“No Action without Research, and No Research without Action.”   Kurt Lewin

Leading Change through Interactive Action Research (IAR)

For an organization to have sustainable value, it must be responsive to its environment. Making sense of the environment and responding appropriately begins with strategic planning. As a result of strategic planning, a vital few strategic initiatives are identified. These may include one or many change projects that need to be implemented. The change projects may involve fundamental changes in processes, systems, structures, and/or culture. Many of these change projects are large in scope and challenging to accomplish.

Success of a strategic initiative and its change projects is dependent on the ability for organizational transformation. For organizational transformation to occur, change must engage and involve stakeholders and be managed using a change process. A change process provides the intention and focus to gain acceptance and involvement in the new way of doing business. The sooner there is acceptance and commitment, the sooner results will occur. In this paper, an approach to change that engages and involves stakeholders is presented. A change context, process, and tools are offered to effectively implement strategic initiatives.

An important aspect of a change is to accelerate acceptance, gain support, commitment, and effectively implement to achieve the desired results. The change approach must address both a technical and personal acceptance side. The technical aspect of change (T) and Acceptance (A) are factors to achieving results. If this social reality is translated into a mathematical equation, it would be the following:

T X A = Results

The acceptance side of the equation does not have to be perfectly executed to achieve significantly faster results. Utilizing a change process that addresses both the technical and acceptance aspect reduces implementation risk and cycle time of implementation.

What would it mean to an organization if there was awareness of the acceptance aspect of the change process?