THE CHANGE AGENT'S GUIDE

Working toward broader adoption

One successful trial of a planned change may disappear without a trace in a year or two unless it comes to be accepted by the system as a whole. Fortunately, there is a very large body of research on how organizations and societies adopt innovations.

To aid the process of acceptance and adoption, a change agent should be aware of the salient findings of research, including the predictable processes at individual, group, and system levels. During Stage 6, the change agent can use this understanding to both deepen individual acceptance of the change and expand the change to a wider circle of adoption and acceptance.

Widening the Circle of Acceptance

Real change does not result from a single trial, however successful. We can only say real “change” has happened when it is continued. When it is repeated at the same place and different places, and when we can extend these actions and their benefits to an ever-widening circle of others.

The preceding five stages identified procedures that the change agent should follow in preparing for a program of change. At this point the groundwork has been laid for the actual installation of the innovation in the client system. Now is the time for transforming the trial into a successful system-wide change. It is in this stage that you find out whether or not you have a workable solution that can be accepted and used effectively by all the members of the client system.

Photo: person reading iPad with EXTEND stage flowchart

Graphic: Clipboard with 3 EXTEND questions

Exploring EXTEND Topics

The planned change model is inserted in the larger context of an on-going change strategy, both for the change agent and for the client system.

The Change Agent's Guide explores Stage 6: EXTEND through these sub-steps:

Stage 6.1 Gaining individual acceptance
Stage 6.2 Gaining group acceptance
Stage 6.3 Deeper adoption
Stage 6.4 Wider adoption
Stage 6.5 Orchestrating multiple diffusion strategies
Stage 6.6 Further extending and staying flexible

To explore these topics, read The Change Agent's Guide.

Graphic: open book with change cycle on left page and extend flowchart on right page

EXTEND Summary

A successful trial run of any significant change project is a triumph to be savored, but it is just the beginning of system change. A lot more needs to be done to secure adoption of the trial, and even more needs to be done to spread the effect and the adoption across a larger and larger segment of the client system.

There are two basic ways to view how extended adoption works. There is a predictable individual process by which people as individuals adopt something new, which we might also call the psychology of adoption, and, of equal importance, there is the group process, which we might call the sociology of adoption.

As you might expect, there are pros and cons of specific tactics of moving groups toward acceptance and adoption. All these tactics therefore need to be put together with our knowledge about individual adoption to orchestrate an overall strategy, keeping in mind that any strategy, however carefully laid out, must be flexible, allowing a change of course or even a move to an alternative plan.