Excerpt from: Maximize Performance
Research Drives Change
Educators are highly familiar with research. Research helps us become better teachers and leaders, and expands the boundaries of our knowledge. Also, research drives change. Same goes for organizations outside of education as well.
It is impressive how quickly people, particularly educators, adapt to change they believe in. Given that, why might someone resist change? First, they might not understand the reason for the change. In other words, they’re not familiar with the research that determines the why. Second, intuitively they could feel there isn’t enough data to back it up. Third, the change has not been explained well. Fourth, they don’t think the new approach will last. Often, this is because they’ve heard for years that the organization is going to make a change and it either never gets off the ground or quickly fizzles out.
The last point is interesting. Why are certain employees and leaders lacking in confidence that a new initiative will continue? Past initiatives have not succeeded in delivering the promised results. Initiatives often stop when they hit a barrier, and then the organization moves on to the latest buzzword, book or speaker.
When someone asks what’s being done to improve leadership skills within an organization, we often hear about a new book or an idea picked up at a conference. Now, we love books and conferences, but books and conferences are not stand-alone items. As change is introduced, it is best when backed by solid evidence in order to achieve results. If performance gaps exist, leaders can acquire better skills. In other words, research makes the ideas stick and determines how to invest in leadership development.
Of course, research to validate best practices has been available for years, with research priorities shifting from management of organizations to instructional leadership. This is a positive trend. We want to see more research focused on leadership. Organizational research has focused on two things we are passionate about: (1) a senior leadership model of high-performing leadership, and (2) a leader focus on creating a best-place-to-work environment to help employees achieve their highest potential.
How does your organization use research and data to drive change?
