Some say Embrace Change, Change is good right? Why is it that so
many people in companies fight it with their last dying breath?  Those
that fight are doing it for very simple reasons that make perfect sense
to me anyways, because we all do it.  You see people are constantly
learning, obsorbing information from experiences around them,
interactions with people, groups, things, etc... Now when a change
occurs in their life or in this case in their job, when this happens
for the first time we are fine with it, things change around us
constantly and we adapt.  But what happens when a change occurs and it
just doesnt go very smoothly?  Well in a company, this is bad plain and
simple. 

When change occurs in a company, especially big strategy changes and
this change is managed poorly people learn from this.  They decide
right off the bat to be critical and as soon as the change starts
making their working lives miserable they fight it and if the change
has already occured, the next time change happens in the working place
they become extremely adverse to any change, overly critical and darn
right resistant.  That's right resistant -- and who could blame them? 
If change is managed poorly in any company (big/med/small) it affects
more than the people driving the change, it tarnishes the employees
trust in the idea that change is good and should be embraced.  So how
do you avoid this issue or even deal with an environment/company that
has a sour taste in it's mouth from a poorly managed/implemented
change?  You apply Change Management principles, yes there is such a
thing.

I managed to plow through a very long book, as interesting as it was
-- it was had some dull moments.  "Diffusion of Innovations" by Everett
M. Rogers (no relation).  In this book Rogers talks about getting an
idea, technology or any new thing really diffused or accepted by a
particular group of people.  This group could be an organization, a
social group, a customer, a client, your mom and dad... it could be
anyone.

• "There is nothing more difficult to plan, more doubtful of success,
  nor more dangerous to manage than the creation of a new order of
  things....whenever enemies have the ability to attack the innovator,
  they do so with the passion of partisans, while the others defend him
  sluggishly, so that the innovator and his party alike are vulnerable"
  -- Niccolo Machivelli, The Prince (1513)

Ha, even in 1513 people knew that change was tough!! I digress, so
back to Rogers theory of change and how to get it right. Rogers
believes there are basically four elements in diffusion, below is a
list of those four elements and Rogers definitions from his book.

1. The Innovation: an idea, practive, or object that is perceived as new by an individual or other unit of adoption.


2. Communication Channels: The essence of diffusion process is the
   information exchange through which one individual communicates a new
   idea to one or several others.


3. Time: The time dimension of the diffusion process, highly coupled
   with the communication piece, has 3 parts 1) the innovation-decision
   process (adoption or rejection by the individual) 2) the relative
   lateness or earliness by which the innovation is adopted 3) the third
   is the rate of adoption by the number of members who are the adoptees


4. Social System: Here is the big hitter, this is where people get
   involved and screw it all up (not a Rogers quote).  Defined as a set of
   interrelated units that are engaged in joint problem solving to
   accomplish a common goal. -- (so they think, the problem is that
   everyone has different views of what the goal is and this makes things
   messy)

The four main elements are pretty straight forward, you need
something to apply diffusion (innovation introduction), you have channels that you use to
communicate this innovation in a time frame to a particular social
group.  This social group either rejects or accepts it over a period of
time.  Rogers believes that in order for a innovation to be widely
accepted in the social system it must be communicated well and within a
certain time frame. In order to gain acceptance of lets say a new
process/strategy in a large company you would need executive
sponsorship (aka a Champion) that really does care, stays on top of it
and doesnt forget.  The second item is a change agent, someone who can
sell the idea to the social system and remind the champion about how great this innovation is so they dont forget. This person takes the vision and
makes it a reality with the help of a qualified team.  The main job of
the change agent is to help the social system understand the
innovation, which in turn would help the eventual acceptance of the innovation.  

I
constantly see change being pushed in companies, schools, churches with
little change management.  Have you ever sat in a meeting where people
are seriously angry because the management team constantly changes
their mind, modifies the innovation over and over again, creating
rework, anxiety, etc...?  Well I have, about 75% of the time it's
because there wasnt any serious thought given into how the innovation
would be diffused into the organization and because of this the
innovation doesnt have near the affect it could of had if it was
managed better in terms of change management.

I won't go on and
on about Roger's theory of "Diffusion of Innovations", I recommend you
read his book if you're curious enough about this topic.  It has helped
me in my job countless times and I believe it definitely applies to RIA
technology projects.

• References: 
  
  
  
  • http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_of_innovations
  
  
  • "Diffusion of Innovations" by Everett M. Rogers