Digital Career Exploration & Mentorship Program
Erica Cedillo | CCMR Coordinator
“If we teach today’s students as we taught yesterday’s, we rob them of tomorrow.” — John Dewey
Introduction
Education is rarely changed overnight. Schools are busy places with many moving parts, established routines, and existing expectations/responsibilities. Meaningful change does not simply happen because someone has a good idea. Successful change requires vision, strategic planning, and leadership. My role as a CCMR Coordinator allows me to support students in graduating with not only the knowledge, but confidence and opportunities to successfully transition into college, career, or the military. However, too many students graduate without ever being exposed to careers or mentored by someone who can provide insight and help them identify pathways that align with their strengths and interests.
My solution is a Digital Career Exploration and Mentorship Program. My strategy is to broaden students access to career experiences, mentoring, and personalized support by utilizing technology and partnership.
In order to successfully launch and lead this initiative, I created an organizational change strategy that aligned with several leadership models.
On this page, you will find an overview of my strategy and how each component supports my efforts to create sustainable change.
Digital Career Exploration and Mentorship Program Strategy
My organizational change strategy includes four main components:
1. Establishing a Clear Purpose: Finding My Why
2. Influencer Strategy to Promote Behavior Change
3. Execution through The Four Disciplines of Execution (4DX)
4. Leading with Self-Differentiated Leadership and Crucial Conversations
Each section contains a different aspect of the change process. However, when blended together they create a recipe for purposeful and lasting change.
Finding My Why
Why do you want to initiate change? Before you ask others to support your cause, you need to be able to clearly communicate why the work is important.
My motivation is providing students opportunities to access meaningful career information and guidance so they can make informed decisions about their futures. Students should learn about careers throughout their educational experience. However, that is not the current reality. Many students graduate from high school without knowing what they want to do next. Why? Because they haven’t been exposed to careers that align with their interests and skills.
Click the link below to read my WHY statement.
🔗 MY WHY
Behavior Change through Influencer Strategy
If you believe enough people will simply buy into your why and change will naturally occur, you are mistaken. Change is hard. The Influencer framework allows you to dig deeper into the core of what is needed to support behavior change.
Understanding and applying the Six Sources of Influence helped me identify:
* What I want to accomplish
* What behaviors are necessary to achieve the desired result
* Who and what influences those behaviors
This strategy helped me identify what needs to happen on an individual level, social level, and organizational level to support lasting change.
Click the link below to view my Influencer Strategy.
Execution through the Four Disciplines of Execution (4DX)
Leading your WHY is great, but what are you going to DO? The Four Disciplines of Execution helps you develop a system that will work within your organization to produce measurable results.
Creating a 4DX plan allowed me to:
* Identify my WIG (Wildly Important Goal)
* Determine lead and lag measures to help track my goal
* Create a scoreboard to keep my team focused on our WIG
* Develop accountability to maintain momentum
Execution through the Four Disciplines of Execution will help keep the Digital Career Exploration and Mentorship Program a priority in your school, even with many other priorities pulling for attention.
Click the link below to view the full 4DX Strategy.
Leading with Self-Differentiated Leadership and Crucial Conversations
New initiatives are often met with some form of resistance. When asking others to support your cause, you are going to have tough conversations.
Some educators may feel the program takes too much time or are worried about not having the resources to implement. Others might feel that because they have been in education for XX years they know what is best for students.
In order to lead through these conversations, it is important to practice self-differentiation. Self-differentiation allows the leader to regulate their emotions and listen to others without losing focus of what is important.
Crucial Conversations allows us to have open dialogue with others about topics that can be controversial. Most people want to discover common ground and work collaboratively, but don’t know how to navigate the conversation.
Click the link below to learn more about my strategy for Leading with Self-Differentiated Leadership and Crucial Conversations.
🔗 Leading with Self-Differentiated Leadership & Crucial Conversations Strategy
Completing the Puzzle
Just like a puzzle, each piece of my organizational change strategy supports the other pieces to create a big picture. The picture tells the story of my program and vision.
* Finding my Why describes the purpose and vision.
* The Influencer strategy defines the behavior change needed.
* Execution through 4DX allows you to lead WITHIN the organization to reach your goal.
* Self-Differentiated Leadership & Crucial Conversations allows you to lead THRU others to reach your goal.
Together we can create better opportunities for students to develop a deeper understanding of their strengths, interests, and opportunities to live their best life after high school.