Article Critique: Successful Change Management Involves Employees
Summary of the Article and Audience
Figure 1: Successful Change Management happens at Bottom
Source: Rick (2014)
It is argued that successful change management in the organization depends on the fact that people are required to be informed about change in terms of new structures, policies and mergers. The main reason is that changes lead to development of new systems and environments. Hence, the employees are able to needed to be aligned with the new environment and system through proper communication. It is key a strategy to communicate a compelling change story to employees to implement change successfully by informing them about pros for them and ultimate competitive edge at individual and organizational level. Resistance to change can be reduced by providing training and education to employees, empowering them, involving them in making strategies, and training and high level commitment from top. It can be understood by the fact that “Meaningful organizational change cannot occur without the cooperation of the affected stakeholder”.
The intended audience of the article presented by Rick (2014) is the managers, change leaders and change agents. The key of successful change management is the effective leader that’s why the article targets the managers/leaders.
The theory used in the article to explain the successful change management in the organization is Kotter 8-step process of change management. The author stated that vision and communication of that vision to employees are key factors to successful change implementation and management. In addition, establishing an urgency and empowerment of employees are the strategies to implement change in the organization successfully. On the other side, the theory of leadership implemented by author of the article is transformational leadership. However, the key issue with the article is that the most important factor of change management i.e. culture is not discussed. Moreover, the characteristics of leaders/managers as part of transformational leader theory are not described and evaluated effectively and efficiently.
Critical Review
The article clearly provides an overview of the effective factors needed to keep into consideration to implement change successfully. For example, urgency, vision creation and communication of that vision to stakeholders are aligned to the reduction in resistance to change. In addition, involvement of employees in decision and strategy making and increasing their powers to make change themselves as part of solutions to issues are effective strategies to make change implementation successful. Nevertheless, the weak points of the article include lack of explanation of the role of culture in successful change management. The author did not explain how developing a change culture leads to high level success in change implementation. Furthermore, the importance of leadership is not covered broadly.
Discussion
The review identifies some of the key strategies to implement change in an effective manner like employee empowerment, high level involvement of employees in decision making and strategy development, two-way communication, and vision. However, in my opinion the change should be implemented on continuous basis at strategic and operational level by adopting the all steps of Kotter 8-step change management process (Hornstein, 2015). The author used some of the steps of Kotter’s model, but not all. Moreover, the leaders should play key role in implementing change by changing the role as change agents, according to the situation. For example, they should act as visionary, transformational, and social leaders at a time when the change is related to technology or innovation (Bjønness, 2007).
Conclusion
It can be concluded from the above discussion that although article indicates key strategies used by the managers or leaders to successfully implement change. There are some limitations of the article. The key strengths of the article includes factors required by leaders/managers to manage change efficiently like employees’ involvement in change implementation and strategy development, employee empowerment, two-way and open communication, creating an urgency and vision. Nevertheless, the weakness of the article is that it does not cover key concept of culture related to change management along with leadership characteristics to lead and manage change to achieve ultimate objectives. Development of culture of constant innovation and improvement is a key to success to change management (Singh and Waddell, 2004).
References
Bjønness, S., 2007. The notion of change in leadership cultures (Vol. 10). USA: Haupt Verlag AG.
Hornstein, H.A., 2015. The integration of project management and organizational change management is now a necessity. International Journal of Project Management, 33(2), pp.291-298.
Rick, T. Successful Change Management Involves Employees. [Online] Available from: https://www.torbenrick.eu/blog/change-management/successful-change-management-involve-the-people/ [Accessed January 2, 2017]
Singh, M. and Waddell, D. 2004. E-business innovation and change management. USA: IGI Global.
