WHOIS HAROLD LEAVITT... AND WHY SHOULD YOU CARE? JThe late Harold J. Leavitt was @ pioneer in the develooment of the academic field of organizational behavior, a management expert with degrees from Harvard, Brown and MIT (undergrad, graduate, and doctorate, respectively) and a highly respected college professor (University of Chicago, Camegie-Mellon University, and Stanford). And, in 1965, he gave to the world his model for analyzing the impacts organizational change Through this model (known as Leavitt's Diamond), Leavitt demonstrates that each element of an organizations system ~ people, goals/tasks, structure and technology/processes ~ are interdependent. In other words, changes made to any one of these four elements cannot and will not occur in isolation. Rether, a change made in any one area of your organization will impact the entire system, In a time marked by countless workplace change initiatives, it is critical for corporate leadership to understand the connection between these four key components within the organization before building an effective change strategy. For example, a change in the organizations structure will result in an alteration in communication patterns between levels/departments/employees (affecting the people component) while the introduction of new technology could require an entirely new set of goals(tasks) to be formulated Furthermore, studies have shown that, when one camponent undergaes change without the other three components also changing (intentionally by management) in response to it, the remaining three components vill actually respond in a way to minimize the newly implemented initiatives. This highlights the importance of developing a thorough and well thought-out change strategy for your organization.