Organizational Change for the Human Services

Book excerpt: "Human service organizations are faced with environments of volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. The COVID-19 pandemic, other healthcare challenges, expectations for evidence-based practice usage, and racial justice are vivid examples. Clients and communities deserve effective services delivered by competent, compassionate, and committed staff members. Taxpayers, donors, philanthropists, policy makers, and board members deserve to have their contributions used to deliver programs that are effective and efficient. All these forces create demands and opportunities for organizational change. Planned organizational change can happen at the level of a program, division, or an entire organization. Administrators and other staff will need complementary skills in leading and managing organizational change. Staff deserve opportunities to have their unique competencies used to achieve organizational goals. Organizational change involves leading and mobilizing staff to address problems, needs, or opportunities facing the organization by using change processes which involve both human and technical aspects of the organization"--