Moving Employees Out of Their Comfort Zone as the Beginning of Implementation of Innovations

Abstract Over the last five years the educational system in Russia is one of the most actively changing. Different aspects of the learning process at school are undergoing changes. Unfortunately, the educational contradiction lies in the fact that with a clear increase in the number of reforms aimed at improving the quality of education, it continues to decline. Thus, the introduced innovations do not achieve the tasks. This issue is studied in detail in change management theory. One of the main factors delaying the implementation of innovations is the resistance to change by employees of organizations. The majority of changes in school are implemented by teachers. Therefore, the resistance to change is one of the factors that school principals should draw attention to when they are planning to introduce any innovations. This research is devoted to the study of the problem of resistance to change among employees, the prerequisites of its occurrence and the search for tools aimed at reducing it. It is the first time in Russian and foreign practice when the experience of using tools which reduce the resistance to change in an educational organization is described and analyzed. The process of removing teachers of educational organizations from the comfort zone was created and described as a result of the performed analysis. The tested process is replicable. It can be implemented by principals of Russian schools at the first stage of implementation of changes.