Managing Organizational Change - Essay Example

Managing Organizational Change (Student Name) (Course No.) (Lecturer) (University) (Date) A. Change Management, Characteristics, and Importance Change management is any approach used by organizations to transform individuals and organizations through the methods intended to ensure efficient utilization of resources, budget allocation, and reshaping the organizational structure (Green, 2007, 107). Change means performing some activities differently from the past. Change management involves a dynamic process rather than focusing on organizational series of events with an aim of executing a desired change. The major characteristics include resistance from individuals, consistency in communication, timing and goal setting, and recognition. With change management, the amount, pace, and complexities of change often continue rising with no signs of letting up; therefore, there is much focus on the achievement of results. Change does occur within any vacuum, as it requires organizational commitment. Change management often generate other changes. Change management is important as it realigns organizational activities with the goals, improves efficiency and effectiveness, ensures reliable competitive advantage, and improved organizational processes. Change management ensures readjustment with external environment and realigning internal activities to ensure that the production meet the needs of the potential customers. However, it is significant to recognize the importance of human capital. B. Organizational Change and Transformation Organizational change involves incremental and building on the existing knowledge and ideas within an institution; it could be reversed purposefully or randomly. Changes happen by force or circumstances. Transformation happens by passion, wiling attitude, and act of self-interest. Change might be small but subject to incremental. However, it requires constant monitoring and maintenance. Organizational transformation is a dimensional shift, which makes it irreversible. Transformation is a type of change that focuses on invention and redefining the whole process, paradigms, and industry. Organizational change is important for integration of organizational processes and technology to improve efficiency and time management (Green, 2007, 122). Change also ensures proper satisfaction of customers’ needs, identification of growth opportunities, challenging the prevailing status quo, and positive impact on the economy. Organizational change offer a platform of ensuring effective crisis management as it assists in rectifying some organizational processes that contribute to ineffectiveness. Initiating change tend to discard such problems. In addition, most organizations initiate the changes to improve on their culture. Changing the culture based on beliefs, values, feelings, and relationships could improve efficiency and productivity. C. Management Theories and Models (a) Life Cycles The organizations consider lifecycle management as a comprehensive solution, which assists in management of its production processes, and management of database, system, and automated administration application. Through implementation of the lifecycle management, the company aims at reducing the effort used in configuring management by considerable percentages. Moreover, proper implementation would ensure that the organizations reduce the patching duration while saving the activities conducted by other departments. Lifecycle management has the ability of eliminating manual and time-consuming activities in relation to discoveries, initial provisioning, configuration management, and organizational change. Within the production departments, the companies could use product lifecycle management as a systematic approach of managing a series on changes that a product undergo from designing point to disposal to ensure that it meet the desired features of the customers. (b) Teleology According to the theory, the actions of humans are purposive and objectives are the final causes that guide organizational movement. Therefore, with the theory, the changes focus on goal and end state. Besides, the organizations are purposeful and adaptive, construct envisioned state, implement efficient actions, and monitor their performances. The development process involves repetitive sequence of objective formulation, implementation, evaluation, and modification of the objectives. The theory states that people or organizations that are like-minded tend to strive to act as a single unit. Some of the teleological models tend to integrate the systems theory assumptions, which relates to multiple effective methods of achieving the goal, equi-finality (Zeepedia, 2016). With Teleological theory, there is inadequate prefigured rule, which is logically necessary of setting the sequence of the stages. Moreover, the theory stresses on the purposive actors, environment, and constraint of resources. (c) Dialectics Dialectical theory is one of the oldest philosophies used by Aristotle and Plato. Currently, the theory is important in describing the movement towards the truth and change. Therefore, the theory is powerful in approaching the objectivity as it rests of the assumption that institutions often exist in pluralistic world of contradictory values, which are in continuous competition with one another for domination and control. The theory cites that every phenomenon has contradictions, which become phenomenon over time and later oppose the balancing forces within an organization. Change often occur when the opposing forces or events acquire sufficient power of confronting and engaging the status quo (d) Evolution The thematic areas of applying the theory include production, finance, quality management, and marketing. The theory refers to the environment as market and has the capacity of observing the applications of the mutational concept. From the theory, the environment plays an important role in influencing the selection of forms, organizational process, and practices to ensure effectiveness and efficiency. The evolution theory also supports the Quality Management Movement (QMM), which focuses on organizational change until company meets the needs of the customers. (e) Force Field Analysis Model The model is important while effecting change as it ensures effective decision-making process. It assists decision makers by analyzing the forces acting for and against change and ensures effective communication of the factors being the decision made. It model is important in two ways: when deciding whether to effect the change; and increasing the chances of success through strengthening the forces that support change and weakening the forces against. (f) Lewin’s Change Management Model Kurt Lewin, psychologist, developed the management model in 1950s citing that most people often tend to prefer and operate within zones defined by safety measures. According to the model, three stages define change. These stages include unfreeze, transition, and refreeze. With regard to unfreeze stage, most people often make efforts of resisting the change. In order to overcome such tendencies, there is need to initiate a period of thawing through focusing on motivational activities. The transition stage occurs after the initiation of change. Moreover, the organization has to experience transition process within some time to allow alignment of organizational activities with the desired outcomes. At the stage, to experience success, the organization has to portray leadership skills and reassurance of commitment towards the achievement of the desired results. The last stage according to the model is refreezing. Upon acceptance and successful implementation of change, in it is significant that the company experiences stability again (Zeepedia, 2016). Besides, the staff has to refreeze as they undertake their activities under new guidelines. While the change management continues to be applied in most organizations, it takes much time to implement. Since it is easy to use, most institutions often prefer the model to effect major changes. (g) Mc Kinsey 7-S Model In 1978, various scholars developed the model. These scholars include Robert Waterman, Anthony Athos, Tom Peters, and Richard Pascale. The McKinsey 7-S model offers organizational management a holistic method of effecting change. According to the model, there are seven factors operating collectively as agents of change such as shared values, strategy, structure, systems, style, staff, and skills. Application of the model while effecting the change presents several benefits to the institutions. McKinsey 7-S Model offers an effective method of diagnosing and understanding an institution, provision of guidance required for organizational change, and integration of the rational and emotional components. Moreover, it ensures that all the important matters are addressed in a unified manner. However, there are disadvantages associated with application of the model.since all the parts are interrelated, changing a single part would contribute to changes in other components, there is ignorance of the differences, and complexity of the model tends to influence its application. Besides, organizations applying the model are those known to experience frequent and higher incidences of failure. (h) Kotter’s Step Change Model John Kotter, the Havard University professor created the model to campaign for change. The employees only accept change after organizational leaders convince them of the need to have the changes. According to the model, there are eight different stages involved. These steps include increasing the urgency for change, building a team that is committed to change, creation of change vision, ensuring effective communication of the desired change, empowering the staff with the capacity to effect change effectively, creation of short-term goals, staying persistent, and making the change permanent. The model has several merits and demerits. The merits include the easy step by step that it offers, it focuses on the preparation and acceptance the change, and easier method of transiting from one stage to another. The demerits associated with application of the model include difficulty in skipping any step and implementation takes considerable amount of time. PART II Skills of Change Resiliency CHANGE RESILIENCY SELF- ASSESSMENT Change Resiliency Indicators 5 (Always) 4 (often) 3 (sometimes 2 (rarely 1 (never) I focus on things I can do something about. ✓ I seek out the support of people. ✓ I engage in optimistic Self Talk. ✓ I have discovered a sense of meaning and purpose in life. ✓ I live in the present appreciating the past and focused on my desired future. ✓ I have a deep awareness and compassion for others. ✓ I am imaginative and brainstorm possibilities. ✓ I leverage personal strengths and resources. ✓ I actively listen and seek to understand. ✓ I partner with others for mutual success. ✓ I ask questions because I am curious to know how things work, and am open to experiment. ✓ I am constantly learning from my experiences. ✓ I expect to have things work out well for myself and others. ✓ I play with new developments and find the humor in situations. ✓ I adapt quickly to change, and am highly flexible. ✓ I convert misfortune into good fortune ✓ I am emotionally intelligent managing my emotions well. ✓ I manage the emotional side of transition. ✓ I listen well and read others with empathy. ✓ I think up creative solutions to challenges, and invent ways to solve difficult problems. ✓ TOTAL SCORE: 80 20 3 89-100 CHANGE MASTER: You are doing a great job staying resilient in times of unrelenting change. Congratulations!  60-88 LEARNING: You are somewhat not so open to change. However, there is always room for improvement. Try to develop your personal change management skills. 51-100 RED ALERT!Your change resiliency skills need some considerable attention. You need to change certain behaviors and learn new skills. B: Reflections Questions 1. Lessons from Change Resiliency Assessment From the assessment, it is clear that the results reflect encouraging performance as I am in a position to influence effectively change if I encourage my level of awareness about others and improve my level of adaptability. Moreover, developing personal management skills of effecting change would be crucial. 2. Personal Experience on Change Management From my personal experience, change is about influencing the organizational processes including the employees with an aim of improving performance. Besides, change ensure realignment of organizational processes with modern technology and innovations to enhance productivity, develop goods and services that meet specific needs of customers, and improving efficiency and effectiveness of the organizational processes. The current change management strategy used within my organization is engagement of all the employees. The strategy is crucial and effective as it ensure integration of collective views of the staff and quality decision-making processes. Employees are the greatest organizations assets and involving them might assist improve their morale and commitment towards ensuring the achievement of organizational needs. 3. Recommendation to Improve the Changes Change is a continuous process. Therefore, it is important to monitor continuously the market trends and needs of the customers to ensure that the desired organizational changes are in line with such factors. However, technological integration might assist to identify such needs easily. Moreover, frequent monitoring and realignment of the changes might assist fulfil the needs of the organization with regard to change and efficiency improvement. References Green, M. (2007). Change management masterclass: A step by step guide to successful change management. London: Kogan Page. Zeepedia. (2016). Application Of Evolutionary Theory Change Management Business Human Resource Management. Retrieved from http://www.zeepedia.com/read.php?application_of_evolutionary_theory_change_manage ment&b=29&c=14 Read More