Management of Change
Part 1 –Managing Leadership Change in D&P
While the business environment has become diverse and competitive, many organizations adopt the change management as the only strategy to unravel the changing business world. According to Stogdill (2009), managing of changes in the business practice helps to keep in pace with changing business world. Changes in businesses occur due to customer changing needs, preference, and taste. Watzlawick (2008) reveals that, most businesses strategies fail due to lack of incorporation of management of change strategy that could help in the implementation of such strategies. Meta-analysis of 20 business studies reveals the importance and role of leadership change in any organization that aspires to develop and grow faster in the global business world. Leadership change strategy helps organizations to develop core capabilities necessary for completion in a highly global and technical world. Consideration of leadership change is focused on the business structures, business processes and business systems as well as developing culture in the organization. Change does not only change with the leadership, but with the ability of all stakeholders to embrace change in the organization.
D&P is the company whose leadership change strategy in an attempt to develop and realize the organization's goals is fully appreciated by the stakeholders. The company top management dedicates both the resources and time required to monitor and implement effective leadership change strategy. The strategy is constantly reviewed to implement the business strategies essential for profitable organization. The feasible approach to leadership change is adopted to harmonize the change management in the organization. The stakeholders realized the importance of combining strategies particularly leadership change in implementing cultural change in the whole organization. Additionally, top management should develop and apply core capabilities for leadership change strategy necessary for organization’s future progress. The CEO reveals that, the changes in leadership is always appreciated since it envisions future direction of the organization, align resources of the company and further motivates commitment of employees to achieve the organizational set objectives and goals. Moreover, the process is critical in building strong management force within the heart of the organization to compete the rivals in the market.
D&P operates in a competitive market where product and services shifts are frequent with the rivals taking competitive advantage in case the business remains adamant in the management of the changes. The shifts in products and service delivery require businesses to be aggressive and act promptly whenever the changes are perceived. Due to this, the company top management and shareholders change leadership frequently especial in the middle line management. One of the shareholders argued that, when line managers are changed or promoted, it brings in aggressive managers who are to manage the strong modifications within the business setting to achieve the profitability of the company.
The change does not only involve reshuffle of employees but also leadership training programmes. The company organizes training to the employees to cope with the new changes in the market. The CEO believes it is not only a change or restructuring of leadership position in the company, but also the new skills that the employees acquire continuously to help in embracing the change management in the organization. Change of leadership is intelligently incorporated into the organization culture to enable the system works consistently without a break down. The company reports change in clients’ complexity and improved business outcomes due to the leadership change strategy adopted by the organization.
The questions that will crisscross any surveyor’s mind in this case are; what are the leadership change skills that the company adopts to achieve the organizational goals? Who is affected by the leadership change in the organization? Why do we embrace the leadership strategy in this organization? What is the association between the leadership strategy and the culture change strategy in this organization?
Part 2: Contextualization of Leadership Change Strategy
Change management strategies make shifts in leadership skills that require management to acquire in order keep with the highly competitive global world. Stogdill (2009) suggests that, effective leadership change involve acquisition of new skills and reshuffling of management to achieve goals set by engagement of the CEO and the executive team. Through training programmes, the employees are integrated into the process of change thereby enabling the organization to become successful in its conquest. Firstly, the need for innovative leaders or managers is critical in managing change. The proactive approach adopted by D&G exposes its employees to the required skills to enable the organization prospers. The leadership is involved in creating visions and strategies that must be treated by the employees with a broader focus to help transform the company. In addition, the employee's efforts are boosted by strong communication system that exists within D&P. The strong dynamic leadership motivates and aligns people within the organization to achieve the set targets of the company.
Furthermore, managers create systems that mitigate hazards that may rise in the organization. The CEO of D&P applies transformational leadership style that allows the employees of the organization to be stimulated and apply idealized values in pursuing of the operations of the business. With the skilled top management, the employees are able to accept the changes and actively participate in transforming the company. The contractual agreements made by the employees and managers engage the personal values that meet the required standards.
According to Weick and Quinn (2010), leadership change in the organization does not only involve leadership itself but also has an influence of culture change strategy. Change in any organization does not only lie on the management but also the people in the organization. Leadership change strategy is just an avenue of aligning the people with the changes experienced in the general organizational set up. Whenever the company experiences changes in the customer requirements, the company's leadership moves swiftly to change the organizational set up in order to perform as expected by customer needs. The new customer values and expectations are incorporated into the employee’s skills through training in order to meet the new changes. In explaining the psychological contract theory, the complex relationship, which exists between the workers or employees and the company, requires consultative incorporation of changes in the organization. Because leadership change affects mostly employees, the management treats the employees as the base of introducing the changes. The thoughtful leadership restructuring and changes in the organization values help to change the culture of the organization to meet the new changes in the business environment. The aspects set by the organization must be realistic, measurable, and achievable to allow the employees embrace the changes experienced. Moreover, the leadership changes in the organization affects the customers of the organization. The leadership change always takes into consideration of the Nudge theory. The manager continuously forecast on the feelings of the customers before shifting to adopt leadership change that would fit the customers thinking about the organizations products and services.
Most scholars argue that, change leadership strategies may affect the organization adversely by bringing people who are not experienced in top management. However, leadership change strategy at D&P has both positive as well as side effects on the organization. The CEO reveals that the success of the company relies on the leadership change strategy. The change motivates the employees since some of them are promoted to the top management. The fresh blood boosts the company’s performance as well as accelerating its operations. Advantageously, the strategy considers customer changing needs and the employee's interests. Moreover, it helps to achieve and maximize the organization's profit by the consumption of many units as projected by the adoption of the leadership change strategy. However, one of the employees ascertained that though the leadership change strategy might be encouraging, sometimes it creates job insecurity among the employees and threats their self-esteem. Leadership is essentially a process of social influence in which individuals want to feel included, supported and reinforced, especially during change. Relations between individuals and their leader will affect perceived leader effectiveness. As such, an understanding of such relations needs to address issues of the individual's self-concept. Watzlawick (2008) suggested that core aspects of the self are relatively stable across situational constraints, but many peripheral aspects such as organizational culture and leadership practices may be constraining factors that affect consequences for individuals and, therefore, their perceptions of the leader. Thus our fifth and final proposition is:
The complexity involved in the change might be dangerous to both the employees as well as the general organization. At one of the points of leadership transition, there is slow output experienced in the company, and this contributes negatively to the organizational expectations. Stogdill (2009) notes that for organization to experience high output during transition period, and then the former leadership must be maintained for a period of transition. The big challenge remains, based on the psychological theories, whenever some people are demoted, and their positions occupied by others they would always want the other team to fail. The change can lead to leadership wrangles that instead of using it to utilize the changing environment aggressively; it may opt to land the organization in a deep sea. However, this can be controlled by adoption of new leadership styles that will enable the company to prosper.
Leadership change strategy goes together with culture change in order to transform the organization fully. According to Watzlawick (2008), leadership change strategy affects human systems as well as the organizations culture in an effort to adapt to the dynamic business world (Watzlawick, 2008). The customers always determine what changes occur within the business organization. Since culture is what happens within the company’s environment, the leadership change affects it in every aspect. The culture defines what the change in the leadership is going to handle in the organization. One of the employee’s notes that, since culture change assesses new ways of improving the organization performance it emphasizes on the decisions made by the leaders in an attempt to achieve those objectives. The adopted culture must be embraced by the organizations top leadership change in order realizes the full potential of the company.
In general, leadership change strategy is very important tool in keeping in pace with the, unfortunately, changing business world. From leadership perspective view, the change strategy involves reshuffling of the top management team and employees to provide an efficient and effective working group to effect new changes in the business environment. In the current business trends, the organizations that do not manage changes is prone to failures. According to Stogdill (2009), the scanning environment for changes is an important tool that could give management a hint on the strategy to apply. Success depends on the application a right strategy. Application of wrong strategies always leads to exit of businesses. Weick and Quinn (2010), emphasizes should be placed on leadership change strategy since it controls all the other strategies (Weick & Quinn 2010). For instance, the management cannot implement culture change in the organization without leadership change strategy since the current leadership cannot embrace the culture change. As seen in the case of D&P Company, strong leadership change strategy leads to success of the business. When a change is properly managed, all the business stakeholders realize the organization goals and objectives.
However, the change should involve all the stakeholders of the organization since the changes affect them. The employees, for instance, are affected by leadership change both negatively and positively. When the employees are promoted, the change has a positive impact on them while when they are demoted to create room for fresh people it may affect them negatively. Most importantly, is to manage the change in leadership in such a manner, which will have a positive impact on the general organization’s goals and objectives. Improving the performance of the organization should be the main agenda of managing such changes in the organization. Nevertheless, the new leadership created should include a team of creative and aggressive marketers that are able to manipulate the customers to gain competitive advantage over the rivals.
References List
Watzlawick, P 2008, Change. Norton, New York.
Stogdill, R 2009, Handbook of leadership: A survey of the literature. Free Press, New York.
Weick, K & Quinn R 2010, 'Organizational change and development,' Annual Review of Psychology, 50 (40), 361–386.
Appendix: Reflective Account
The global business world is prone to change. Successfulness of organizations depends on the way management control the changes within the business context. Analysis of business studies identifies effective management of change as the main difference between the well performing companies and those that quit due to failure to manage the dynamic business situation. Effective change management enables smooth transition of the organization from old business practices to new practices to keep with the pace of changing business world. When change management is well planned, the specific tasks are included in the planning that enables the organization to align the changes to the objectives and goals of the organization. With the whole organization stakeholders in mind, both the suppliers and customers are catered for, and processes are efficiently operated in the organization. Even though, change management concentrates on the general management of the organization; success relies on the employees embracing the changes in executing the objectives of the organization. Since failing to manage change might prove disastrous to the organization, the employees are involved in the whole process.
Not only leadership change is important in the management of change in the organization, several change strategies should be engaged in the management to align to the changing business environment. With the changing employee's expectation on job satisfaction, culture change strategy should be implemented in order to motivate the employees to achieve organizational goals and objectives. In addition, innovation strategy remains an important tool to manage changes in the organization. With the future economy of countries' being unpredictable, change management is a key tool that will remain effective to control such future changes.
