Mike’s Story
Mike Parker had a diving accident several years ago and broke his 5th and 6th vertebrae. He has what is termed an incomplete injury as described by HYPERLINK “~$ANGE%20PLAN%20for%20Mike%20Parker.doc” MayoClinic.com/health/spinal-cord-injury/. With the help of his family, he is taking a recovery approach to his injury, not an adaptive strategy. He has recently taken a driver’s class and has received his driver’s license.
After studying change for a semester, and reading Leading Change by John Kotter and The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, his Organizational Change class wanted to put into practice the techniques that they had learned, so they decided to raise the level of awareness of spinal cord injuries and also help Mike get a vehicle to drive. Even though they only had a month to accomplish this ambitious goal, they have started with a high sense of urgency. During this month, our class will: develop a vision and communicate it clearly and often; develop a coalition of people to make our vision a reality; empower our classmates and others to help make this happen; celebrate short term wins; develop a culture of understanding; and make this project sticky, find the connectors, mavens, and salespeople to make it happen, and create a context in which the activities selected will be successful. These points that we have learned about leading change will be the focus of out efforts in this project. Our class has created a website at spinalcordawareness.com which should be operational by April14th.
Other websites that will explain in detail about active recovery and outline some of the activities that Mike and his family are undertaking can be found at these sites:
HYPERLINK “http://www.pushtowalknj.org/” \t “_blank” http://www.pushtowalknj.org/ or HYPERLINK “http://www.projectwalk.org/” \o “http://www.projectwalk.org/” \t “_blank” www.projectwalk.org.
Mike and his family are working on developing a program to help other students and people who work with people with spinal cord injuries at The University of Alabama. They are also preparing to donate an Ergys Bike, an expensive bike designed to provide exercise to patients who are working to recover from these life-changing injuries.