Behavioral IT® – Coping with IT Disruptions

For sustaining businesses in a VUCA World, or a world with Vulnerability, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity, it is important to address the primary cause of VUCA. The culprit is the rapidly changing technology, more significantly the Information Technology (IT). Though the primary driver of change today is IT, not many change management courses discuss how to manage IT-driven change. Technology changes fast, but it takes generations to change the minds and behavior of people. The vehicle of businesses runs on two uneven wheels – one wheel (technology) runs at jet speed and the other wheel (people) runs at bullock cart speed. It is extremely important to address this “inertia of the human mind” to sustain businesses.To deal with the social sustainability problems arising out of IT, you need a solution with a behavioral approach. The author has coined a new term called “Behavioral IT®” to address the social issues of IT (Prem Kamble, 2010a and 2012a). Behavioral IT is both a managerial skill and a strategy which deals with the psychological, behavioral and attitudinal aspects of technological change. This paper draws lessons from the disruption and turmoil of the industrial revolution and concludes that we need a change in mindset to tackle the information revolution. It takes a multidisciplinary approach with major stress on psychology of change. It looks at the key features of IT in contrast to the industrial one to draw useful conclusions about what we need to learn and (more importantly) unlearn from the past to ensure a smoother change. Over 70% failures in IT projects indicate that something is seriously wrong. This paper is useful for all CXO’s, managers, heads of companies and heads of departments—in short, for all the change drivers or change catalysts in businesses. It is of course useful for students of management too.At the outset, it is important to inform the reader that this is not an academic research paper, it is based on-the-job ‘research’ and experience of over 25 years of enabling IT transitions as a CIO. During this period, the author has closely observed the psychology of IT users during IT transitions, right from CEO to the lowest clerk