#360 Bridget Burns: Breaking the Higher Ed Hunger Games—Part Two
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Who is Dr. Bridget Burns and what is her mission in higher education?
Hi, everyone. Welcome to our show, Chief Change Officer. I'm Vince Chen, your ambitious human host. Our show is a modernist community for change progressives in organizational and human transformation from around the world. Today, I welcome Dr. Bridget Burns from the University Innovation Alliance. Bridget and I met at South by Southwest when we were on the same judging panel for startups in education technology. That was a time before COVID. Many changes have occurred ever since. Bridget has navigated these changes firsthand in higher education. She's now leading a university innovation alliance focused on improving graduation outcomes for students from low-income families, a mission tied closely to her own background. In this episode, we'll explore how she convinced 11 schools to work together shifting the paradigm from competition to collaboration.
We'll discuss the resistance to change because of poorly designed processes and how improving these processes led to much greater acceptance. We'll talk about the importance of empathy, curiosity, and ownership in driving change. We'll also cover how AI is reshaping education and the challenges institutions face in integrating this technology. Lastly, we'll explore the crucial transition from education to employment and how her organization is helping students achieve better life outcomes. Sit back and enjoy this unfiltered conversation packed with insights and practical advice. Yeah, empathy, curiosity, and ownership are crucial for change. Like you said, no one really likes change unless it benefits them in some way.
Why is empathy, curiosity, and ownership essential for successful change?
It also needs to generate collective benefits. People often ask, why does change? How can we make things better? Why does my contribution matter in this case or that case? How can I help? Maybe I can help more than you expected. Ownership isn't just about being informed or notified. It's about contributing to the evolution of the change and being responsible for the outcome. If the outcome isn't as good as expected, how can we work together to make it better? This sense of ownership, this power of ownership is so impactful.
Yeah, invite your people into the problem that you need to solve. People love to solve problems. People love to be helpful. But what they don't want to be is a cog in a wheel told to do X or Y. And they also literally work in that area. They might have some ideas. Listen, I know that you can have employees that you're like, they're just not going to want it.
What are the human challenges and resistance faced during change initiatives?
All I'm saying is that the resistance is justified. And if you are so out of touch with your people that you can't understand that, then you've been at it too long. And you need to give yourself a micro dose of a empathy sprint to go out and remember why you started doing this work. Remember why you cared about the people. Remember why you chose to be a leader. Because... I get dismissing people because I feel like people who work in any industry, my observation is there's a lot of people walking around with broken hearts because they've had a leader who's betrayed them. They've had a thing that they worked on for 10 years that got shelved at the last minute. And they remember that they showed up, that they missed dinner with their kids to build that thing.
And you're just going to turn it off. You're just getting rid of it. There's all these people who are carrying around these stories of bad experiences from change. And then there are leaders who are carrying around this mythology about people being lazy or people not wanting to do stuff. And I just, it doesn't serve us. And it is not, it's not reality. And we are not our best selves when all we're doing is living out a story we're telling ourselves about change. Other people. And so you just got to you got to tap in. Curiosity is going to be your best friend. And if you don't if you don't have it right now, you've got to give yourself you got to pull back out of the work and get back to caring about people and remembering they all have a reason to feel the way they do.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
Who is Dr. Bridget Burns and what is her mission in higher education?
0:12–3:01
2
Why is empathy, curiosity, and ownership essential for successful change?
3:01–4:13
3
What are the human challenges and resistance faced during change initiatives?
4:13–7:26
4
How is AI reshaping higher education and what are the challenges in its adoption?
7:26–8:21
5
Why is collaboration necessary to avoid siloed AI efforts in higher education?
8:21–9:52
6
How does AI affect faculty, administration, and student support services?
9:52–11:02
7
What is the impact of AI on curriculum relevance and workforce readiness?
11:02–15:07
8
How is the University Innovation Alliance helping students transition from education to employment?
15:07–27:47
Speakers
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