Strategy and Change Management - Assignment Example

Reflective Journal: Strategy and Change Management Student’s Name Institution Reflective Journal: Strategy and Change Management Introduction Reflective journal is considered a record of student’s learning experience based on the activities and participation during the learning sessions. Therefore, in a reflective journal, learners can record their observations and perspectives of approaching certain implications or situations arising in their academic and professional fields (Flores et al., 2016). In this reflective journal, I intend to explore the unit; Leadership, Strategy & Change. Whilst reflecting on the concepts learned from the unit, I seek to demonstrate my understanding of strategy and change as aspects of organisation leadership as discussed in the course unit. The reflective journal will explore the six modules from week 6 to 11 and identify some of the concepts and practices of strategy and change management leadership and management mechanisms, along with their pros and cons. Also, I seek to relate the classroom ideas of leadership and management, particularly towards strategy and change management, and their application and implications in the real workplace practices and activities. Further, upon identifying the different versions of strategy and change management in an organisation, I intend to demonstrate awareness and competencies towards the practicable concepts of leadership and management in these areas by discussion and reflection principles that guide good practices in strategy and change management. I believe that the exercise of exploring and reflecting on the unit modules would be able enhance my awareness and understanding of the relationship that exists between class learning concepts and actual and change practices of the real-world organisation. Also, it is my belief that upon completing the exercise, I would be able identify the most appropriate approaches of strategizing and making necessary changes in an organisation and change my practices towards being a competent and professional leader or manager, as well as provide a recommendation about the preferred approaches to employee in an organisation. Weekly Journal Entries Week 6: What is Strategy? The module in this week introduced the concepts entailed in organisational strategy as a factor of its development. Through the module, I understood various aspects and perspectives that the concepts of a firm’s strategy imply when it comes to leadership and management practices and activities. Based on the explanations and knowledge I acquired in class during this week, I understood that organisational strategy can be described as the sum of practices and activities that a company may intends to undertake towards achieving their long-term organisational goals. I believe that this description makes the idea of making strategies in a company very essential for leadership and management in a firm. Similarly, Fairholm (2009) describes organisational strategy as a plan that considers all the possible factors affecting the operations and performance of a company and propose an action towards meeting the resources available and achieving the short- and long-term intents of the firm. The author argues that the idea of strategizing requires leaders and manages to adopt and employ strategic thinking whilst undertaking their roles and duties. Therefore, I believe that a strategy in a company plays different roles in a firm including: recognising patterns of issues in a company; demonstrating understanding of factors affecting the business activities of an organisation, alongside the nature and degree of their impacts; identifying new opportunities, and recognising the primary intentions of the firm based on the identified potential opportunities. Also, a strategy states and articulates roles and responsibilities that are consistent with the primary intentions of the company and its business. Organisational strategy can be classified into two categories; the planned and emergent strategy. The module demonstrated that the planned strategy is the type that have been common amongst almost, if not, all companies across the globe. The concept of traditional planned strategy describes the practices of identifying the opportunities and potential problems in the market and outlining the actions that a company intends to take towards a long-term ambition. This type of strategy is demonstrated in statements such as vision, mission and value of a company. Also, an organisational strategic plan and operational plans also demonstrates the application of the idea of planned strategy. All these statements and strategic and operational plans seek to achieve long-term objectives in a form through determination and identifications of practices necessary towards their achievement. Baumgartner (2014) explains that vision, mission and value statements are some of the indicators of the strategies that a firms has towards its specific objectives. The module also demonstrated that, besides being a plan, vision or mission, a strategy can also be a pattern and perspective of activities in the organisation that are directed towards achieving the business intents of the firm. I learned that, organisational strategy requires leaders to employ certain approaches towards its effectiveness and efficiency in implementation and success. According to the theoretical aspect of organisational strategy, the module demonstrated that managers and leaders can approach the concept of an organisational strategy as a design, experience, varieties of ideas, or a discourse. Through these approaches, both the traditional planned and emergent strategies can be subject to certain disadvantages, besides their positives. For instance, the module demonstrated that, depending on the approach adopted by the leaders and managers, traditional view of strategizing in a firm can prompted to lack of innovation if the intended actions repeat what was done in the past. This places emergent strategy, which considered the arising issues in the organisation to lay down actions that can maximise the positive outcomes issues, in front. However, just as planned strategy, emergent organisational strategy can also imply inadequacy in legitimate management is there are no real actions employed during implementation. Moreover, I learned that position; depending on factors such as environmental influences, strategic capability and purpose of the business; choices, and implementation factors, including cost requirements, corporate structure influence and alliances and network factors, are some of the elements of a quality strategy that leaders and managers need to consider whilst strategizing for their company and its business. It is also imperative noting that certain factors; especially the organisational-based; influence firms towards adopting practices that were never part of the primary plan, hence the unintended perspective of emergent strategy. Week 7: Strategic Analysis The module of this week explored the idea of conduction analysis to support the practices of strategizing in a company. As demonstrated in the previous module entry, organisational strategy requires the managers and leaders to identify and consider various factors that can maximise the outcomes of a strategy and its intents. Therefore, I believe that a competent strategic manager or leader should demonstrate high level of strategic and analytic thinking. Therefore, through this module, I became aware and understood the different approaches of conducting analysis, as well as the tools necessary during such practices. Before coming up with a strategy, thorough analyses of external environment, industry and sectors, competition and market, stakeholder expectation, and organisational based factors, leaders can identify the various opportunities and threats in the market, as well as the various ways through with such threats can be counterattacked to maximise out of the opportunities identified. Therefore, strategic analysis is considered a method of gathering relevant and necessary information towards making an informed strategic plan. Besides, Hills et al. (2015) support that strategic analysis through effective approaches is a prerequisite step towards making a strategic plan in a company. Therefore, the management and leadership of an organisation should consider employing efficient and effective techniques that can identify the factors that need to be considered whilst making organisational strategic plans. One of the areas that the module demonstrated that needs analysis and evaluation is the external environment that influences the operational activities of a firm. A business operates in a market where political, socio-economic, technological, legal, and the physical factors constitute some of the external forces that affects its activities and performance (Yuksel, 2012). Therefore, it is essential that these external forces, alongside their impacts, be assessed and analysed to improve the quality of the strategic plan. Through the module and its assigned reading, I learnt that PESTLE is a technique of strategic analysis that can assess the fore-mentioned external factors and identify the information necessary for developing a strategic plan. Besides, this approach identifies scenarios, in which key drives of the factors are identified and plausibility estimated, towards making informed decisions and strategies (Yuksel, 2012). Therefore, an organisation needs to come up of a situational scenario in line with the primary objectives of the business and develop a decision based on how the external factors affect the operation of the firm. Porter’s five forces and industry life cycle analysis are some the techniques that can be used to analysis and obtain information from the influence of industry and sector on a business activities and operations. Through these two criteria of analysis, the threat of new entry in the sector and industry, competitive rivalry, supplier power of influence, threats of substitution, and buyer power information and impacts can be obtained and strategic planning can be undertaken towards meeting the objectives of the company. Also, strategic groups involving products with similar activities and resources, market segments as influenced of characteristics of target markets, their purchase pattern and preference factors, and the idea of Blue Ocean thinking where new markets and opportunities are identified are some of the techniques that a company can employ to acquire information necessary for strategic planning concerning competitors and target market. Also, I believe it is necessary and essential that the leadership of an organisation considers the perspectives of various stakeholders to identify their expectations. I have learned that different stakeholders have different expiations, which may conflict in certain circumstances. Therefore, techniques such as stakeholder mapping can identify the common grounds on which their perspectives can be considered and used during strategic planning to ensure their satisfactions, such jobs and interests satisfactions. Lastly, it is also essential to consider the organisational factors through VRIN and Benchmarking techniques. I believe these approaches, amongst others such as SWOT analysis can identify the strengths of which leaders can make use to maximise on opportunities during strategic planning. Week 8: Crafting a Strategy Whilst the previous week focused on the concept of obtaining information necessary for supporting the development an organisational strategies, week 8 explored the process involved in developing and implementing a strategy. Through this week’s module, I learned that the development of a strategy in an organisation does not only need or involve obtaining information through different approaches and techniques, but also consideration of various factors upon gathering data to ensure that the process is capable and effective enough to achieve a competent strategy. The process of developing and implementing an organisational strategy commence with determination of factors that affect the business and its activities to obtain necessary information. From the previous week, I learned that analyses of external and internal environments and competition and market factors, amongst others, through techniques such as SWOT, PESTEL and porter’s five forces, amongst many others, provide the necessary information that managers and leaders use to make informed decisions concerning the development of a firm’s strategy. Therefore, the process requires collaboration between different departments of the company and they share the relevant knowledge and maximise on awareness to gather the information needed. However, from this module, I realised that, based on the type of the strategy that a company seeks to develop, different approaches are employed while developing the strategies; for instance, the approach that would be used to develop a planned strategy is considerably different from the one that would be used towards emergent strategy development. Based on the readings for the module as well as the module presentation, I gathered that crafting and implementing a planned or intended strategy of an organisation, the executive-level managers deliberately plans a framework in line with the gathered information from various analysis and objectives of the company. I understand that strategic leadership and strategic planning are some of the approaches that the managers and leaders can use to develop and implement a strategy that is oriented towards achieving the intents of the business with much efficiency and effectiveness. Through strategic leadership and planning, different styles of leadership and plans are used. For example, a strategic leadership for developing and implementing a strategy would be directed by: a decision-making practice left to a single leader, such as CEO commanding everything; general vision of the company; informed decisions that are made based on evaluation of different perspectives in the firm, or charismatic style of leadership where the strategy is to follow the views of a leader without direct control (Wilderon et al., 2012). Personally, I believe a strategy is developed and implemented on the basis of informed decision-making upon evaluating all the relevant and necessary views and factors is the most appropriate and competent towards the effective and efficient achievement of a firm’s objectives. Concerning strategic planning as an approach of developing an organisational strategy, I learned that leaders need to consider factors such as formalities of systems in the company and flexibility, depending on anticipated influences and objectives of the strategy to be developed, to enable the intended strategy to meet its purposes. Therefore, a formal system would communicate effectively across all participants, enhance coordination and engagement and promote learning and awareness towards making informed decisions and plans. Besides, strategic leadership and planning promotes a psychological confidence in management and leadership (McDermott et al., 2013). Therefore, a competent organisational strategy manager needs to consider the leadership style sued to develop the intended strategy. However, besides the psychological advantage of intended or planned strategy, the approach also has certain disadvantages. For instance, a planned strategy lack ownership is a feeling amongst the excluded parties during the decision-making; the strategy is set based on certain anticipations, hence rigid to any potential change in factors anticipated, and the strategy is always detached from reality since is based on expectation and imagined or anticipated factors. This some of the common challenges that hinder various organisations from achieving their objectives based on the intended strategy made previously. However, crafting and implementation of emergent or unintended strategy require the observation and consideration of situation at hand to develop an intervention towards addressing certain issues in the organisation. I understand that the need to develop and implement this type of strategy is inevitable in any organisation, because; even if the company is already having a planned strategy of its activities, which most almost all forms have, and the implementation is underway; certain situations that were never part of intended plan tend to rise and call for intervention measures. For example, inflation changes due to economic and political factors or changes in competition due to new entries can call for unintended strategy towards addressing the impacts. Therefore, I believe that leaders and managers need to be competent, creative and innovative enough to be able to involve the necessary stakeholders towards making informed decisions and developing and implementing an effective strategy. Week 9: Theories or Organisational Change With different forces that impact business operations and performance, it is necessary for leaders and managers to understand the concept of organisational change and its impacts on performance. Through this week module, I learned relatively a lot about the idea of change, its necessity and effectiveness and potential challenges that are associated with it, as well as the qualities that manager and leaders need to have to be able to lead and manage change. Through this module, I understood that concept of change was there even in the past. For instance, different myths argue that everything change with time and if a person does not expect the unexpected, he or she might not find out what it entails. I can infer from this these ideas that people should always be aware and expect changes in their lives or in the activities that they are parts. For example, I believe that, in every this we do, we believe in growth and development. Therefore, it is only changes in income or the ease with which we conduct our activities that indicate if such intended growth and development are taking place. Therefore, if positive changes are observed, development is perceived. Similarly, the contemporary society is impacted by various factors that consequent changes to the environments and forces that affect business activities. The business can be deemed to fail of it is incapable to adjust to the new or emergent factors affecting its activities and performance. Globalisation has resulted in various changes in the business world. For instance, advanced technology has influenced the way people receive and send information. Also, the modern world features diversity in almost all fields, industries and sectors. From workforce to other resources necessary for organisational business activities, diversity is a common aspect. Therefore, as opposed to a business that employs specific resources to meet the demands of a specific culture in a specific market, corporate companies contemporarily make use of diverse human and other resources to make produced product and services that target a culturally diversified market. Therefore, this instance demonstrates changes that also call for organisational change to adjust to the levels necessary. From the lectures and recommended reading, I understood that sometimes continuity or current approach does not work with the ever changing business forces. Therefore, in this case, an organisational change is essential. However, based on Mintzberg’s view of an organisation and its leadership activities, I believe that a firm needs stability. Therefore, leaders need to know when changes are or not necessary to maintain stability. Charles Handy explain through his sigmoid curve that organisational change is essential is essential when a company is in its successful state of performance (Good et al., 2016). Therefore, I believe that adaptive and flexibility skills, as well as innovative and creativity, are some of the areas that change managers or leaders need to possess for effectiveness in management and leadership. Besides, reflecting back to the previous weeks about development and implementation of a strategy, changes require emergent strategies for intervention. However, resistance to change amongst employees and leaders is a challenge that management, as well as leader, need to consider during intervention to change. Week 10: Hard and Soft Methods for Managing Change This week focused on the concept of management of change. However, whilst I was assessing the concept of change in an organisation, upon understanding what can cause it, I learned about the various need to manage change. For instance, Harstine & Peikola (n.d.) explain change come with various challenges that subject companies to adjust and shift away from the intended or planned strategies. However, the authors elaborate further that change requires effective certain managerial skills that leaders may fail to demonstrate. Also, change impact need to acquire new ways of undertaking tasks amongst employees as well as having to adopt and used use skills and instruments that can result in challenges. These aspects often consequent resistant to change that affect the process of managing the change and its intents. Change can consequent challenges in organisation. Depending on the perception of the participants, the problems can be classified as either hard or soft. From this week, I learned that soft problems can be characterised by ambiguity, volatility and it is often poorly understood. Also, soft problems in an organisation can be also associated with dynamically elements. On the other hand, hard problems are well defined or structured. While soft problems can motivation issues or employee satisfaction, hard problems can be linked to issue such as scheduling or remuneration plans, amongst others. Based on the type of challenges in which change results in, the hard and soft problems, different types require different systems or strategy to manage. For instance, hard or difficult problems caused by change call for the hard model of management. From the module and its readings, I learned that solving hard problems using hard method requires managers to consider the situation from which the problem or change is resulted, weigh options that best suit the situation, and implement the selected solution based on the description of the problem and in line with the primary objective of the company. Concerning the soft problems, I have gathered that a soft model that entails consideration of the present situation and its effects on the future of the company, understanding the need for change, developing an action plan based on the need, implementing the change, and assessing and reinforcing the implemented change. Inferentially, I would consider the soft method of managing change. The approach addresses the change based on the current and future impacts, a perspective that can be used to inform employees who would otherwise resist. It is a solution to challenges that are associated with changes that are necessary in a company. Comparatively, hard method, alongside its tools, is relatively ineffective and can attract relatively high resistance amongst employees. Inferentially, approaches or strategies of addressing and managing soft and hard problems in an organisation require that leaders or managers comprehend their underlying causes. The contemporary society subjects businesses to various changes. Diversity, for instance, is one of the benefiting factors, but a hindrance as well. With people of diverse age, talents and abilities, culture, social backgrounds, and religion beliefs, organisations tend to face various instances of hard and soft problems whilst making attempts to manage and utilise the concept for development. Therefore, leaders need to employ and advocate for inspiring corporate culture, as well as emotional intelligence, amongst other qualities whilst implementing approaches for addressing and managing soft and hard organisational problems. Week 11: Leading Change This module was considering the potential hard and soft challenges that change consequent in leadership and the performance of an organisation. It is explored the top-down and bottom-up approaches to competent leadership of change in a company. From the module, I learnt that, effective leadership of change make use of a constructive relationship in the organisation. Productive relationship amongst employees and managers across different levels or positions has the potential of positive influence on change leadership. Smith (2011) explains that productive relationship helps managers and leaders to manage and overcome resistant to change and maximise on the benefits of the proposed change. Therefore, with a good relationship in a firm, leaders, as well as other employees, can focus the proposed change to wining against competitors. However, the leaders need to consider and impact awareness amongst their followers to understand the need of change as well as what should and should not be expected and concerning the proposed change. Based on this module, I understand that top-down approach to leading change implies imposed change is initiated from the top management and its activities towards the lower positions. One of the aspects that I understood with this approach is that decision-making is centralized amongst the leadership, which implies that other employees below the leadership is excluded in the process of leading the change. I believe this approach may fail to consider the perspective of the employee, hence causing resistance gained the proposed change. This approach is inferentially forcing employees to accept and adapt to the proposed change. Therefore, motivation and satisfaction can be inadequate in this approached. On the other hand, I understand that bottom-up is more appropriate towards leading change in an organisation than the above strategy. The approach characterises the involvement and participation of all the relevant stakeholders towards decision-making targeting effecting implementation of change and maximising its outcomes and impacts on the performance of the firm. Therefore, since the approach considers the perspectives of the employees and other stakeholder expectations, satisfaction and motivation can be improved. Also, introduction of new technologies, amongst other practices that change deems necessary, can be accepted across the different positions of employees in the organisation; hence, reduces or no resistance. Inferentially, the concept of leading organisational change requires leaders or managers to consider certain principles to maximise effectiveness and efficiency. For instance, this week demonstrated that organisational culture is one of the many factors that leaders need to consider while planning and implementing their approaches to change leadership and management. Most organisation in the modern business world characterise diversity as a feature and influence. Therefore, considering the perspectives of the employees and other stakeholders is one of the key success-factors that guarantees minimum or no resistance to change. Therefore, leaders should employ bottom-up or up-down approach; however, consider the perspective of the stakeholders. Conclusion and Reflection From the week 6 to 11, I have learned the concept of organisational strategy and change, alongside the approaches and techniques for managing and leading them. From the modules, as well as the readings that I managed to find, I found out that organisational strategy can be classified into two categories; the planned and emergent strategy. The planned strategy is the type that has been common amongst almost all companies globally. Baumgartner (2014) explains that vision, mission and value statements are some of the indicators of the strategies that a firms has towards its specific objectives. Organisational strategy requires leaders to employ certain approaches towards its effectiveness and efficiency in implementation and success. Through these approaches, both the traditional planned and emergent strategies can be subject to certain disadvantages, besides their positives. For instance, the module demonstrated that, depending on the approach adopted by the leaders and managers, traditional view of strategizing in a firm can prompted to lack of innovation if the intended actions repeat what was done in the past. This places emergent strategy, which considered the arising issues in the organisation to lay down actions that can maximise the positive outcomes issues, in front. Therefore, I would recommend the emergent strategy in most of the situation that present changes in the forces that affect the operations and performance of an organisation. Considering that planned strategy is rigid, emergent one is preferable over it. However, leading changes in an organisation, and effective management, requires that most, if not all stakeholders are involved in decision-making, which can motivate and ensure satisfaction amongst the employees, hence reduced resistance to change. References Baumgartner, R.J. (2014). Managing corporate sustainability and CSR: a conceptual framework combining values, strategies and instruments contributing to sustainable development. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 21(5): 258-271. Fairholm, M.R. (2009). Leadership and organisational strategy. The Innovation Journal, 14(1). Flores, K.A., Kirstein, K.D., Schieber, C.E. & Olswang, S. (2016). Support the success of adult and online students. Settle, WA. Good, M.J., Taylor, W.W., Beck, J., & Robertson, J. (2016). On the evolution of organisations. Fisheries, 41(9): 507-510. Harstine, L. & Peikola, K. (n.d.). Managing organisational change (Chapter 14). Hill, C.W., Jones, G.R. & Schilling, M.A. (2015). 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