Sustaining Change Efforts Through Turnover: Exploring and Reflecting on Effective Leadership Strategies

Change efforts are complex and are driven by the people involved. Since 2012, we have worked with 118 change teams of varying sizes and durations, and realized that 100% of the change teams had to grapple with turnover in change agents, administrators, or even the institutions involved. A crucial aspect of sustaining change efforts is how change leaders plan for that turnover. Sometimes turnover is known in advance (e.g., upcoming retirements) but other times turnover is unexpected. When people or partners turnover, change efforts can grow, maintain, or fizzle out. Planning for turnover is essential to maintaining or growing change efforts, and those plans need to account for the different types of turnover an effort might encounter. No change leaders can plan for every contingency, but change leaders can put systems and processes in place to help avoid change efforts fizzling out when a key person leaves. The poster will invite viewers to reflect on key areas of planning for turnover: documentation, culture, processes, and communication. Documentation strategies include organizing project documents (notes, files, products) and maintaining a comprehensive and comprehensible directory, along with determining who should have access to what. Culture strategies include establishing community agreements for how the change group interacts (norms), handles conflict, and hears from relevant constituent groups. Process strategies include regular revisiting of change efforts aims and strategies, particularly making space for new partners to influence those goals, bringing their expertise and interests to the change effort. Effective communication strategies are the heartbeat of any change efforts; sustainability strategies include ensuring relevant participants receive appropriate communications, transparency in decision-making, and making space for different types of communication (verbal, in writing). The research we will share comes from all types of institutions from community colleges to research-focused universities, and spans single and multi-institutional change efforts.