Dealing with change is an ongoing challenge for every manager. Describe how an organization can tell that it needs to change. What are indicators that change is needed?
Organizational development (OD) is a set of techniques for implementing a planned change to make people and organizations more effective. Describe metrics that can be used to evaluate the effectiveness of a planned change and explain why is it often difficult for managers to implement change.
Social psychologist Kurt Lewin developed a three-stage model. Summarize the model and provide an example of how that model was implemented or used in your company (or previous one) or a change initiative.
While the business managers and businesses are often preoccupied with plans that help them reach their immediate goals, they do overlook the indicators, symptoms, or signs that reveal that the organization needs one or more changes. It is important to notice and act on these indicators as they may reveal serious drawbacks or malfunctions also, which may also impact the profitability or sustainability of the organization. The signs may reveal that the business needs to adapt certain new strategies for heeding to the changing needs of the business. Some of the important indicators for change are given below.
It is important for any business to adapt to the latest trends and to be at the forefront of innovation, to be sustainable and ahead of the competition. If the news about the industrial or business segment in which you have your business surprises you more than often, it shows that you are not following or adapting to the latest trends and are lagging behind in terms of modernization and advancement. If this is happening, you need to start following the news related to your industry as it will help you to do a SWOT analysis and find out your strengths, threats, weaknesses, and opportunities. You should also pay more attention to the unions or trade organization, emails, and should do some research about the latest technological, production, human resource, financial, marketing or other development that have impacted your industry.
a. Your products cost more than the competitor offering
Your competitors will be able to gain the cost related competitive advantage and would be able to offer the same products at lower cost if they have adopted lean manufacturing practices and are using methods including Six Sigma, Deming cycle and others. They might also have upgraded their facility to make it technically advanced and economically more efficient. If you find that your competitors have been under-pricing you consistently, you also need to improve the manufacturing and production-related aspects of your business. You should also re-negotiate with your vendors and suppliers for bulk purchase and try to choose the more affordable supplier and to gain the financial advantage in other ways so that you can price your offering at a lower price-tag.
b. Unexpected obstacles
Unexpected obstacles in one or different areas of business operations may indicate that your planning and implementation process needs re-evaluation. For instance, the market might have changed and your old marketing strategy method would not be focusing on the new aspects. It is important to upgrade the planning and strategic variables and aspects and always devise and implement the plan in lieu of the current and future scenarios.
c.Lagging communication
Communication is not only essential for a business and its operation, but it can also attract customers and make them loyal to your brand if the right communication strategies are used. For Instance, you might be able to contact the suppliers and distributors and may be able to manufacture and sell your product. But to be sustainable and be “an apple of the eye” of the customers, you also need to have communication on social media platforms and websites as well. The new communication measures and methods also indicate that you have a desire to lead the business and want to reduce your response time to the minimum for all stakeholders.
Metrics used for evaluating the effectiveness of a planned change
While most business organizations always have tested measures that can assess project performance in terms of profit and losses, measuring “the people side of change” is not always at top priority. Successful individual and group transitions within a business and its cumulative positive impact lead to organizational success. Hence for assessing the effectiveness/evaluation of change management or planned change, it is important to measure how successful the individual transition have been in lieu of the change. Apart from this, organizational performance in lieu of the supply chain and other business aspects should also be measured.
Changes to organizational performance can be measured on metrics including KPI
measurement, execution speed, timeline and project plan adherence, ROI or return-on-investment, the actual realization of benefits, communication deliveries and change readiness, among others.
Individual performance and response to changes can be measured through the assessments, tests, services, and observation and evaluation of performance. The metrics useful here can be the adoption matrix, employee feedback, proficiency measure, error/compliance/issue logs, support requests or help-desk calls, participation measurement of employees or employee engagement, adherence/compliance report, utilization reports, training participation, observation of behaviour, and readiness assessment among others.
The accumulated progress Is measured by analyzing 3 factors including speed of adoption, utilization (how the employees and people are actually using the change in their day to day life), and proficiency (the expertise with which people can use the change). Service, feedback, observation, and assessment reports can offer the necessary data/information to measure the changes on the basis of key metrics.
Difficulties and challenges that the managers may face while implementing a change
The change affects businesses frequently and while some are major (like the acquisition of a company) others can be minor (like restructuring of a project team). The implementation of a change may have both short-term and/or long-term effect on an organization.
Most often the managers find it difficult to implement a change because of a number of reasons. For instance, they may not have a planned approach towards implementing a change. In the absence of a step-by-step implementation approach adopted through the implementation of a well-structured and planned process, the change is likely to fall apart or may not be adopted. Also, employees and individuals have a tendency to resist changes and they like to continue with the old protocols and standards only. Lack of consensus among employees and staff may also cause a difficulty to the managers. This happens more often when proper communication and discussions have not been held prior to implementing a change. Inadequate communications and absence of discussions may often be the culprit behind the failure of change adoption.
Managers can overcome these difficulties by having a planned approach towards change implementation, using proper communication methods and tools, creating a broad consensus by pulling everyone on board, and by overcoming employee resistance through providing them more information about the benefits of the change.
Summary of Kurt Lewin's three-stage model
Kurt Lewin adopted a three-stage model for implementing a change in an organization successfully. He named these three stages as unfreezing, transformation, and refreezing. Being a physicist, Kurt compared the transformation of an organization to the transformation of an ice cube to an ice circle or triangle. To successfully change an ice cube to an ice circle, the ice needs to be melted first, put into the circle-shaped container/mould, and refrozen.
In the same way, the organization should first unfreeze itself from the old concepts, standards and ideas and adapt to the new and changed concept. Constructive discussions, meetings, analysis, forecasting and communication will ensure that all the reservations have been resolved before the transformation begins, and hence there is no resistance or issues during the implementation of the change. Receptivity, acceptance, openness, and readiness can be created among all stakeholders for the change to be adopted swiftly. The apprehensions, threats, dilemmas, and fear can also be timely resolved.
By the time the transformation happens, the organization and the stakeholders are also in a “change ready” state. Assigning of proper roles and responsibilities, learning, improvement, motivation, action reviews, and accountability are important aspects and follow-ups of this stage. The stage may have a turbulent character. But the anxiety and ambiguity have been relaxed to a larger extent, and confusion and chaos are successfully avoided through proper discussion and planning. While the behavioral, psychological, procedural, and structural issues might occur, they are managed effectively and efficiently as forecasting and analysis of the possible outcomes have already been made.
Reinforcement of the change happens at the stage of refreezing and a new equilibrium, which is also now the set standard, is in place. The change is made permanent and the new behavior, values, and norms are permanently integrated into the main system. Support and constant monitoring are crucial aspects of this stage. The learning goes on and the organization strives towards attaining excellence and perfection in the new changed model.
The Hi-Speed tonic brand Acme changed its old product with a new and improved version by using he Curt Lewin change model in a period of 2 weeks. The “change” information was communicated to all relevant teams, discussions were held amongst the staff for preparing for it and for its operationalization in the individual department. The staff were also empowered towards helping the supervisors and managers. Active monitoring helped towards finding out the staff who ignored the change information and steps, and they were held directly accountable for their ignorance and actions. The organization adopted a constant learning curve and all processes related to manufacturing, marketing, sales and others duly accustomed themselves to the new product by bringing in the changes required.
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