Article at a glance:

The psychology of change management

Large organizational-change programs are notoriously difficult to run: they involve changing the way people not only behave at work but also think about work. Sometimes, however, changing individual mind-sets is the sole way to improve a company’s performance. Psychologists in the fields of child and adult development have made several important discoveries about the conditions that have to be met before people will change their behavior. First, they must see the point of the change and agree with it, at least enough to give it a try. Then the surrounding structures—reward and recognition systems, for example—must be in tune with the new behavior. People must also see colleagues they admire modeling it and need to have the skills to do what is required of them.

The take-away

Applying any one of these insights on its own doesn’t have much impact. But managers now find that applying all four together greatly improves their chances of bringing about lasting changes in the mind-sets and behavior of people in their organizations—and thus of achieving sustained improvements in business performance.