Queasy or Easy: The Effect of Change on Your Team's Productivity

#Leadership

Casey Hernandez

by Casey Hernandez

Casey Hernandez Digital Media Team Manager

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The district dilemma: Technology changes steal time and focus from your team’s important mission of teaching and learning.

It’s okay to state that fact, accept it, and figure out how to balance both daily operations and learning the ropes of a new system. This often means accepting the ebbs and flows of normal productivity along the way, with the understanding that workload for both leaders and employees is inflated for now, and once it returns to normal, there will be a brand-new normal.

Luckily, there’s research to help leaders envision employees’ experiences during big changes in processes, workflows, and daily life that come along with an edtech upgrade. (Read: new edtech solutions, migrating to a new version of a system, and any other change you’re facing and managing as a leader.)

Perspectives involved

Everyone has their unique experiences, but there are two types of people involved in a big change: those who are choosing the solution, and those who are affected by that leadership group’s decisions. Let’s call the affected group “contributors,” especially since stakeholders in K12 districts can be quite diverse.

These perspectives can easily feel in-sync or misaligned. The power dynamic between folks making decisions and folks adapting to decisions leaves some people uneasy. Change can feel like being trapped in a group project you didn’t sign up for. Leaders who remain cognizant of that internal friction can even forecast some reactions. Being aware is the first step, one that informs all the responses, pivots, and scaffolding leaders can provide during a big change.

Leaders who choose a proactive approach to change management are essentially inviting people to choose the solution as well. By acknowledging and anticipating of the pain of change, leaders can invite as many contributors as possible into the fold of leaders choosing to work toward a better experience.

5 Stages of grief go to work

The Kübler-Ross Scale, so named for the psychiatrist who first coined the original stages of grief in 1969, adapts the five stages of grief into a productivity model for leadership groups to use when making big changes for their team in the workplace. This could look like an implementation of software, a leadership change, or other improvements to business (or school!) designed to improve life for everyone.

But improvement is change, and change is grief: the cost of progress is letting go of what came before. Everyone experiences the five stages of grief during implementation of a new solution. That emotional rollercoaster directly corresponds to dips and then, ideally, an eventual rocket blast of productivity. Leaders encounter this mental dance earlier than contributors, but then they lead others through it.

Those five stages of grief are:

Denial: “This won’t really change much, ultimately.”
Anger: “Why change what isn’t broken?”
Bargaining: “Can’t I just do it the old way until next year?”
Depression: “This is too much; I can’t keep up.”
Acceptance: “Okay, I’ve got this!”

Following these, a productivity spike: “Look what we can do now!”

You can do a deep dive into the model here.

Acknowledging how difficult change can be

Exactly like grieving a loss, every contributor and leader will experience this curve differently. Additionally, although the curve is presented in a linear way due to the flow of time, people will move at a different pace between stages. Some may re-process through the initial disruption-and-experimentation loop multiple times as the process of migration, implementation, or other change unfolds.

The challenges for leaders and contributors alike may include:

Personal stress underlying intense professional change.
Confidentiality: People may be privy to details they’re not yet allowed to divulge to the public or whole team.
Climate: Everyone’s reactions affect each other’s experience.
Time: “It’s hell in the hallway” between the start of a new edtech adventure and destination of routine muscle-memory.

Everyone can take action to make a change more comfortable, and anyone can be a leader and champion for new systems, processes, and workflows.

Leaders can:
• Address, acknowledge, and name emotions directly.
• Be curious about people’s worries.
• Create a safe space for listening to concerns, including one-on-one check-ins.
• Remind people how this supports the school’s mission and vision.
• Don’t rush people past discomfort—slow down when you can, even when deadlines loom.
• Lead with consistency and compassion.
• Use stories, metaphors, charts, and conversational language to explain complex concepts.
• Define success clearly and include reflections on the team’s improvement and support for each other.

Contributors can:
• Keep in mind it’s normal to feel uncomfortable, and it’s how we know we’re growing.
• Remember you won’t be productive immediately.
• Be curious and ask questions—odds are, someone else has a similar one.
• Ask about what you should learn or prioritize next.
• Feel empowered to speak up, because your feedback matters.
• Use your agency: be a voice of empathy and a leader.
• Think back to other big changes and take stock of how life improved before.
• Gain confidence one day at a time

Large edtech implementations (think SIS or ERP changes district-wide) often spell changes to daily processes people have spent years perfecting until they can complete the task “in their sleep.” Leaders are along for the rollercoaster ride of change management, especially with that attractive payoff of acceptance and productivity zooms once the initial frustration is conquered.

Follow-up resource: 10 ways to be a great team leader

Which leadership principles do you subscribe to? Here are 10 of mine.