For Dr. Gene Hall, a professor in 性视界传媒鈥檚 department of educational leadership and former dean of the 性视界传媒 College of Education, the phrase 鈥渃hange is the only constant鈥 takes on special meaning: For more than 30 years, change 鈥 or, more specifically, understanding change as a process in organizational settings 鈥 has been a nearly constant subject in his research.
Hall鈥檚 latest book in this field, a second edition of Implementing Change, written with longtime collaborator Shirley M. Hord, gives readers a model to guide them in facilitating change.
Hall鈥檚 interest in the subject emerged when he was a new faculty member at the University of Texas at Austin, many years ago. 鈥淥ne of my first assignments was to work as an external change agent to 40-plus higher ed institutions around the United States that were implementing innovative teacher education programs,鈥 Hall recalls. 鈥淪ome of the key constructs in my model of change, the Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM), were derived from that experience.鈥
Hall received several large contracts from the National Institute for Education to develop measures and to verify whether key CBAM constructs were representative of real-life change processes. Hord, from the Southwest Educational Development Laboratory in Austin, Texas, was 鈥渙ne of the talented colleagues,鈥 Hall says, who joined the research team and has collaborated with him for 30-plus years.
鈥淲e are known as the 鈥榞odfather鈥 and 鈥榞odmother鈥 of CBAM, one of about four paradigms that are used around the world for understanding, studying, and facilitating change.鈥
Hall and Hord start from the assumption that change 鈥渋s a process, not an event.鈥
鈥淭his is more true today than ever,鈥 Hall says, advising that viewing change as a process is key for those working in organizations. 鈥淒on鈥檛 make change an event; do not assume that it is ever 鈥榙one.鈥 Enjoy the process.鈥
鈥淲e also emphasize that there is a personal side to change. You can鈥檛 just deal with the innovation. You have to understand the role of people in the process.鈥
Each chapter in the book describes a key change construct that Hall, Hord, and their colleagues have developed and researched over the years.
Hall notes that in a climate calling for education to pay more attention to the way accomplishments are achieved in the private sector, Implementing Change is one example of 鈥渁cademic research and ideas that are applicable in business.鈥
He notes that the concepts introduced in the book have already been adopted with success by a national company as it went through major restructuring.
