Andre John Haddad
Industrial Psychologist

An essay on achieving rapid change

(June 2003)

Today more than ever organizations are accountable to their shareholders and employees for their performance. Their collective futures depend largely on the organization’s capacity to quickly adjust to shifting markets and world events. We require nimble and agile organizations with a real capacity for change. In that context we can ask ourselves if we can apply the speed or velocity of change to people’s capacity to transform their behaviors and habits. But can people change quickly?

While transformation programs generally fail to generate conviction, enthusiasm or engagement, managers persist in using them. This failure is mainly due to our staunch belief that employees will do the right thing… eventually, and because they are adults they must be treated as such. Consequently as managers we fail to spell out each and every specific of what must be done. We fail to be clear about what we want, and not surprisingly, they fail to figure it out.