Leading the Change in Community With Diffision of Innovation & Kotter’s Process

Today in our sustainability and community relations class Dr. Kool showed our cohort two concepts which were diffusion of innovation and Kotters process. Ultimately, these two processes are used in order to promote change in the community which can be used for our projects for Colwood Council.

Diffusion can be defined as “a process in which an innovation is communicated through certain channels over time among the members of a social system”. The following picture depicts the breakdown of innovation and the parts of society that are involved in the process.

Innovators are a large minority of the innovation curve as they represent 2.5% of the total. Innovators are found to be educated and have multiple sources of information. Also these members have been shown to be susceptible to taking risks. Early adopters which are found to be 13.5% are an evolution of the innovators and can somewhat act on the innovators ideas.

Individuals that fall into the 34% of the population are the early majority group. People that fall into this group are respectable opinion leaders which serve as role models and are respected by their peers. This group typically consists of evangelists and missionaries as they possess the attributes necessary as mentioned. Overall the innovators, early adopters and late majority groups are innovators and have the drive necessary to establish and implement change.

The latter half of the diffusion curve consists of groups which are typically on the change “bandwagon”. The late majority group, which also constitutes for 34% as the early majority distinction is generally similar however they fall into the bandwagon generalization and do not exhibit change as much as the early majority would. The laggards can be synonymous with straggling behind the group and interact with peers. Laggards seldomly hold positions of leadership where they would express their opinions. As with the “straggler” mentality they typically will think longer about ideas and thus take more time to implement their thoughts.

In order to lead change, Kotter also created an eight step process which can be used also to become a leader in change. The eight step process includes:

· Establish and/or reflect a sense of urgency

· Create guiding coalition

· Developing a Vision and Strategy

· Communication for understanding and buy-in

· Empower broad based action

· Produce short-term wins

· Consolidate gains and produce more change

· Anchor new approaches in the culture and create a new culture

Establishing and reflecting a sense of urgency reflects whether or not there is a sense for change or whether or not society would move beyond the status quo. This step also realizes whether or not a vulnerability exists and if there is something wrong or a dissatisfaction with the existing status quo.

Creating a guided coalition inevitable makes the choice on what needs to be done and whom will be required to drive the project. Positive attributes for this will need to be considered as a motivator who is powerful or influential will need to be chosen that people will be willing to follow.

Once the project leader is chose a strategy will need to be developed based on the vision of the project. This is important as the strategy needs to have the vision of the overall short and long term goals in mind to effectively establish a strategy that will address the needs. Once the strategy is developed, it must be communicated effectively. How will this project be communicated to the community and how will it become engrained within the community? These are some questions to consider when analyzing the appropriate communication method that will be chose.

With communication comes the concept of empowerment. This allows how the actual enactment will take place and how it will answer the sense of urgency that has been detected from the audience. Also, if there are external persuasions and barriers the empowerment will hopefully surpass them and have the audience readily accept the idea. Perhaps rewards and incentives can be used to positively bribe the audience to the idea.

The change cannot be thought of on a long term scale and short term goals must be established. The short term goals must outline small objectives set so that when they are reached it can be reflected as a short term win. The objectives need to be effectively communicated to the audience to let them know that progress has taken place and that positive change is occurring. The gains and objectives that occur must not be taken lightly and victory cannot be declared to early as Kotter stated. These problems that were created took years to evolve and the processes that are used to change them will also take time to be successful. The continual evolvement of the growth occurring must happen in order to actually anchor the ideals into everyday society and culture. Change and behaviors can fail just as quick as they are changed. I am going to quote Kotter whom states it best by saying, “Until new behaviors are rooted in social norms and shared values, they are subject to degradations as soon as the pressure for change is removed”.

Change is continually occurring in the world we know today and it is important that if we are to influence for our own change, such as for Colwood, it must effectively be presented. Therefore, I believe that Kotters process for implementing change can be a beneficial tool for not just presenting but initiating change. Hopefully our group can incorporate this process in our wiki with the hopes of presenting an idea of change that is not just accepted with short term thoughts in mind by our audience but perhaps an elongated future in which it can readily persist.