| Organization change efforts often fail. In fact, they are much more likely to fail than succeed with reports of dismal success rates as low as 30% (Pascale, Millemann, & Gioja, 1997). Despite the many measures used to gauge success, organizations seem to fail at many of the key change effort metrics, including budget, timeline, and adoption. One possible reason for low adoption is suboptimal communications during the change process. While other studies have looked at change communication timing, channel delivery, and messaging, there is a need to look at the effectiveness of the communications from the perspective of how humans process the information. This study represents one of the first attempts to measure the efficiency of change communications. Although this approach is widely used by instructional scientists, it has not been established as a common practice for organization scientists involved in communicating change efforts.;This study evaluated the effort needed to learn about a simulated organization change effort in order to determine whether differences in cognitive load impact knowledge gained and adoption of the change. Employing an experimental design, participants were presented with a change simulation at random, either experimental or control, and then answered a series of knowledge, effort, and demographic questions. It was hypothesized that efficient change communications, which consider cognitive load would lead to deeper understanding of the change effort and subsequently a higher adoption rate for the change. As predicted, communications designed to lower cognitive load result in a more efficiency by garnering the highest performance outcomes while minimizing the mental load needed to comprehend the information. Additionally, the results show that lowering the mental load needed to comprehend the change also increases the likelihood the change will be adopted.;Contributions of this study include extending the application of instructional design theory to enhance the outcomes and success of organization change efforts. In addition, the study results in expanded change theory, which includes the visual communication and cognitive science influences that impact the adoption of organization change. |
