Want Higher Ed Change? Start a Reading Group

Making change in higher education isn’t easy, and as I’ve pointed out in an earlier newsletter (here ), leaders may be tempted to first make big plans and then try to get buy-in, but the culture of higher ed is proudly individualistic; with any group of five faculty there are roughly 8.5 opinions on how to do any give thing.? As such, pushing an agenda is the royal road to strong cultural resistance. In this light, how can a leader—titular or from the grass roots—get traction on what to change?? And even when there is consensus on what to change, how can a change-oriented group of people figure out how to change? ?

Earlier editions of the Rebooting Higher Education newsletter have addressed some of the steps in making change, but in this issue, we examine an often neglected and very simple preparatory step that can help focus on points of pain and agreement, both.? In particular, we are talking about the formation of simple reading groups to encourage conversation and help flesh out important issues on what might ultimately turn into a change initiative.?

We start by considering the benefits of reading groups of different sizes, continue with some of what you might read, and finish with an invitation to get started.

How Big a Reading Group?

Of course, individuals can read a book and benefit, but in change initiatives, I find that the smallest meaningful group is the pair, n = 2, and elsewhere (here ), I have written about the virtues of what I called pairwork (as opposed to teamwork) in change initiatives. When you’re trying to do something that hasn’t been done before, it’s really helpful to be able to have good conversations of discovery and innovation with someone else, especially someone with a point of view that isusefully different from yours. For example, in the pre-iFoundry days, Andreas Cangellaris and I had many stimulating conversations about what and how to bootstrap iFoundry, with me bringing a theoretical perspective and Andreas bringing shrewd political insight into things that might fly and how to get them off the ground.?

Of course, after a leadership pair gets its feet under it, it is helpful to invite others in for larger conversations. In iFoundry, this led to the study of any number of resources by a group of faculty and students in a formal classroom setting in a one-off course called Designing the Engineering Curriculum of the Future.? Many useful conversations were held in that class, and it was also that class that stimulated fateful visits to Olin, Purdue (engineering education), and other nearby schools.?

There are, of course other ways to go.? Earlier (here ) we suggested the formation of an incubator or RSSI = respectful structured space for innovation as a focal point for change, and as a precursor to setting up a formal RSSI, it can be helpful to form a reading group in which useful resources are read and discussed.? The formation of a common vision—and language—in change initiatives is sometimes overlooked, but it is crucially important, and the formation of a reading group is a low-cost, low-commitment way to start having the conversations that can converge on the vision and language needed to make significant change.

This, of course, can be scaled up, and I think back to a time when A Whole New Engineer was used in a school-wide reading group as a way to spark change at Texas A&M Qatar.

What to Read?

Of course, I’m partial to the one-two punch of A Whole New Engineer and A Field Manual for a Whole New Education .? One of the things that puzzles me in the higher ed business is how much effort is placed on what to change, and how little effort is expended on thinking about how to change.? The assumption that the usual structures and strictures of the academy can be turned toward significant change is just wrong.? Committees, working groups, strategic planning processes and so forth are designed to gussy up the status quo; they are not designed for—and rarely result in—significant change.? Part of the reading curriculum must be about effective higher change processes.? With rare exceptions, the corporate literature on change is more useful that the higher ed literature, and a couple of favorites include, the Heath Brothers terrific book Switch and just about anything from John Kotter (Leading Change , That’s Not How We Do It Here , Accelerate ).? Another useful take is to study Schein’s theories of organizational culture in The Corporate Culture Survival Guide ; although Schein gives little or no guidance on how to change, understanding culture more deeply is essential to understand both what will resist (and ultimately sustain) your change efforts.

An Invitation to Get Started

A reading group, perhaps first with a trusted friend to incubate innovative pairwork, then in a larger circle, and perhaps even a school-wide effort, is a low-cost, low-commitment way to have the conversations that smooth the way to significant and needed change. The journey to a new vision with common language cannot be imposed from above, especially in a higher education setting. The simple step of starting a reading group can start your department, faculty, school, or institution on the road to effective change.

DAVID E. GOLDBERG (Dave) is an artificial intelligence pioneer, engineer, entrepreneur, educator, and leadership coach (see here ). Author of the widely cited Genetic Algorithms in Search, Optimization, and Machine Learning(Addison-Wesley, 1989) and co-founder of ShareThis.com , in 2010, he resigned his tenure and distinguished professorship at the University of Illinois to work full time for the improvement of higher education. Dave now gives motivational workshops and talks, consults with educational institutions around the globe, and coaches individual educators and academic leaders to bring about timely, effective, and wholehearted academic change. Dave's latest book is A Field Manual for a Whole New Education: Rebooting Higher Education for Human Connection and Insight in a Digital World . Contact Dave at [email protected] or message him on LinkedIn.