It’s important to be intentional about change

Key takeaways

• You have to find your champions to help with the change process
• Make sure that you get the buy-in from faculty, staff, and students
• Communicate your vision for why the change is necessary

Lillian Schumacher, President, Tiffin University

It's really important when leaders of institutions or any organization today—we have to change. And I think it's important to be intentional about that change.

And so part of that intentionality has to be, I follow Kotter's model. And I used to teach. I was a business faculty by training. And Kotter has a model that he talks about. You really have to create a sense of urgency for change, and you have to find your champions to be able to really help with that change process. You have to communicate that change, and you have to communicate it over and over and over again.

You want to minimize the resistors of change as much as you possibly can. So it's a process. It's a process where, especially at institutions of higher learning, where we have faculty that are the heartbeat of the institution. Faculty are designed to ask questions. They're designed in nature by who they are to push back. And so making sure that you really get the buy-in from faculty and staff and students is very, very important.

So the way I've found it to be most successful is to not change for the sake of change. It has to be intentional. And that vision for why the change is necessary has to happen.