CAP - Change acceleration Process, an approach which a Leader in Six Sigma adopted in achieving its business goal during implementation of changes... We tried this and had a huge success... Basically it involves identification of PPP, purpose, people and process that offers resistance to change and adopt enablers to make them embrace the change...

I am sure you will win...

Kindest Regards

Ramanan

Thanks for the response, Ramanan, which sounds really interesting. I once listened to Dr Gregory Watson on Six Sigma but never had the chance to go deep. I'd be happy to learn more of the details of the process you've kindly mentioned. Any resources to read?

Dear Murat

Mostly Six Sigma implementations are lead as Initiatives... some of them are published... I will search for exact mapping of your needs... Most closer one is the recent paper of mine on Six Sigma Methodology for Employability, an IJMEF publications, can be down loaded as it is open access... I am leading some changes within the Institution / University... couple of publications to appear...

Kindest Regards

Ramanan

Dear Ramanan,

I'll be happy to download your paper, thanks for that.

Looking forward to hearing about your experiences soon.

Best Regards,

We advocate a movement of Shared Leadership.

Don’t take the lead. . . share the lead: Surprising leadership lessons from big time college sports Charles C. Manz, Craig L. Pearce, Jeff W. Mott, Zac Henson, Henry P. Sims Jr. This article is about strong leadership in fast-paced competitive contexts. Yet we will not be focused on the classic idea of dynamic influence resulting from ‘‘taking the lead.’’ Rather, here we are concerned with the cutting edge leadership idea of ‘‘sharing the lead.’’ While shared leadership has especially been studied and written about in work organizations, much can be learned and gained from applying and studying shared leadership on sports teams. In fact, one of the more interesting arenas for studying leadership in general and shared leadership more specifi- cally is big-time college sports. Success and career sustain- ability of head coaches depends on the quality of the assistants on their coaching staff and the contributions they make to the overall coaching team. As with so many leadership contexts this area is ripe with paradox. Some- times the most unlikely developments emerge that offer rich lessons about dramatic factors influencing leadership sustainability.

At first Mr. Erguvan, what you understand under 'change in the in managment of higher education'!? Local managment of given Higher Educational Institution (University, Research Institute); managment of given funding Institution for teh Higher Education; or management of government Institution responsible for the public Higher Educational system, meaning 'ministry', because of the approaches are completelly different.

For local managment of given Higher Educational institution to motivate effetively the academic staff for any changes is almost impossible, because of the work-contraxt of the academic staff depend from the managers at level Rectors/Directors. Usually this done the students, but when have really something critical in the management, which to have very strong impact on the students. Such mistakes the administration in the Higher Educational Institutions avoided very carefuly :))))

Of course 'change of local managment' can be achieved if there is any criminal acts in the administration such as illegal financial transactions and/or other events, but for this it must have judicial activities, prosecutorial checks, etc. ... all these activities however are out of the area of competence of tthe academic staff (excluding of cource jurists from the Juridical Faculties, but they alone also cannot perform any affective activities, so that....)

The management of Funding Institutions and/or government policy in the Higher Education would change throuth petitions, protests and related public forms...In such cases you should have statements of academics from representative part (> 50 %) of the academic Institutions at given country, and more than > 50 % of the academics in each of them. Only in this way you could ensure the representativeness of your vision for the 'change' in the managment in the higher education.

Firstly, It depends on what type of change is expected and what action is required from staff at higher education institutions. Then which stakeholder is to be targeted. The term 'Staff' is a generic term. Whether it is a faculty group or academic staff or other categories in HEIs since each one has different roles. If it is a faculty group, a retrospective review technique needs to adopted to demonstrate the need for change. Once accepted by the group, an appropriate technique would be selected depending on the nature of change expected.

I'd like to thank you all for your precious thoughts. I realize that I wasn't clear in the term 'change management'. Let me narrow it down to a small-scale private higher education institution that reports to the Ministry (accreditation and all), working towards implementing a quality management system which is supposed to be accompanied by an ISO 9001: 2008 certification in due course.

Dr Henson's shared leadership idea is great because we'd definitely like to increase the number of participants in the process towards the change. In this regard, "staff" means both academic and administrative, but I agree with Dr Arun in the sense that the techniques may be different. I guess cultural characteristics (in the share leadership as well) remain to be the key issue in the type of technique(s) to be utilized.

I believe, as educational institutions, we have much to learn from the business. Dr Shafig, thanks for the insight and the link. Although business has more flexibility in offering incentives for work, HEIs can also do that not necessarily with monetary tools.

Dr Bojidarka, you are definitely right to ask 'what change' in "what environment". If you are surrounded by a pre-defined system by the government, what can you change, right? So my focus was totally internal. Having said that, a successful change could be offered as a role model to the government.

I have taught in France, Ukraine and the US, and know from experience that faculty in each nation have some similar, and some different, assumptions that they bring to teaching. Also, colleges and universities are complex, and different in ways from other organizations. So one part of the answer for you will be toaddress the dynamics in Georgia, and not assume that what works somewhere else will fit your needs.

I have found that most organizations need several things to increase motivation. People need to be listened to, people at all levels. They need to be part of the change process. Neither bottom up or top down solutions will be sufficient – both are needed. Deming’s advice, take the fear out of the workplace, is still essential.

The classic organization development approach begins with action research, a means for listening to and then involving participants in the change process. This can be very effective.

The Socio-Economic Approach to Management (SEAM), which has 40 years of research history in over 1300 organizations of all kinds works on two fronts – how to involve people is respectful and effective ways, and how to make sure that the organization is as efficient as it can be financially. Part of the SEAM insight is that standard accounting does not factor in many hidden costs, which in Europe now add up to 20,000 euros per employee. The process of involving all employees in reducing hidden costs and improving management practices has made SEAM a model worth considering when it comes to change. You can see more at www.stthomas.edu/seam

Yes, There are a number of questions which need to be asked. What is seen as a *beneficial change* and by whom? It is definitively not obvious what is desirable by whom, for what purpose and in what context. The next question would be *how to do anything with a purpose to support desirable change process*? Socio-Economic is a reasonable approach. Also Socio-Technical approaches including Benefit Management (directly linked to change reality and motivation). Not to forget Soft Systems Thinking - for example with the help of Soft Systems Methodology.

Yes, you are definitely right in the sense that we do lack a multi-disciplinary approach to change management. The 'human' factor combined with the present environmental factors all play significant roles in the process. But the researchers usually deal with the 'touchable' rather than the factors that may take longer to tackle with. Thanks for the insight though.

Actually this makes me think of the research done by Werner Ulrich - and his Critical Systems Heuristics. Especially the twelve boundary questions can be easily practical to apply. Even in the most *positivistically* inclined environments. for more information see link: http://wulrich.com/index.html

I went through the CSH quickly and it seems promising.

But again, when it comes to the application, country specific factors will be crucial, don't you think? Presently, the theory is generally produced in the west, and it'll be interesting to see their applications in the east.

I think the theory has also been applied in the east. But then I also think that there is a huge difference when it comes to local context and this difference can be much different than national context. What matters to you, who do you trust, what is your topic of interest, who are you? etc.. in my experience there can be a greater difference (in qualitative judgement) between two individuals who appear to be exactly the same (based on quantitative metrics) from the same village than between two individuals from different continent, gender and age.

Thanks for the insight. That's exactly what I meant by the "human" factor. So many variables; and it becomes harder when people start thinking about "how" they should respond to your questions rather than what the answers really are. I'm beginning to think that we should cooperate with people working on 'artificial intelligence'. :)

We seem to need more comparative studies.

First step you should aware the employee about the new changes and how it going to take effect on them.