One of the characteristics of any dynamic and growing young university is change. This is especially manifest at George Mason. A challenge for any research organization, but particularly one in science, is change management. How do we build from our successes knowing full well that our institutional environment will be changing rapidly? Along the same lines, how do we plan for a successful future when our successes imply fundamental changes for our own institute?
A place to start this blog entry is with the notion of “change management”. Wikipedia defines this term in the following way:
“Change management is the process of developing a planned approach to change in an organization. Typically the objective is to maximize the collective efforts of all people involved in the change and minimize the risk of failure of implementing the change. The discipline of change management deals primarily with the human aspect of change, and is therefore related to pure and industrial psychology.”
Note the connection to psychology and hence the implied thread to cognitive science–one our institutional foci. The notion is to engage those affected by change into preparation and planning, so that change becomes a positive, rather than a negative.
With regards to change that comes as a result of our university’s rapid growth, clearly this implies a constant dialog (a give and take) between the stakeholders outside the Institute and those of us on the inside, most certainly involving myself, but also the staff and the PI’s. If we can play a role in planning for change then we can have a good chance of having the change work in our favor.
I think the same goes for change that comes as a result of the Institute’s own dynamics (as an example our expansion project). Here also, if a dialog can be established, then those affected by the proposed changes can constructively “channel the course” of that change so that it results in good things rather than bad. This blog is in fact a result of my desire to establish a virtual open door to the director’s office, so that change is never dropped upon our folks out of the blue, but rather evolves –in real time– on the blog and in the day to day planning for the Institute’s future.
What about strategic planning? Here also is an exercise in change management–although in this case in a more structured way aimed at charting the desired course for future institutional dynamics. As part of the University’s strategic planning exercise last year, our own strategic plan for the Institute in 2010 was crafted. The results can be seen here. Strategic planning is by its very nature, obsolete by the time the plan is public–that’s certainly true of ours. Yet the exercise is extremely useful because it helps us imagine a future that is in fact different from the current state of affairs.
Ultimately change management is about maximizing the opportunities that come our way.
Discoverers and Discoveries 