What next
The St Patrick's College Technology Department has seen a lot of change over the past few years, and, as with the nature of Technology, will witness more change in the coming years if it is to grow.
"In week seven of term four 2007, having largely farewelled our senior students, we had a departmental day away from school," says Chris. "We spent several hours reflecting on each of our programmes, identifying strengths and weaknesses, looking for gaps and areas needing improvement. We brought Brian in, in his Technology adviser role, to work through this process with us.
"We now have a clear sense of the incremental changes that will move us forward another step or two in 2008, and we are beginning to work on some of these areas over the last two weeks of this year. The department recently appointed a new teacher for 2008, to take the place of the fourth teacher who is moving on to another role elsewhere. Our first planned task for the start of 2008 is to spend a day as a department formulating a revised vision with input from each of the four teachers."
When asked for advice to others for managing change within a Technology department Chris identifies six key points :
- Have a positive attitude.
- Work as a team.
- Develop a vision.
- Create an open working environment.
- Keep moving forward – evaluate, refine, improve.
- CELEBRATE SUCCESS! ("We have a saying in our department. When one of the others does something quite good, we say 'Genius!' And we say to each other, and even more to our students, 'You can do it'.")
Asked to suggest an apt way of ending this case study of change management, Chris suggested the following parable.
Two butterflies were floating high above a caterpillar, who was crawling along the ground. One butterfly looked at the other and said, "he doesn't know what he's missing".
The next day, the same two butterflies were floating past the same spot. All of a sudden, something ripped through the wing of one of the butterflies, and he plummeted to the ground. The second butterfly saw that the caterpillar, far below, was wielding a gun...
Don't be that caterpillar. One day, when you are a butterfly, you will regret it.
