Against the Grain
Against the Grain Backtalk
Back Talk — Buddy Can You Spare Some Change?
by Tony Ferguson (Associate University Librarian, Columbia University) ferguson@columbia.edu
Lately, it seems to me that my life is centered on change. Trying to change the behavior of others or trying to repel attempts to change me. Here are some of the library change experiences I have encountered during the past few days. Our library systems officer wants digital publishers and vendors to move beyond IP address authentication. With advances in Web technology we just can’t seem to keep our proxy servers working for every title. He would also like to change how our Electronic Resource Liaisons (selectors with their digital information hats on) interact with these vendors. They are to demand that the vendors/publishers shape up or our money will ship out; I would like to change my supervisor’s mind about what constitutes an acceptable library materials fund increase—8% is just not enough; she doesn’t think the Provost’s mind can be changed since he believes 8% is already more than generous. I would like to get the very talented middle managers with whom I work to change from whining about their level of poverty to working with me to figure out how we should reallocate our funds. I have worked on three license agreements during the past 48 hours and each of these cultural experiences included “us” and “them” opportunities to change the other’s minds; and finally I have been mulling over why I can’t get library materials selectors to change from a reactive to a more proactive collection assessment mentality.
But getting anyone, particularly oneself, to change seems very difficult. I know I should lose about 50 pounds of corpulence, but all of this thought about change makes me hungry for a slice of my wife’s birthday cake plus ice cream.
What has to happen before people will change? For a class on educational administration I have been reading a number of the classics in this field and I thought I would share a few ideas from them about change, plus bore you with stories of my own failures and success. Edgar Schein, in his Organizational Culture and Leadership (paperback 1997) suggests that people need to “unfreeze” before they can change. I am not sure where this metaphoric expression originated, but for me it is reminiscent of seeing deer or rabbits seemingly ‘freeze” in the beam of your headlights; they just can’t seem to get moving. They have to unfreeze before they can get going out of harm’s way. Humans are the same. They have to unfreeze before they can get going. Schein suggests that unfreezing involves three steps: First they need to be shook up to the point that they recognize that there is a problem and something will have to change. Second, they have to recognize this problem is their problem to the point that they experience some sort of anxiety or guilt which will motivate them to want to solve the problem. At this point, the person in need of change could still refuse to deny the facts or their responsibility to do anything about them so third, there must be enough “psychological safety” present for them to see that they can solve the problem, make the change, without a loss of “identity or integrity” (pp. 298-299). To go back to my deer in the headlights metaphor, the deer has to come to grips with the idea that something has to change, that it has to move, and that the particular move under contemplation will allow it to survive.
Schein suggests that two more steps are involved in truly changing. The person or group experiencing change has to undergo “cognitive restructuring,” that is, they have to start thinking differently. They have to internalize the lessons of their unfreezing experience. Finally, they “refreeze” the new ways of thinking and doing things. A library example that all collection development librarians can identify with relates to the idea of access instead of ownership. After being knocked down by 1980’s serials inflation a few years in a row, it dawned on me that there was a problem. Failed attempts to annually get extra money told me that it was my problem, or at least that as the head of collection development, I had to do something to fix the problem beyond telling others to cut serials. Telling others to cut serials was causing me significant anxiety. So in addition to cutting titles, I underwent a “cognitive restructuring” and realized that what the user wanted was the information, not the bound volume. I am now a firm, not reluctant, believer in the value of document delivery services that deliver in a matter of hours or minutes. This same cognitive restructuring has helped me to identify with the virtues of electronic journals which provide information instantaneously. I don’t, on the other hand, feel anxiety about not having bound volumes. This new way of thinking is now refrozen in my approach to collection development. In a few years things will change and it will be time to thaw out again. These are only a few of the many ideas that are in Schein. It is well worth the time you will spend reading this book.
Another good book on change, one that is not all that optimistic about the number of times change really takes place in education, is Fullan and Stiegelbauer’s The New Meaning of Educational Change (1991). They note that most researchers believe there are three main phases in the change process. In the first, the decision to adopt a change is made—this is where Schein’s unfreezing takes place. The second phase includes the initial implementation steps and in the third phase the change becomes institutionalized. Changes fail because the ball is dropped during one or more of these stages. The first phase is fraught with danger. As a wise man once noted, “an idea and a little authority” are a dangerous combination. Managers, like me, see a problem, hear about a solution, and try and force the two into a happy marriage. Fullan & Stiegelbauer suggest that “the best beginnings combine the three R’s of relevance, readiness, and resources. Relevance includes looking at both the practicality of the change, the degree to which all involved understand what is being changed, and the need for it. Readiness refers to the ability of those implementing the change to “initiate, develop, or adopt a given innovation” and again there is a perceived need for the change (p. 63). Resources refers to that which is needed to carry forward with the change. If I had a dollar for every change that I have initiated without doing all of these things, I wouldn’t be here writing for Katina.
Implementation is another critical phase. Ideas come easy; implementation is difficult.
In the 70’s while at BYU I chaired a committee on shelving space. We had a problem. We were buying too many books and were running out of space. A helpful UMI representative introduced a solution: microfiche islands. The idea was you substituted a Wilson index and microfiche copies of five to ten years of the journals indexed for all the stack space that would have been taken up by the bound journals. You could subscribe to paper or not. We chose to continue with paper, but planned to discard the temp bound issues after their heavy use period was past. At the time I was a new assistant head of collection development with a little authority. That, combined with the microfiche island idea, was truly a dangerous combination. Did I work through the three R’s of relevance, readiness, and resources? I did OK on resources, since UMI was willing to pay for everything on an experimental basis. But I failed to work through the relevance and readiness phases and discovered only after the fact that the faculty felt that it was a very dumb idea. We were weak on implementation as well. In the end the islands disappeared and my learning experience caused a great deal of grief. I try not to repeat such errors. I have had a cognitive restructuring.
So, change is pervasive in our lives, but to be successful we have to do much more than wander into the workplace with authority and ideas. Otherwise, we may be on a street corner asking for a different kind of change.
