Dec 7, 11-12:00: Relational Coordination and Readiness for Change

Readiness for change, defined in multiple ways, is well established as being helpful for implementation success, whether at the individual, group, organization or ecosystem level.  Recently, Lauren Hajjar and colleagues (2020) have argued that a critical element of readiness for change is the capacity to engage in relational coordination among multiple stakeholders, especially for coalitions and collaboratives.  In this Cafe, we integrate the R=MC2 readiness model (Scaccia et al, 2015) with the Relational Model of Organizational Change (Gittell, 2016).  We discuss how to design and test an implementation process in which change agents build motivation and capabilities within each of the key stakeholder groups while strengthening relational coordination among them, in an ongoing iterative cycle.  We discuss how to study the interaction between readiness and relationships in the context of implementing a community health worker intervention that is based on empowerment, is designed for scalability, and has demonstrated success (Rabbani et al, 2015).