a)  If you think the leader did a good job of leading change, what did they do well? Give at least 3 specific examples of how they led change effectively, and why these made a difference.

I believe the change initiative was successful but not easy. This leadership challenge, where I had to institute a new policy that would transform an aspect of my team’s job routine is an example of a change on a departmental level. From the reading “Leading Change”, the author, John P. Kotter created a framework for guiding organizations through change. If we analyse the case, it becomes evident that this small policy change follows many of Kotter’s 8-steps.

For purposes of this question, I want to focus on only 3 steps that I believe made this change effective:

1)    A leader to lead the change.

1. For change to be effective it requires a leader who is able to lead the change. John P. Kotter makes the case that “ change, by definition requires creating a new system, which in turn always demands leadership” (Kotter, 2007)
2. A good leader is one who is passionate and an active supporter of the change. In my case, as the new supervisor, I had an opportunity to address an issue that had been festering for far too long.  When I was just a sonographer, I was one of the team members who would also scan during a no-show even if it was not expected of me. I could relate to the feeling of unfairness that some of my staff felt and I too wished we had a policy where we can deliver patient care and evenly distribute the workload.

2)    Collaborating to build coalitions

1. Kotter defines this step as “assembling a group with enough power to lead the change effort.” In my case, it was the committee that was created with all the stakeholders that would be eventually driving this change. Since this change would result in the technician scanning more inpatients, it was crucial that the team was supportive of this change. Furthermore, by involving the resistors in this initiative, it sent a signal to the staff that everyone was on board and believed in this change.

3)    Communicating and Continuously Improving

1. No matter how much planning one does, until the change actually occurs no one can be 100% certain if it will actually work out as planned. When we first implemented our no-show policy there were was still some confusion and some aspects did not pan out the way we thought they would. I knew that the change would initially be a bit bumpy but at the same time there were some aspects of the policy that I realized looked good on paper but were not pragmatic.
2. My attitude was that we can only improve by learning from our mistakes. For the next 3 monthly staff meeting, I asked staff to provide feedback on the no-show policy, asking them “How we can make this no-show policy better?” This provided an opportunity for my team to present their thoughts and discuss of what is working well and what is not working well.  We continued to fine tune and revise our no-show policy ensuring that we strike a balance between staff satisfaction and effectively utilizing our no-show spots.
3. I believe allowing the staff to communicate their thoughts and reaction regarding this policy implementation provided the opportunity for me as a leader to understand my staff and continuously improve our change efforts.