Peer to Peer Magazine

P E E R T O P E E R : I L T A ' S Q U A R T E R L Y M A G A Z I N E | F A L L 2 0 1 8 33 the latest updates, it is incumbent upon organizations to execute sufficient testing in lab environments. Organizational leaders and trainers should assess the change, its impact, and effectively communicate it. For the legal industry, the change frequency and cadence may be novel, and thereby requires support staff to retool in order to efficiently support our organizations in an ever- changing workplace world. In tandem with the rising changes surrounding us at home, the "evergreen" workplace experience will continually influence us. It will inoculate us against a change resistant mindset. Change management will become less about allaying fear, and more about embracing opportunity through a more tolerant mindset. Law firm organizations should identify and engage Type R personalities in the organization, and normalize change by drawing upon humanity's shared experience of frequent technolo changes at home. This contributes to a change durability that will lend itself to greater change comfort in the workplace. In the spirit of fairness and intellectual rigor, we should separate small changes on a smartphone or TV in our personal lives at home from major system changes in our workplace. After all, the stakes can be much higher with the latter because the potential risk for limited adoption and poor use bear severe consequences. Within the next five years, due to the constant flow of change, we may be increasingly durable and receptive to change, even to the extent of enjoying it. While some degree of change resistance will always exist in humanity, the scale can feasibly shift from a place of trepidation and change resistance, to a new plane of openness, adaptability, and change tolerance. Naturally, the more progressive and positive the change, the more likely it is to be well-received, and therefore, sufficiently adopted. Regressive and negative changes that bring about detriment are on a different plane altogether. However, we do not always know what type of impact a technological change will have until it happens. This is part of the risk associated with any new technolo. The stark reality that remains is this: the unavoidable byproduct of an emerging technolo's disruptive nature is that its outcome is unknown. We probably did not know we'd prefer an automobile to faster horses until its manifestation, and we may not have ever imagined the value of voice recognition technolo and virtual assistants until we discovered how to dim our lighting or order a pizza without getting off the sofa; but it is not always fun and games. For example, consider the public shock and dismay that virtual assistants are listening and autonomously saving recordings of voices. Released annually, Gartner's Hype Cycle 2 captures adoption by displaying the traversal of technolo along a trend line that broadly represents society's sentiments toward it. Whatever the technolo and wherever it may fall on the Hype Cycle at this moment, the bottom line is that change is here to stay. Change Tolerance and Emerging Technologies in the Workplace We may be encountering new change approaches in the workplace sooner than we think. For organizations using, or planning to deploy, the Windows 10 operating system and Microsoft Office 365, technolo and training staff are shifting gears to the "evergreen" path. This means there are no major, forthcoming software releases, but instead a series of small and constant updates that will be pushed out to Microsoft customers on a regular basis. Much like a river that continually flows, we are momentarily reminded of the Heraclitan adage, "No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man." Microsoft's "evergreen" path has forced those who support change in an organization to rethink change management. "Adapting to an environment where services may update every few weeks or months—with updated content under the control of an external provider—can be challenging, especially for large IT organizations." 3 Before implementing

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