Employee adoption The Standish Group and Gartner, organizations that track Information Technology (IT) and other project implementations globally, have clearly stated that a signicant contributor to information systems (IS)finformation technology (IT)finformation management (IM) project failures is overlooking the need to address employee adoption and resistance jointly. Whether or not a project is successil has much to do with whether or not employees adopt the inevitable changes that are advocated. And such adoption is a frmction of how much resistance users may have to the changes in work. The degree to which employees are expected to comply with the wishes of management and remain uninvolved affects the magnitude of employee resistance. Thus, resistance can be influenced by the presence or absence of involvement in decision-making. These are issues that are always explicitly handled by effective organizational change management (OCM), yet many project teams do not include such a resource or focus. In fact, too many organizations, when forming their project teams, make the incorrect assumption that project managers (PMs) andlor business analysts (BAs) will handle OCM. But these people have far too many other responsibilities to be able to devote the necessary time and energy to do an effective job at OCM. And with all due respect to their capabilities, they carmot possibly have sufficient knowledge of, and experience with, OCM as do those of us who have dealt with it consistently throughout our careers. In 2010, I asked a PMI representative why they fail to at least higrlight the importance of OCM in successful project implementation. The answer I received was distressing: I was told that information on organizational change was considered out of scope! The assumption seems to be that if all technical and management details are attended to, implementation will be successil. But nothing could be further from the truth! An article integrating results of 49 studies on major change projects showed that complex initiatives fail 67 81 percent of the time (King, S. & Peterson, L. [2007]. How effective leaders achieve success in critical change initiatives, Part 2: Why change leadership must transcend project management for complex initiatives to be successful. Heairhcare Quarterly, I 0(2), 72-75). Change projects fail because of organizational resistance ahnost twice as often as they do because of any technical issue, including poor project management. It appears almost irresponsible to convey a message that says that focusing on the