Greetings!
The article in The Washington Post (5/20/08)
titled Fat School got me thinking. The story
profiles a residential program for overweight
children. The cost: $6250 a month with a
four-month minimum stay.
Although the school presents high short-term
success rates, and a few anecdotal reports of
kids who kept the weight off for longer
periods, there is no research to indicate
that this approach does a better job than
anything else in helping young people keep
weight off. And at $6250 a month, it seems
like that might be a good thing to do.
That got me thinking about change in
organizations. It does strike me how easy it
is to invest in something without any real
indication that it works simply because the
need is so great. Are parents willingness to
invest so much in the lives and health of
their children any different from leaders who
spend millions on
Business Process Reengineering when the success
rate is so low? But, I'll save that rant for
another day.
I am most interested in the lack of support
for these kids after the program ends. As
Anjali Jain, a pediatrician at Children's
National Medical Center said in the article,
"If their families don't change, [students]
are going to be back to their old ways of
doing things" once they return home.
What many changes fail to take into account
is what it will take to support these changes
once the program goes live.
For a couple more paragraphs on this, please
visit my blog. And the blog will allow you to
comment. Change
Management News
About the Blog
I post to my blog about three times a week,
so if you enjoy reading this newsletter, you
might enjoy the blog as well. And if you
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make a new post. Talk about excitement!
Sincerely,
Rick Maurer
Maurer & Associates
phone:
703-525-7074
