Letter: Craft an organizational change strategy and test it

Change is enabled by carefully crafting strategies (including, but not limited to communication and compensation) to help employees and organizations to shift their mind-sets.

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Regarding, "Employee buy-in key to infrastructure change, experts say," a reader writes: This is a good introduction to the problem of organizational change. However, the term "management" here is a bit misleading. Organizational change can't be "managed" the way that you manage IT projects, namely by allocating resources and scheduling activities. People and organizational cultures don't modify behaviors simply in response to X units of effort, and they certainly don't change their attitudes to meet fixed (typically too short) deadlines.

Rather, change is enabled by carefully crafting strategies (including, but not limited to communication and compensation) to help employees and organizations to shift their mind-sets and cultures to accept and respond effectively to disruptive change.

We have developed a simulation model that helps organization practice proposed change initiatives in a safe low risk environment. This model, called CALM, helps you explore the likely consequences of your change strategies and better understand the dynamics (and realistic time
frames) of trying to change your organization while other environmental forces continue to act on it. Such "test drives" help you learn from simulated rather than real mistakes in trying to encourage sustaintable change.

Richard Adler

letters@fcw.com