Question 1
Strategic change initiative encompasses developing solutions to tackle pertinent issues the management prioritizes for consideration as at a given time. Basically, the prioritization scheme is guided by the goals to be accomplished, the implementation strategies and the implementation of the expenditure budget. Each plan must be put to task within a given time frame to help be at par with the future. Its success is dependent on coordination. It demands coordination within an organization and must cover all the organization’s diverse functions in order to succeed. Completion of one initiative to the mainstream operations is succeeded with a new plan as there is emergence of fresh strategic issues that demand attention.
Strategic change initiative thus simply involves an organization’s understanding of its mission statement, vision and the strategies and constantly gears its operations towards the same. It must at all time respond to an unusual situation that when resolved generates a considerable result on the organization’s performance. However, without cross-functional support, it’s deemed to fail. Successful strategic change initiative entails four steps: initiating the effort, building a consensus on the approach, executing, and communicating results.
An organization’s vision is simply a desirable description of what it would like to accomplish. This could be either in the near term or long term future. Basically, it acts as a clear map for creating preference for the current and for the future undertakings. A vision statement simply describes how an organization will be in the long term.
Major importance of a vision is that it helps an organization understand how it should be in the near or long term future. Typically, it helps an organization define its course of action as pertaining to certain issues. It helps in strategic plan development. A vision fully helps organization comprehend where it stands, where it wants to go and how to reach there. This results in strategic plan development. Therefore, a vision concept fosters strategic change initiative via acting as a guide in goal setting and in implementation of both strategies and budget within a given time frame.
Question 2
Discussed hereunder is a case study on strategic change initiative at Agilent Technologies, aimed at creating a shared vision and establishing a strategic initiative towards realizing the vision.
In any organization, it’s often challenging to make critical decisions and changes. For the organization studied herein, the strategic change initiative required a coordinated and cross-functional effort. Such an initiative was meant to respond to a given set of issues which, when resolved, would have significant impacts on the company’s results. The strategic change initiatives focused on:
i. Offering better services to the global customers.
ii. Ensuring that the organization meets the important deadlines and the market requirements.
iii. Ensuring that the company competes effectively and explores new markets through the introduction of new products.
iv. Ensuring that the company does not have significant cost over-runs.
The strategic change initiative significantly improved the critical results, as hailed by the Vice President and General Manager of the Customer Team, Agilent Technologies. The initiative led to clarification of roles, rules, and the responsibilities in implementing the changes, and significantly improved the organization’s results. The achievements included superior management of accounts, which led to a significant increase in market and customer share, greater product competitiveness, and enhanced customer satisfaction. For the change initiative to be realized, the organization had to initiate the effort by gathering the support, do the launching by agreeing on the approach, execute the change and produce the results, and then, gain momentum through communicating the results.
Question 3
No change can result without the initial efforts. Every manager should identify the individuals or departments, whose performances are suffering, and then seek their opinion on how to improve the performance. The launching should be done through a cross-functional management discussion and agreement on the problem that is to be solved, the approaches of solving the problem, the contributions of every individual and groups, the roles and responsibilities of the key individuals, and the intended (expected) results. In every strategic change initiative, skills, new information, and staff training are very important to so that the staff can acquire new skills and make necessary adjustments to the new approaches.
It is the responsibility of every manager to take the right actions in order to solve the underlying problem so that improved results can be produced. All the involved parties must clearly understand the objectives and their roles so that the strategic change initiative can be successful. Communication is very important. The manager should communicate to all those who are affected by the initiative once the progress occur. This reinforces the support and the interests across the organization.
When managing the change, a good manager should establish a common objective and approach, and ensure that the leaders and the staff at large buy in and make it a priority. The manager should persistently communicate the need for the change initiative and provide sufficient support structures. The short-term achievements should be generated and communicated to all the involved parties. The manager should finally ensure that there is accountability for all the decisions, actions and omissions.
Successful strategic change initiative demands detailed cross-functional and coordination in an organization. It’s a credible way of providing solutions to current issues affecting an organization. However, its analysis and prioritization of the current issues that seem to be strategic enough now may make an organization be locked out in the future in case participants or initiators fail to comply. At the initiation stage, leaders and participants have an upper hand to completely turn down the initiative by failing to prioritize the issues or the opportunities.
Secondly, it’s deemed to fail in case there is no defined support structure. These situations can be fixed by putting in place supportive structures like employees’ motivation and also by establishing accountability and monitoring plans.
Reference
Breakthrough, Inc. (2008). “Making Changes That Dramatically Improve Results.” Strategic Initiatives for Results. Retrieved at http://www.breakthroughinc.com/media/Strategic%20Initiative%20article.pdf
Dutton, J. E, Walton, E. J, and Abrahamson, E. (1989). “Important Dimensions of Strategic Issues.” Journal of Management Studies 26:4. Retrieved at http://webuser.bus.umich.edu/janedut/Issue%20Selling/importantdimensions.pdf
Gronroos, C. (1994). “From marketing mix to relationship marketing: towards a paradigm shift in marketing.” Management Decision, Vol. 32, No. 2, pp 4–32
Hamel, G. (2002). Leading the Revolution. New York
Nag, R., Hambrick, D. C, and Chen, M. J. (2007). “What is strategic management, really? Inductive derivation of a consensus definition of the field.” Strategic Management Journal. Volume 28, Issue 9, pages 935–955.
