Making Change Happen: The Rider, the Elephant, & the Path (Part 2)

This past summer, I vowed to live in my Kindle, clawing away at my digital to-be-read list. Two books from my library helped me think about Adult Education in a new way: Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard by Chip Heath and Dan Heath, and Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business by Gino Wickman.

Switch offers a catchy framework for understanding change through the metaphor of the Rider, the Elephant, and the Path. The Rider represents the rational side of change that needs direction; the Elephant represents the emotional side of change that needs motivation; and the Path represents the environment that can either support or hinder change. This is part one of the framework.

Traction, through Wickman’s Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), approaches the challenge from a different angle: how organizations turn vision and priorities into consistent execution of change. Its highly-adaptable tools focus on clarity, accountability, measurement, follow-through, and assessment for any team or organizational goal. This is part two of the framework.

The two books got me thinking: what if we combined the main ideas into a simple way for adult education leaders to engage in organizational change? We are asking, when it comes to change within a team, program, or organization, are we ready for change? Are we willing to change? Are we capable of change? If we can truthfully answer “Yes” to those questions, we have two follow-ups. Are we actually executing this change? Have we fully debriefed the intention of the change and the execution of the change?

This isn’t a process found in either book, but the combination of their most important elements kept me up late into the night, excited to bring this to the office to try it out. It is truly an adaptation inspired by the core concepts in both works, translated into an adult education context and I invite you to imagine bringing this easy-to-implement-framework to your teams.

This is part two of Making Change Happen: The Rider, The Elephant & The Path. If you haven’t yet read the previous article that sets up the first part of the framework, take a minute to skim through and then return here for a deeper dive into the second part of the framework.

Executing: Are We Actually Doing It?

This is where Traction adds something important to the process.

We can have clarity, motivation, and a well-designed system and still not execute or debrief our efforts!

Adult Education programs are particularly vulnerable to this because we are constantly responding to immediate needs. A learner needs help right now. A class needs coverage right now. A grant deadline arrives and we’re asking for an extension right now. A new state MSG goal appears right now. A community partner calls right now.

The urgent needs can easily push out the intentional ones. Or, we may talk about an initiative repeatedly without ever moving it forward and that becomes the difference between intention and execution.

Execution asks: Who owns this? What is the next action? How will we know we’re making progress? When will we check in?

Geno Wickman’s Traction provides a practical organizational approach to creating focus, accountability, measurable priorities, follow-through and assessment within teams and organizations. We don’t need to adopt an entire business operating system to benefit from those questions. We can just use a simple-to-implement framework:

Pick the Priority:

Organizations often have too many priorities and if everything is a priority, nothing is. Oftentimes, the priorities may be too broad.

Instead of saying:

“We need to improve community engagement.”

Choose a specific outcome:

“We will establish three new community referral partnerships by December 1.”

Now the team has something concrete to work toward.

Give It an Owner:

All members of the team can be involved without anyone being accountable.

“We’re all working on it” can quickly become “I thought someone else was doing it.”

Ownership doesn’t mean one person has to do everything. It means someone is responsible for making sure the work moves forward.

Pick the person who understands the goal, wants the work, and has the capacity to do it. In Traction, this is known as GWC: Get it, Want it, Capacity to do it. The tool helps business leaders determine whether an employee is in the “right seat” on the organizational accountability chart. In our case, it helps us identify the person best positioned to execute a goal that the team has set through consensus that will result in positive change for our students.

Measure Something:

Measurement doesn’t have to mean creating a complicated spreadsheet. It means deciding what evidence would tell you that you’re making progress.

For example:

• Number of new referral partnerships
• Percentage of staff completing weekly updates
• Number of lesson exit-tickets
• Number of students re-engaged after outreach
• Number of new student feedback
• Number of new volunteers recruited

The goal isn’t to measure everything. The goal is to measure something meaningful enough to tell us whether we’re moving forward on a positive path. Each member of the team should be assigned one measurable data point. All data points should be reflected upon at each staff meeting.

Check In:

Execution requires follow-through. Not another meeting for the sake of another meeting.

A simple question can be powerful for your team:

Did it happen?

If the answer is no, go back to the start of the process and reset.

Your group should be asking:

• Was the Rider unclear?
• Was the Elephant unconvinced?
• Was ownership undecided?
• Was the Path too difficult?
• Was the goal too large? Too small? Do we have too many goals?
• Did we fail to create a routine for follow-through?

The goal of accountability isn’t punishment. It’s learning together and starting again for the sake of your students and the cohesion of your team.

Debrief:

Execution isn’t just about determining whether something happened. It’s about learning from what happened.

When a goal is complete or when it isn’t, take the time to debrief with all members of the team.

• What worked?
• What didn’t?
• What surprised us?
• What got in the way?
• What should we do differently next time?
• What should we keep doing?
• What does the data say?
• What do the students say?

This is where the framework becomes more than a way to get things done. It becomes a way to get better at working together. The Rider, Elephant, and Path give us a shared language for understanding execution. The execution, including the debrief, gives us a chance to use what we learned in order to improve the next goal. In Adult Education, we can’t just complete the work, we need to learn from the work.

Putting It All Together – An Example

Imagine your Adult Education program wants to increase staff participation in team meetings.

Instead of simply telling staff:

“We need everyone to participate more. Everyone needs to be engaged.”

Walk through the four questions.

READY — The Rider

Do staff know what meaningful participation looks like? Perhaps participation means bringing one question, idea, learner success story, piece of data, or challenge to each meeting.

WILLING — The Elephant

Do staff believe their participation matters? Perhaps leaders need to demonstrate that staff ideas actually influence decisions or leaders can outline how this topic impacts each staff member.

CAPABLE — The Path

Have we created a meeting structure that makes participation easy? Perhaps each meeting includes a predictable round of input, rather than relying on whoever happens to speak first—or speak the most—to contribute. Maybe the room itself creates barriers to participation: the fans are too loud, team members can’t hear one another, or the setup makes it difficult for everyone to engage. Creating meaningful participation may require us to consider not only who is invited to speak, but also whether the structure and environment make it easy for everyone to do so.

EXECUTING — Traction

Are we actually following through?

Execution is where intentions meet reality. Accountability shouldn’t sit with one person or one role; it really belongs to everyone. The question becomes: What is each of us responsible for contributing, and how will we know we’re following through?

For example, teachers might come prepared to share what they’re noticing from students in class and bring one idea or question to the staff meeting. Support staff might track contact hours, formally gather student feedback, or identify barriers they’re hearing in day-to-day interactions and bring two possible solutions or action steps ready for discussion.

The director might review the participation data before the meeting, look for patterns or gaps, and come prepared with questions rather than conclusions. They might identify where additional context is needed, acknowledge barriers the team has raised, and be ready to explain what they can address directly, what may require additional support or resources, and what falls outside their role.

Even the staff meeting itself requires preparation. Someone gathers the participation data. Someone synthesizes it. Everyone reviews it. Everyone comes ready to reflect on it. The team then looks together at what’s working, what’s getting in the way, and what each person can do differently in the days, weeks, months ahead.

But follow-through means more than identifying an action step. It means taking the next action.

If the director identifies a need for a separate meeting with a staff member, team, or partner, the first step after the original meeting is to schedule that meeting in the same workday – if possible. If support staff agree to gather student feedback, they determine how and when they will collect it and stick to that plan or be ready to revise that plan. If a teacher identifies a classroom barrier that needs to be addressed, they bring it forward and identify what support they need, ideally the same day they identified the barrier. If the team agrees to revisit participation in six weeks, that follow-up is put on the calendar before everyone leaves.

The commitment doesn’t end with “We should do that.” It becomes: Who is doing what, by when, and what is the next visible step?

Suddenly, “staff aren’t participating” becomes a much more useful leadership conversation.

Instead of asking:

“What’s wrong with our staff?”

we begin asking:

“What are we each responsible for, what conditions are we creating for participation, and what are we going to do next?”

Accountability becomes shared ownership and the norms become “We prepare and participate.” “We act and we follow through.” “We look at the evidence and we adjust.”

That is a very different approach to leadership and change.

The Leadership Lesson

Perhaps the biggest lesson is that change isn’t simply a matter of convincing people to do something differently. Leadership is about creating the proper conditions for intentional and effective change.

We provide the Rider with clarity. We give the Elephant a reason to move. We shape the Path so the desired behavior is possible. And then we create enough traction to turn intention into consistent action and assessment.

Adult Education doesn’t need more initiatives for the sake of having initiatives. We need organizations that can take good ideas and actually make them happen in a way that serves students.

The next time a change isn’t working, resist the temptation to immediately ask:

“Why aren’t they doing it?”

Instead, ask four better questions: “Are they ready?” “Are they willing?” “Are they capable?” “Are we actually executing?”

Those four questions may be enough to turn a frustrating organizational problem into a solvable one. And sometimes, the simplest leadership processes are the ones we actually remember and use for positive impact.

Inspiration & Further Reading

This process was inspired by two books:

Heath, Chip, and Dan Heath. Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard. Crown Business, 2010.

The Rider, Elephant, and Path metaphor and the ideas surrounding directing the Rider,          motivating the Elephant, and shaping the Path come from the Heath brothers’ work on          making change easier.

Wickman, Gino. Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business. BenBella Books.

The ideas around organizational focus, accountability, measurable priorities, and execution are drawn from Wickman’s Entrepreneurial Operating System and Traction.

The Ready, Willing, Capable, and Executing process presented here is an adaptation of those ideas for an adult education leadership context—not a framework directly presented in either book.