initial motivation for the creation of the conversation spaces was that ‘teaching and learning often seem to be forgotten'. So she has asked her staff to spread the practice throughout the Institute, encouraging teachers to ‘talk about being a TAFE teacher’. Interestingly, many of the practitioners disclose that ‘this is the first time they have had the chance to think and talk about what they do as teachers'.

One of her initial findings from the conversation spaces is that the contemporary TAFE teacher needs to have an ‘eclectic range of skills and knowledge’ beyond skills of instruction and knowledge of an industry. For instance, she finds that ‘teachers need to be able to offer advice to students on a range of issues including career opportunities’. She also finds that the recent reports on VET pedagogy provide a useful framework for  understanding the breadth of skills and knowledge identified in the conversation spaces.

The discussion with this outstanding VET professional reminded me of the concept of a ‘professional learning system’ proposed by Hoban (2002) which I referred to in my unpublished report to ANTA in 2003 on a national – but locally implemented – mechanism for innovation in teaching and learning in VET. Hoban (2002, pp.68-69) suggests that a theoretical framework for a professional learning system should be based on the conditions required for teacher learning, discussed below:

• A conception of teaching as an art or profession, indicating a dynamic relationship between students, other teachers, school, classroom, curriculum and context. Because of these interactions, there is always uncertainty and ambiguity in changing teaching practice.
• Reflection is important - as teachers need to become aware of why they teach the way they do and to focus on understanding the patterns of change resulting from the dynamic relationships in which they are involved.
• Teachers need a purpose for learning to foster a desire for change and so content should be negotiated.
• The time frame is long term, as changing teaching means adjusting the balance among many aspects of the existing classroom system.
• A sense of community is necessary - so that teachers trust each other to share experiences such that topics for inquiry and debate may extend over several months or longer. As a result of this progressive discourse, teachers theorize and discussions are generative so that new ideas are always evolving.
• Teachers need to experiment with their ideas in action to test what works or does not work in their classrooms.
• A variety of knowledge sources are needed as conceptual inputs to extend the experiences of the participants.
• Student feedback is needed - in response to the ideas being tried out in the classroom.

The use of ‘conversation spaces’ for professional dialogue fits will with Hoban’s framework for a professional learning system. Sometimes there are good practices in Australian VET that are world class, such as this use of conversation spaces, but receive little recognition.

A forthcoming story in my weekly column in Campus Review concerns the Australian VET trend towards the creation of what I call TAFE mega-Institutes. These Institutes have around 700-1000 staff, annual budgets of $70m or so, and population bases of around 500,000.

This formula has been applied in NSW, TAS and now SA. There are some mega-Institutes in WA and VIC, but the mega-Institute formula has not been strictly enforced in these two States. CIT in Canberra was probably the first of this type.

In my column I address a fear that these mega-Institutes will become super-sized: fat, unwell and slow-moving. Fortunately I am able to analyse one of these mega-Institutes which is two years old and is working very hard to be sleek and agile.

What is a key to avoid becoming super-sized? One key I discuss in the article is extensive and ongoing change management. But underpinning the change management is informed and enlightened leadership; a commitment to customer-responsiveness; and collaboration between the different segments of the organisation. Staying fit and remaining responsive to customers when you have a large infrastructure ain't simple.

On Wednesday this week, 18 August 2004, I conducted a workshop for managers at Brisbane North Institute of TAFE on the topic of 'The qualities, skills and knowledge needed by a VET change leader - based on research'.

Research by others and my own research tells us much about qualities of a change leader in VET. For example, Scott (1999) argues that if change agents are to apply the knowledge they have, they need some additional personal attributes:

• their stance towards change, work and the people who populate it;
• their ability to think creatively, reflectively and with focus, especially their ability to ‘read and match’
• their ability to continuously update what they know and can do, especially through their expertise in the self-management of their career-long learning (p.148).

Hayes (2002) considers that it might be possible for change agents to learn the theoretical skills of change agency, but they also need faith in their own abilities:

Some managers may have the conceptual knowledge and required skills to equip them to intervene and make a difference, but they may fail to act because they have insufficient faith in their own ability to affect outcomes (p.20).

Confidence is essential for change managers:

If they do not have any confidence in their own ability to manage the change and achieve any improvements they will not try to exercise influence (Hayes 2002, p.21).

My own research (Mitchell 2004) shows that change agents need a high level of judgment, courage and sensitivity – to effectively assist the change process. Change agents also need to be reflective and insightful while coping with resistance, apathy, exuberance or turmoil.

Finally, Buchanan & Badham (2000) believe that, to continue to grow, the change agent needs to be a reflective practitioner:

The reflective practitioner is also self-conscious, self-aware and self-critical, learning from experience – and from mistakes when necessary (p.207).

It is interesting that researchers consistently nominate the qualities of being reflective, flexible, confident, conscious, aware and self-critical.

I have prepared a paper for my session at the AUSTAFE National Conference in Queensland from 18-20 August 2004. The paper is entitled ‘Alternative approaches to change agency and change management in VET’.

In the paper I argue that there is no one best way to approach either change agency or change management.

In relation to change agency, I argue that:

• there are alternative ways to diagnose aspects of the organisation that need changing
• there are alternative ways to self-diagnose
• there are alternative process models of change – the how of change management – from Kotter to Cummings and Worley
• while there are some similar skills and knowledge needed by change agents, the mix or emphasis changes from one context to the next
• there are advantages and disadvantages of internal versus external change agents.

In relation to change management, I argue that:

• one prominent school of change management is the emergent change school, represented by Kotter (the guiding coalition)
• another prominent school is that of planned change, represented by Kurt Lewin (unfreeze, move to new level, freeze) and Cummings and Worley (5 deliberate, logical steps: create readiness; create a vision; develop political support; manage the transition; sustain momentum)
• a third school advocates a combination of the emergent and planned approach, represented by Stace and Dunphy
• each of these three schools has its detractors and supporters.

I conclude that:

• to perform effectively in different settings, change agents and change strategists need to be aware of alternative approaches to managing change
• change management initiatives in VET, including change agency, need to be grounded in the theory of change management
• consciousness empowers change managers.

For a copy of the paper, please email me on johnm@jma.com.au

I discussed in a previous posting that gaining legitimacy is a challenge for internal change agents – that is, staff operating within their own organisations as change agents. In this posting I discuss another major challenge for internal change agents – remaining objective.

Paton and McCalman (2000, p.189), drawing on Margulies and Raia (1978), identify this second potential limitation of the internal change agent, the challenge of remaining objective – that is, remaining objective in relation to a problem existing within the change agent’s own organisation. Factors that might hinder the change agent’s objectivity include:

• being too close to what the problem is
• being part of the problem
• being willing to confront issues when promotion and pay issues are forthcoming
• being part of the power system being examined
• being aware of the needs and demands of superiors (p.189).

Interestingly, Paton and McCalman (2003) see as a solution to the problem of objectivity that the internal change agent ‘must not and cannot become involved in change within his/her area’. (p.189). The custom in VET is to do the opposite: to deliberately engage colleagues to work within their own areas as change agents.

The position taken by Paton and McCalman (2003) can be taken as a cautionary note that the use of internal change agents within their own areas of VET organisations is, at the least, challenging, requiring high-order skills.

I discuss these ideas further in chapter 5 of my report The Skilling of VET Change Agents, available from http://reframingthefuture.net (click on Publications, then click on Sub-program 2).

Next week I am conducting a workshop on ‘Alternative approaches to change agency and change management  in VET’ at the AUSTAFE National Conference on the Sunshine Coast.

The workshop will address some crucial questions for VET managers and staff who want to improve their organisation’s responsiveness. The questions are:

• How do we bring about change in the organisation?
• How do we ensure these changes are supported by staff and are sustainable?

This workshop will provide participants with a range of theoretical frameworks which can underpin change management and change agency in the VET context, using the following broad definitions:

• Change management is the process of modifying or transforming organisations in order to maintain or improve their effectiveness (Hayes, J., 2002, The theory and practice of change management, Palgrave, Wiltshire, p.22).
• Change agency refers to the ability of a manager or other agent of change to affect the way an organisation responds to change (Hayes 2002, p.17).

The workshop will draw on research I have conducted over the last few years for Reframing the Future, the national professional development and change management initiative funded through the Australian National Training Authority to assist in building the capacity of the VET sector to implement the national training system.

Opportunities to consider how Reframing the Future project teams and individuals have put that theory into practice will be provided through interactive discussion and activities.

Participants will be encouraged to review the reports I have produced by Reframing the Future on these topics and which are available from the website: http://reframingthefuture.net (click on ‘Publications’ then ‘Sub-program 2’). See particularly The Never-ending Quest and The Skilling of VET Change Agents.

Change agents operating within their own organisation – what we call ‘internal’ change agents – often struggle to win legitimacy.

Paton and McCalman (2003) note that winning credibility is a challenge right from the start of a change management activity:

In terms of entry into a change management process as a facilitator, the internal change agent has to convince management and employees within a particular part of the organisation of their expertise in this area (p.189).

Buchanan and Badham (2000) also note:

This is a game of credentials, in which reputations established through time are important assets. The credibility of the players is crucial: will individuals keep to their goals and agendas and promises? (p.206)

Paton and McCalman believe that the internal change agent is constrained by his or her involvement and participation in the organisation and by his or her specified role which others may seek to exploit to their advantage (p.189).

The internal change agent may also be driven by the ‘intrinsic or extrinsic rewards associated with a successful change project’ (p.192).

Paton and McCalman acknowledge that this might also apply to the external consultant who is paid by someone within the organisation to operate as a change agent. These ‘external change agents’ may slant the approach to fit with the views of the person paying him or her.

My research shows that performing as a change agent – whether as an internal or an external change agent – is a complex undertaking requiring sophisticated skills, appropriate attitudes and extensive knowledge.

I discuss these issues further in Chapters 1 and 5 of my 2004 ANTA report The Skilling of VET Change Agents available from http://reframingthefuture.net (click on Publications then on Sub-program 2).

In a mentoring capacity, I had a detailed conversation with a VET professional earlier this week around the topic of what is strategy in the minds of her colleagues. I would like to set out two alternative definitions of strategy and then return to this conversation.

Browne et al (1999) suggest that strategy is a general view of your business, involving a planned and systematic consideration of how to remain in business:

A strategy is a general view of what sort of business the enterprise is in or should be in, and entails some planned and systematic consideration of how to remain or become successful in that business, addressing factors internal to the organisation, such as its structure and people, and external factors, such as its customers and competitors (p.407).

However, Browne et al (1999) also provide an alternative definition:

An alternative view of strategy is that it is a story, or narrative, which attempts to ‘write’ or account for a whole series of disconnected and emergent elements as they were a unified whole – but more than one such story is possible. These stories then act as guides to action (p.407).

In the extended conversation I had with the VET professional earlier this week, she expressed the view that for a few very senior managers within the organisation, strategy was a planned and systematic framework consisting of goals and action plans. However, she believed that, in the minds of most of the people in her organisation, strategy was a story, their story: each person had a story or narrative about the organisation and how it got to where it is and what it is and what are its capabilities.

It is very important to understand what strategy means for one's colleagues, as it will influence many things, such as the way change is planned and the way new strategies are formulated and the way staff development is constructed. For example, if most people in an organisation think about strategy as if it is a narrative, senior managers would be wise to acknowledge this and attempt to connect with these narratives, not simply impose a clinical and remote set of goals on their colleagues.

On the other hand, I am sympathetic to senior managers who are under pressure from Boards or Councils and/or from central bureaucracies, to produce neat and orderly strategic plans of where the organisation is heading. A compromise I often suggest to senior managers is that they collaboratively develop strategic plans that take into account the fact that many people in their organisation have their own narratives. This is harder than it sounds, as it requires some deft negotiating and some creative wording, but to ignore multiple staff (or stakeholder) narratives is to delude oneself that everyone is sharing the one narrative.

There are numerous models available for explaining how innovations are adopted, but one of the models that grabbed attention at the start of the 1990s was promoted by Geoffrey Moore. You may remember parts of it, such as the terminology he popularised - 'early adopters' and 'laggards'.

Moore first set out his model about ‘the technology adoption life cycle’ in Crossing the Chasm in the early 1990s when he suggested that different people adopt a technology or innovation in the following sequence:

• innovators (technology enthusiasts) adopt the innovation first
• then early adopters (visionaries)
• then the early majority (pragmatists)
• then the late majority (conservatives)
• then the laggards (skeptics).

The ‘chasm’ that he refers to in the title of his first book is the gap – or period in time – between the adoption of technology by the early adopters and the early majority. Mostly Moore was referring to different market segments, not people in your organization.

In his second book, Inside the Tornado (1995), Moore saw a time-split in market acceptance of a technology, as follows:

• in a first stage, the new technology gains acceptance among early majority (pragmatists) in one or more niche market
• in a later stage, the technology has passed the test of usefulness and is now perceived as necessary and standard for many applications.

Guess who are Moore’s major reference sites? Oracle, IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Sun, PeopleSoft etc. Starting to worry that Moore’s ‘technology adoption life cycle’ has little to do with either your organization or your customers?

In the most recent edition of Harvard Business Review (July-August 2004), Moore has extended his earlier theories in an article entitled ‘Darwin and the Demon: Innovating within established enterprises’. The article suggests that 'innovation comes in many forms – products, processes, marketing, business models, and more. Which kind of innovaton should you be pursuing? It depends on where you are in your product category’s life cycle'. Moore now tacks on to the ‘technology adoption life cycle’ a ‘market development life cycle’ and advocates that companies ride the market life cycle. Companies need to determine where they are along a time sequence as follows:

• Disruptive innovation
• Application innovation
• Product innovation
• Process innovation
• Experiential innovation
• Marketing innovation
• Business model innovation
• Structural innovation.

From the brief description I have given, does this expanded model appeal to you? On the one hand, there is probably some value in aspects of his expanded model, in that products such as Microsoft Office go through stages in the market, so different types of innovation are required at each different stage. On the other hand, most of us work for or with companies that do not sell Microsoft Office or Lotus Notes or Apple Macs, so the value of the model starts to decline.

In my experience, Moore’s models appeal to the need in us for answers and solutions. These models can make us feel more in control during the chaos that often accompanies innovation. While the models offer fragments of value that may be useful in our situations, overall the models distract us from confronting the awkward reality that markets and individual people vary in their responses to new technologies. Sorry to disappoint. Or perhaps you have already bought the dream and I can’t dissuade you.

If I was to suggest that change agents are inevitably involved in organisational politics, some senior managers might be horrified. Surely there are no politics in our organisation! Read on.

Last night I received the following email from a professional I am currently mentoring in a change agency program. He has given me permission to reproduce this section of his email, to illustrate the political judgment he needs to exercise in his work:

Progress to date has exceeded my expectations. The change model I documented has remained sound, but the way I've had to work it has required the maximum in flexibility with some stages not fully completed before I've moved on to the next. Tomorrow will be a challenge in precisely the way I thought - the tension between facilitating and directing. The CEO is keen for me to undertake some negotiations with other key stakeholders on his behalf (a desire shared by others involved). I've resisted thus far as I know this will require me to make some agreements on behalf of the organisation. I have a plan to avoid this while not totally walking away from it, however the likely issues are so technical in nature that my superior understanding of VET will probably force my close involvement at the very least.

The above email is an excellent description of a change agent balancing conflicting tensions; managing the client and the senior stakeholders; and jockeying with the client as to when he will become involved in internal negotiations within the client’s organisation. This level of professional reflection and judgment and sensitivity, combined with a knowledge of organisational politics in VET, is a fine basis for a change agent.

Buchanan and Badham (2000) provide a strong argument that change agency is inevitably involved in the politics that are a normal part of organisational life. They promote the concept that the change agent is a ‘political entrepreneur’ as this term rightly emphasises the following:

the risk-taking and creative dimensions of the role of the change agent, and also the personal commitment, extending on occasion to passion, toward the change agenda (p.5).

Burnes (2000) agrees that managers and change agents have the legitimate right to introduce changes, ‘but to do so they must use political skills in a pragmatic way to build support and overcome or avoid resistance’ (p.300). While Burnes advocates avoiding resistance, Buchanan and Badham (2000) suggest that the change agent who strives to be politically neutral or ‘squeaky clean’ will be ineffective:

The change agent who is not well equipped, or not willing, to deal with political issues and power plays is thus likely to be outmanoeuvred – and will probably fail. This argument is based on the presumption that organisational politics are pervasive, and cannot be ‘wished away’ or ‘managed away’ (p.5).

Buchanan and Badham (2000) suggest that because change generally stimulates both support and resistance, it is naïve to deny the political dimensions of change:

The ‘squeaky clean’ approach which ignores, avoids or otherwise denies the political realities of organisational life could be viewed as unskilled, incompetent, unprofessional and unethical (p.5).

Read more about the political nature of change agency in Chapter 1 of my recent report The Skilling of VET Change Agents (ANTA, 2003) available at http://reframingthefuture.net (click on ‘Publications’ and then click on ‘sub-program 2’).

I find it takes professionals whom I mentor about two-four months to become aware of the range of skills and knowledge they need to become effective change agents. To their surprise, they also find out that being a change agent requires them to perform multiple roles.

Currently I am mentoring ten change agents who have completed two months of a six month program in change agency. The participants are becoming increasingly aware of the raft of skills and knowledge they need to perform the various roles of a change agent.

Let’s look at what some theorists say about the traits and skills that they require.

Kanter (1989) suggests that change agents or 'change masters' need to become business athletes, with the following traits:

Able to work independently without the power and sanction of the management hierarchy
An effective collaborator, able to compete in ways that enhance rather than destroy cooperation
Able to develop high trust relations, with high ethical standards
Possessing self-confidence tempered with humility
Respectful of the process of change as well as the substance
Able to work across business functions and units – ‘multi-faceted and multi-dextrous’
Willing to take rewards on results and gain satisfaction from success (in Paton and McCalman 2000 p.51).

Buchanan and Badham (2000) find that the behaviour repertoire of the 'change driver' is as follows:

A combination of change and project management skills, interpersonal skills in negotiating, persuading and influencing, and political skills, combined possibly with knowledge of the substance of the change itself (p.24).

Buchanan and Badham (2000) also find that during a change project, the agent will need to change roles:

The ability of the change driver readily to switch roles will depend largely on the substance and goals of the change initiative in hand, the formal position, power base and personal attributes of the change driver, and the positions adopted by other players in the game at any one time (p.183).

In summary, the literature suggests that change agents need many skills and a deep knowledge of organisations, people and change. One key skill is the ability to perform many roles.

These findings in the literature fit with my own research. Read more about this in Chapter 3 of my report on The Skilling of the VET Change Agents (ANTA, 2003)available at http://reframingthefuture.net (click on ‘Publications’ and then on ‘Sub-program 2’).

From my work around Australia, I know that Harvard Business School's John Kotter is among the most popular change theorists. However, informed organisations modify Kotter's change management model to suit specific contexts.

A proponent of emergent change, John Kotter is the author of books such as Leading Change (1996) and John Kotter on What Leaders Really Do (1999). Kotter advocates eight steps in the change process, from establishing a sense of urgency, to creating a guiding coalition and more. Kotter considers the eight stages to be a process and not a checklist and that most major change efforts comprise a host of small and medium-sized change projects (Burnes, 2001, pp.296-297). 

Burnes (2000, p.280) explains that the emergent approach to change starts from the assumption that change is a continuous, open-ended and unpredictable process of aligning and re-aligning an organisation to its changing environment. Burnes (2000) explains that the emergent approach is increasingly popular in the contemporary world:

Advocates of Emergent change argue that it is more suitable to the turbulent environment in which modern firms now operate because, unlike the Planned approach, it recognises that it is vital for organisations to adapt their internal practices and behaviour to changing external conditions (p.280).

The external environment for sectors such as VET and ACE are continually changing, suggesting that the use of an emergent change model like Kotter's will often be appropriate.

While Kotter’s approach is popular, there are a number of criticisms or cautions about his approach which deserve mention:

• First, the Kotter approach assumes that every manager can be a change leader, while overlooking specialist skills required of change agents (Burnes, 2000, p. 297). In response to those situations that need a specialist change agent, the national professional development program Reframing the Future <http:reframingthefuture.net> launched a new sub-program in early 2003 called National Training Change Agents, to highlight the specialist skills required of change agents.
• Second, the Kotter approach is sometimes criticised for not showing enough concern for the reasons why resistance to change emerges (King & Anderson, 2002, p.203). It is odd that Kotter is seen as downplaying resistance to change, as he was initially famous because of his insights into resistance. Perhaps books on resistance will sell less well than books on how to bring about change.
• Third, despite his claim that he does not have a set against managers, Kotter often portrays leaders as transforming organisations while he views managers as they were depicted in 1970s behaviourist texts, as focusing on planning, budgeting and controlling. Contemporary literature on management, such as that provided by Cusumano & Markides (2001), views managers as ‘value creators’ and strategists, far removed from the behaviourist manager of the 1970s. Kotter seems to over-emphasise leadership and under-state the importance of management.
• Fourth, Kotter's popularity in Australia shows an Australian bias towards USA change models, as my recent work in the UK showed me there is much less interest in USA models there. Australians need to question whether the Kotter model, predominantly based on USA examples, is entirely transferable to the cultures of Australian organisations.

In summary, Kotter is not without his critics. While Kotter's model has value, it is not suitable in every instance and needs to be critiqued and modified to suit each setting.

While Kotter’s model is popular in VET, a range of other models is available and are used around VET, as the nature of change will be different not only from one  organisation to the next, but from one section of an organisation to another section. It is appropriate that different groups of managers use different change management models to suit their particular contexts.

I discuss various adaptations of Kotter and other change management models in chapter 4 of Mitchell, J.G. (2003), Strategy-making in Turbulent Times, ANTA, Melbourne (available at http://reframingthefuture.net click on ‘Publications’ then click on ‘Sub-program 2').

I note with interest the words ‘change agent’ creeping into Duty Statements, along with dozens of other requirements. The inference is that change agency is just another standard skill, like the skill to negotiate with industry or to liaise with the community, that will be acquired over a career by aspiring leaders and managers. But what if only a very small proportion of personnel will ever be effective change agents?

My own research on change agency suggests that change agency is a high-order skill, not acquired by the majority of personnel. Paton and McCalman (2003) suggest that the change agent needs to be competent above all in dealing with people and helping an organisation find solutions, a skill which few have:

To help solve a problem, the change agent has to be able to offer some form of expertise. Traditionally, this is based on knowledge of the subject. However, for the organisation development agent, the knowledge, more often than not, is in dealing with people and helping the organisation find its own solutions …This is a skill that few have, and fewer still use effectively (p.191).

Buchanan and Badham (2000) summarise the complexities of the change agent role, including taking career-shortening risks:

The change-driving role is not an easy one. Major change makes the driver more visible, and more vulnerable. The role requires a behaviour repertoire that extends into different forms of Machiavellian actions, and other managerial character styles. This can involve the conscious switch from one position in relation to change implementation to another, to reduce risk and maximise personal advantage. It also requires energy and commitment – perhaps even passion – as well as creativity. It involves the acceptance of personal risk in career terms (p.207).

Is it time to re-work Duty Statements so that ‘skills as a change agent’ are only in the ‘nice to have’ not ‘must have’ category, as such skills are rare?

I recently prepared a research report on how an intensive six-month program, conducted by Reframing the Future, provided the conditions for eleven VET managers to develop a range of change agency skills. Note that a range of skills – not every possible skill – was developed over six months, and only as as result of structured, guided, intensive practice. To develop such skills involved hard work and high-order application on the part of the trainee change agents.

See The Skilling of VET Change Agents (ANTA, Melb, 2003) available at http://reframingthefuture.net (click on ‘Publications’ then click on ‘Sub-program 2’).

In mentoring change agents in the vocational education and training (VET) sector, one of my practices is to table with them a range of different models for how change needs might be diagnosed and change introduced. I find that aspiring change agents greet these models with enthusiasm. They also are comfortable taking up my suggestion that any text-book model for change management needs to be modified to suit the organisation they are seeking to change.

However, I find aspiring change agents are much less comfortable when I ask them to postpone the examination of 'how to do it' models, and to first examine the model they have in their head about how organisations work. Mostly this request draws a mystified look from the trainee change agent and I often get the response that 'I don't have a model for how organisations work'.

I use a range of different techniques to help practitioners see that we all have models in our heads of how organisations work. Sometimes it is easy to detect the model, based on the language practitioners use to describe their own organisation. Metaphors are a key.

Gareth Morgan (1997), in his seminal book Images of Organisations, summarises the most popular models or images that we have of organisations. These include the image of an organisation as a machine – an image popular with those who see the different parts of an organisation as the interlocking parts of a machine. Other popular images of organisations are as follows: 

• organisations are like organisms,
• or brains,
• or cultures,
• or political battlegrounds,
• or psychic prisons.

Morgan finds that each of us brings models such as these to our analysis of organisations, although our model may not be so clearly formulated and we may not be very aware of our model.

Such personal models of organisations influence the way each of us views an organisation and will influence how we go about planning and managing change. It is advisable for change agents to identify their own models of organisations before seeking out other people's 'how to do it' change management models.

If we are unaware of our existing model for how organisations function, we will select a model for change which suits our view of the world, but not other people's. Change management is about understanding multiple views of the world, including our own.

I explore these issues in chapter 2 of the report Mitchell, J.G. (2004), The Skilling of VET Change Agents, ANTA, Melbourne (available at http://reframingthefuture.net click on 'Publications' and then click on 'Sub-program 2').

In 2004 I am mentoring an educational manager who is developing an innovation strategy - in teaching and learning - for her large, metropolitan technical and further education (TAFE) Institute.

Developing an innovation strategy is a fascinating topic but it raises a raft of issues, which we are exploring together. Just one of the issues is what motivates practitioners to be innovative.

One of the findings from research I have undertaken recently is that innovation can be influenced by practitioners’ motivations or personality traits or sense of personal or professional identity.

My research indicates that VET practitioners have varying motivations, personalities and identities. For instance, VET practitioners may be motivated in one of the following ways:

• by a desire to model originality;
• or by a determination to provide improved services; 
• or by a desire for deserved recognition from peers.

Personality traits influencing innovation can include a preference for being unconventional; or a preference for operating in an ambiguous and challenging situation. A practitioner's sense of identity – say, as a humanist, an industry specialist or as an oracle or facilitator – may also influence her or his response to a proposed innovation in teaching.

The critical role of motivation has significant implications for an innovation strategy and for those managing such a strategy.

I discuss these and many other challenging issues around innovation in Mitchell, J.G. Clayton, B., Hedberg, J. and Paine N.,(2003), Emerging Futures: Innovation in Teaching and Learning, ANTA, Melbourne (available at http://reframingthefuture.net click on 'Publications' and then click on 'General publications')

It is always enriching to provide mentoring services to colleagues in education. Currently I am mentoring a range of senior executives and senior managers in different educational organisations, around topics such as managing flexible learning, managing change, developing strategy and managing evaluation.

When I think of mentoring an Eastern saying comes to mind: ‘The teacher and the taught together create the teaching’. This saying will mean different things to different people. One thing it means to me is that the mentor and the mentee create a new whole: the mentor and the mentee both contribute to the learning that is occurring.

 For me, other angles on this saying are as follows:

• the mentee learns from the mentor and the mentor learns from the mentee 
• neither knows in advance all that will be learnt
• together, the mentor and the mentee create new knowledge
• if there is time, the mentor and the mentee can develop a collective consciousness.

I am sharing these thoughts about the mentoring experience for a number of reasons, one of which is to make the point that mentoring is more than the pursuit of models or solutions: it can be a journey full of discoveries. Many of these discoveries are about the discoverers: about their previous mindsets, prior expectations and openness to new perspectives.

Such a highly reflective approach to mentoring suits educational practice, because educational practice is a rich human experience containing surprises and complexities waiting to be discovered.

Bookstores are often crammed with ‘how to do it’ guides to change management. Some of these books reduce change management to five or ten or ‘n’ easy steps, mischievously suggesting that the same 5-10 steps can be applied in every situation.

I mentor many change agents who commonly find that the models for change that are so prominent in the literature don’t ever fit neatly with the change agents’ complex environments (Mitchell, 2004, p.33). 

Collins (Organisational Change. Sociological Perspectives, Routledge, London and New York, 2003) criticises management theorists who produce programmatic or schematic guides to managing change in organisations: what he calls ‘n-step guides for change’ (p.83). His typical example of the schematic n-step change model is as follows:

1. Develop strategy
2. Confirm top level support
3. Use project management approach
• Identify tasks
• Assign responsibilities
• Agree deadlines
• Initiate action
• Monitor
• Act on problems
• Close down
4. Communicate results (p.83).

Collins suggests there are three key features of simplistic n-step change models:

A rational analysis of organisational change
A sequential approach to the planning and management of change
A generally up-beat and prescriptive tone (p.84).

Collins criticises n-step guides because they downplay the existence of conflict and the breadth of personalities in organisations and they sanitise the change process (p.127):

Unlike the organisations assumed to exist in n-step guides, organisations are not peopled by workers who naturally share a common consensus. Instead, people adhere, to a greater or lesser degree, to their own value system…We must, therefore, be realistic about the extent to which managers (or the state) could effectively erase such a complex, plural, deep-rooted and socially maintained set of values (p.127).

These comments are a reminder that simplistic recipes for change management  will rarely be appropriate.

I report on this matter in Mitchell, J.G. (2004), The Skilling of VET Change Agents, ANTA, Melbourne at http://reframingthefuture.net (click on ‘Publications’ and then on Sub-program 2).