Maggie Grady: 0:02

Welcome to the CATT Teaching Table podcast, where we explore innovative teaching methods and dynamic educational strategies. Hosted by the University at Buffalo's Office of Curriculum, Assessment and Teaching Transformation, otherwise known as CATT, and supported by the Genteels Excellence and Teaching Fund. This podcast is dedicated to highlighting the journeys toward educational excellence. I'm your host, Maggie Grady, Instructional Innovation Project Manager for the Office of Curriculum Assessment and Teaching Transformation. Today I'm joined by Tyler Bauer, UB's Organizational Change Management Specialist. Tyler works with teams across UB to help plan, communicate, and support change, especially the kind of change that affects how we work, teach, and support students. So, Tyler, thank you so much for joining me today.

Tyler Bauer: 0:49

Thank you for inviting me. I'm looking forward to it. I notice, as you were kind of saying the title, it gets really long in all those different areas. So I try to make it a little bit simpler in saying I just focus on how people react, how do they embrace, how do they adopt, how do they use the changes that we're trying to introduce here at the campus. So it's something where higher education is experiencing a lot of changes, and we need a lot of help as we start navigating how we can actually launch these changes across campus.

Maggie Grady: 1:14

So let's talk a little bit more about that. So on UB's Administrative Services Gateway, the change management support area describes services like needs analysis, strategic planning, communication plans, and consultations to ensure all aspects of change are considered. So keeping that in mind, when you're working with teams, how do these elements show up in practice?

Tyler Baueri: 1:37

How I usually describe it is I'm more of the common sense guy when it comes to a lot of these changes that take place across campus. Sometimes we can get bogged down in the type of work that we do. We can focus so much on how this is gonna impact this type of process in any type of way. A lot of the work that I do is kind of take more of a big picture type of view and saying, how is this gonna impact the people on the lower levels? How is this gonna impact this person in this side of the aisle or anything like it? And slowly over time we build out strategies to make sure people are actually going to embrace or adopt or use it. So some of those different things that you talked about, some of the needs analysis, it's really just sitting down and getting an understanding of what exactly you're trying to change here. How is this gonna impact individuals and what does success look like for you and for the university? And making sure we're all on the same page as we start leaning towards that strategy together.

Maggie Grady: 2:25

Right. And with many people's ideas and plans, just organizing all of that, I think, has to be pretty challenging for you.

Tyler Bauer: 2:33

Oh, yeah. I mean, especially if you think about the let's think about the cultural aspects of change in higher education, for instance. I mean, if you were to look at higher education, it's so multi-layered. You have teaching, you have faculty members, you have staff members, you have students, you have shared governance. If we're as the University at Buffalo, we're part of SUNY. So we also have mandates and the entities such as SUNY, which is kind of telling us what we need to do. So, how do you balance that? I mean, some of these incremental changes are happening at such a slow pace while we're sitting here focusing on these things, but then you have some of these larger scale initiatives that are forced down on us that we didn't even know about. So now we're balancing how do we actually navigate when you have changes at the lower levels, the higher levels, how do we make sure everyone feels as if they're all going on the same train together? And I will say this within higher education, there is a lot of change fatigue. It feels as if every single day there's something new that comes up, which we're gonna have to navigate. So, if we're gonna think about trying to make sure people are embracing changes and trying to get buy-in, how do we make sure all those pieces fit together where they don't feel as if this is not something that's just thrown on me again?

Maggie Grady: 3:43

So many faculty and staff feel like they're constantly adapting. So, just like what you mentioned, new platforms, updated processes, emerging expectations around accessibility most recently, and now even artificial intelligence. So, from your perspective, why does change feel particularly intense right now across higher education?

Tyler Bauer: 4:04

Because it is. I mean, it's hard to sugarcoat it. I mean, right now in higher education, we're in a crossroads. The major reason why we see increases and changes right now is probably due to technology. Because the technological advances we're seeing is changing our natural environments outside of our work and within our work. And it's not as if higher education is sp is particularly singled out. There are unique challenges within higher education, but this also exists in the global world as well. If you look outside, you know, our typical work environments, things are changing every single day. We're getting things are imposed on us that we had no idea about or anything in that regard. You sprinkle in technology, it it's gonna be one of those things where we're gonna see an increase before we see a decrease.

Maggie Grady: 4:49

Okay, so you just made mention about changes coming from all different directions. And we have a new presidential search. I can only assume that that's going to affect all of the change management and put a whole bunch of pieces into play.

Tyler Bauer: 5:04

It will. I mean, you're starting to notice it right now because not only is change management focused on the change itself, it's usually what happens before, during, and after the change actually happens. So if we're getting a new president, there might be some people internally at the university that might already be starting to feel some type of way in regards to that change and approach and how it approaches their work. For instance, you might have some people that might feel anxious because they're thinking, we have a new president coming on board. I'm used to the things that I'm normally go on within my day-to-day. A new president can change the way I function within my work, and I am not looking forward to that. In which that might not be true. It's just that we're creating that within our minds. So, yes, when it comes to a large leadership change like that in higher education, you're gonna see a lot of anxiety increase because of the unknown. The one thing we do know is that people do not like the unknown when it comes to launching any sort of change.

Maggie Grady: 6:00

Sometimes when people hear change management, they think it's only for major organizational restructuring. But change happens in smaller, everyday ways too. And you were explaining a little bit of that, especially in teaching, student services, and administrative workflows. Can you explain and describe the organizational change in a higher education setting like UB?

Tyler Bauer: 6:22

In change management, we always have to think about culture when we're thinking about strategies or anything like that when we have some sort of initiative. And in higher education, there's certain cultural barriers that we know exist that we're gonna have to sit there and tackle when we're thinking about any type of strategy. So the first one majorly is power distance. And there's sometimes some lack of trust within a leader. They don't know what my day-to-day typically is, what my typical day-to-day looks like in any type of way. And because of that, we then might not fully embrace the type of initiative that's being launched from the top down. The other piece that comes along with it is that high power distant relationships, usually people who are making decisions are making them in a vacuum. So therefore, we're not getting the appropriate stakeholders engaged throughout the process, which then leads to inefficient change initiatives or trying to accomplish something when in reality we don't know all the pieces of the problem. So that's one cultural aspect that we have to tackle. We know that that exists. That's not uncommon to the University at Buffalo, that's common within higher education. The second has to do with emotional expressiveness. So in higher education, we actually do not like sharing a lot of our emotions., usually, if you're in a work setting and someone shares emotions, there can be some kind of bias toward that person because of the fact they showed that type of emotion. And what that causes is almost resentment because people stay silent. So whenever there's any issues that are present, they do not want to be seen as someone who's emotional. So therefore, they do not voice any concern. So therefore, we do not even know that resistance exists when we launch our change initiatives. But at the same time, they could have very valid concerns. It's just that we're not hearing them out in any type of way. And it leads to this passive aggressiveness within individuals, which then manifests into something where it becomes more of a cultural identity. So that's the second one. The last, which I think is the most difficult to navigate, is uncertainty avoidance. In higher education, we do not like things that are uncertain. So the way that we run into issues with this is that sometimes when we talk about initiatives, let's say we're thinking about a reorganization, we might not know what the future looks like. That's not something that people in higher education like to hear. They like to know exactly what it what do I need to know? Give me the exact details of how this impacts my job and the day-to-day things that I do. And if you can't provide that, then I'm not 100% sure that I want to embrace that or I want to buy into that in any type of way. So knowing those three different cultural barriers that exist, we have to make sure not only are we thinking about the people and we're thinking about what the change is itself, we're also thinking about the cultural impacts of higher education within change initiatives. So it's a very delicate balance between all the various pieces.

Maggie Grady: 9:08

Yeah. And then is that something that you would then bring to their attention and saying, you know, we be we need buy-in from all of the aspects within your department, within the organization, within your org chart, and make sure that we hear the voices and address those concerns.

Tyler Bauer: 9:24

So yes, so you work individually with all the different project leaders and everyone who's involved through changes to help them understand these are the different things that we might come across. These are some of the resistance pieces we might get. Now, you mentioned specifically a little bit about buy-in and how we get everyone's voices heard, but there's also a delicate balance between are we hearing everyone's voices or are we hearing the right voices? Sometimes we might get feedback or or people involved that maybe shouldn't have been involved to begin with. And then we run into this issue where we almost are not moving forward. We're we're constantly talking in circles and we're not leading to any type of area where we're pushing forward within the change initiative which is common in higher education, as you can imagine from shared governance and everything like that. Sometimes you have various different committees that go, that person goes to another committee, goes to another committee, and then we run into a situation where we're just completely fatigued out because guess what? There's another change that came through, and we're really focusing on the next one. Project leaders, I always feel bad for them because sometimes they're thrown into situations where they have to lead a change initiative. Usually it's something that was told by their boss or a supervisor and saying that you need to lead this in some type of way, who might not be completely bought into it to begin with. And then when they start leading it with a committee, they get in front and they start talking to others and they say, All right, does this sound good? And then no one says anything. And they say, Okay, let's go, let's just keep on moving to the next thing, because they're just thinking, all right, well, we just made progress. I'm happy that I got through this little piece. But in reality, no one really agreed to anything. Everyone's being passive because they don't know what to say, or they don't trust the situation, and therefore you're not getting that feedback and the actual meat and potatoes of what you're trying to accomplish of what you need in order to make this successful.

Maggie Grady: 11:09

Yeah, exactly. And I can kind of see because I've been with UB for so long, but the same people get called on to run committees or to they get tapped because they did a good job in a previous committee and whatnot. But that doesn't necessarily get all of the voices represented.

Tyler Bauer: 11:28

It's not even just a big hiccup. It's common across the university, right? I mean, when you have someone who's a very good worker, we tend to say, all right, well, I want to do the easy thing or anything like it. I'm going to choose that person, and that person's gonna lead that effort specifically within the group. The problem with that is that one, that leads to burnout. Those individuals who are very good eventually, because of the responsibility creep, eventually over time, they can get really stressed, they can get anxious, and because that can lead to them falling behind in their regular job duties. But also the people on the other side who are not getting asked remember that. And then it becomes part of their identity of saying, well, I'm not the person who's usually asked all these different things, so I'm gonna play that role because that's the role that you gave me. So we have to be aware of who we're choosing to ask for feedback as well. If we're going to the same people over and over and over, are we doing that because it's the easy thing? Or are we doing that because it's the right thing? And most of the time it's because of the easy thing. In reality, we need all voices at the table, even the people that are that could be critics to the things that we're saying, because at the end of the day, they can call out things that maybe we didn't notice in regards to this change initiative in particular.

Maggie Grady: 12:38

Can you think of some other barriers or what some of the most common barriers that we haven't spoken about that you see are?

Tyler Bauer: 12:45

When it comes to barriers, I typically see some recurring themes across different areas. So for one, really not understanding why we're doing these things to begin with. you see this when it comes to organizational structures. For instance, like I mentioned before, let's say you have a senior leader who tasked a project leader to run this. They don't quite understand why they're doing it. They get a committee together, everyone asks, so why are we doing this? And the person cannot answer that question. Well, you're almost shooting yourself in the foot before you kind of even start because the main reason why people want to embrace changes is understanding why we're doing it to begin with. We all kind of turn into, you know, three- or four-year-olds once a change initiative hits us. We all ask why? Why is this happening? Why now? All those different pieces. And a lot of times we don't think about how are we going to answer those questions before we jump into it. So, a common barrier that I see is that we don't talk about the why going into it. So a lot of times I'll have to sit down with the project team and really just hammer out all those details. Why are we doing this? What is changing? What is not changing? Because that's a lot of times where people can assume certain things in regards to a change. And also just what does success look like? How are we measuring this? How are we going to make sure that at the end of this we could say that it was a job well done? So that's one barrier., another barrier that I see a lot is just communication., an example could be, and you've probably seen this before, where something happened and you call someone, you say, Whoa, I thought that this is the normal process. And they say, Well, didn't you see that email? No, my inbox is filled with so many emails every single day, it's really hard to keep track of every single one that comes in through my inbox. So they assume that just because they sent an email communication out or some kind of written communication, that people know that this change is happening and therefore everyone's going to embrace and adopt it. We have to think about communication not only from a top-down approach, but also from a bottom-up approach. How are we making sure that we get everyone's feedback throughout that process? How do we make sure people feel heard throughout the process? How are we equipping our supervisors throughout these types of processes to make sure everyone understands how to answer a lot of these questions and answer the question consistently? And that leads into my third one, which is in regards to not preparing our supervisors appropriately. A lot of times our supervisors are stuck in this difficult balancing act where they have to make sure they lead these change initiatives to their direct reports really efficiently, but at the same time managing up to leadership and understanding that their people feel heard throughout this process. And sometimes we forget about them. We might tell these changes to the people that are directly impacted, but that directly impacted person can then run to their supervisor and let them know hey, I want to know how this is going to affect my job. If they're not aware of this change happening, how are they gonna support you through that conversation? An example where I've seen this has to do with the reorganization. So there was a large-scale reorganization that happened, and they decided to announce it, the leader, at a town hall event. They decided to say, this is our new organizational structure, this is what our work is gonna look like, and this is how we're gonna effectively do it. Well, as soon as the people left that town hall, the first thing they did is they went to their supervisors and said, Well, what is that about? They were like, I have no idea what this is. I've never heard of this before. Now your whole change initiative is almost shot down to the ground before you even had a chance to really get it up and running. It would have been much better if you mentioned this to your supervisors beforehand, so that now your frontline employees can speak to those supervisors and say, well, yes, this is all part of a process. We've been having conversations. and that's one side of the coin, in which, you know, recently there was a reorganization that I did work on with one of the units here in campus, and that was something that we had to tackle head on was making sure the supervisors knew about this before they decided to make the large-scale announcement at the at the large all-hands meeting. And one of the things we got from feedback from surveys and understanding how people felt, they thought it was a very well done and strategic implementation because of the fact that we spent a lot of time making sure the appropriate people had all the right information as we went along the process because they didn't feel surprised. That's usually my main goal when I talk to people, just make sure they don't feel surprised. So that's, I mean, those are just some common barriers. I'm sure I'm forgetting a lot. You know, every single change initiative is different. So the barriers could be, you know, from leadership to supervisors to individuals to structures to systems to processes, all those different kinds of areas.

Maggie Grady: 17:36

Yeah. So is there, I'm sure that this isn't a standard answer, but is there some sort of template that you could then say to, hey, you're gonna have this big change. You did send the email, but people really didn't see that email. How else could they reach those people that they're impacting and make sure that they all completely understand and keep that line of communication open?

Tyler Bauer: 18:00

Usually when I meet with individuals first, we actually go through a whole communication strategy. So it's not just an email. We actually have everything laid out, you know, where we have not only conversations that are happening at the local level between supervisors and director ports, we're also having it from top down. We're having a leader mention this is why we're doing it, this is what leads into our strategic plan, et cetera. But let's say you run into a situation like you just mentioned where they send an email out and now they come to us and they say, Hey, how do we navigate this now? You know, how do we make sure we're getting the feedback and support going into it? A lot of that comes into working individually with supervisors for them to kind of map out and look at their individual staff. So a lot of times I'll have them write down in a in a chart, I'll usually have three columns. And the first column is the individual or the group. The second one is the main concerns that they would have in regards to this particular change. And it could be anything. This is meant to be open-ended thinking. You write down anything that could possibly come up. And then the third one is the engagement strategy. What are we doing to help with that? If we know that this is the issue that they're gonna come up with, or this is an issue that they have with this change, what are we gonna do to combat that? Or what are we gonna do to make sure we're getting ahead of it to make sure that they feel supported throughout the process? And once we do that, we then come together as a group and we start seeing the similarities between all the teams. So that now you could sit there and say, all right, well, I'm seeing a common theme between this piece of the change. Now let's think about how are we gonna create that as part of the engagement strategy moving forward. A lot of times, if we start leading a change initiative and let's say it's failing, we make the announcement, we don't really do anything afterwards, it's really about how we react to making mistakes. The hardest thing that I try to tell leaders to do when it comes to leading these types of changes is embracing the fact that maybe they made a misstep along the way and being public about it. Sometimes it's difficult for people to do, but it goes a long way in saying something along the lines of, okay, when we tried this, this is where I made a mistake. This is what we're gonna do now to make sure we don't make that same mistake again. And just as long as they're open to doing that. But if I usually say sometimes that's the only way we can move forward is for us to take a step back.

Maggie Grady: 20:20

Thank you to our listeners for tuning into this episode of the Teaching Table Podcast. If you enjoyed today's discussion, be sure to subscribe and leave us a review. We will be back soon with more conversations on exploring the latest in teaching innovations and strategies. Until next time, teach well and teach accessibly. As always, be sure to connect with us online at buffalo.edu/catt, that's C-A-T-T, or email us at ubcatt@buffalo.edu.