Managing and Leading Strategic Change - Essay Example

Managing and Leading Strategic Change This paper will seek to critically analyse and evaluate the nature of the relationships between an organisations’ environment and management of internal systems, processes and activities. The scope of this paper will be to focus nature of the relations between an organization’s surroundings and management practices of that organization’s internal activities, processes, and systems. It will focus on the key issues arising from the management of change in an organization. Its purpose is to critically analyse and evaluate the nature of these relationships shared by organizations’ environment and their external activities. Introduction As the business world continues to evolve every day, people are moving from the olden formulas of doing business to new and technological equipped systems (Schniederjans, 2005:74). The scope of this paper is to show that it is needful for managers and marketers to incorporate knowledge of substantiated organizational change in order to ensure that business organizations and their environments correlate with the internal activities, processes, and systems (King, 2009:59). The essay discusses that the art of technological advancement is high thus; management and its team need to be up to date. Ultimately, this helps the company to achieve both short and long-term objectives. Further, the scope of the essay presents a documented evidence of research based on selective appropriate academic literature, concepts, models and theories based on change management in an organization. The nature of the relationships between an organisations’ environment and the management of internal systems, processes and activities Literature on scientific change maintain that the nature of the relationships between an organisations’ environment and management of internal systems, processes and activities is increasingly influencing the performance of every organization (Plunkett, Attner, and Allen, 2011:85). This is due to, partly, the overarching interactions between the organization’s insiders such as employees and the organization’s outsiders, which consist of consumers, suppliers, regulators, and any other environmental actors involved with such an organization (Mclean, 2006:71). Critical outlook into the nature of the rapport between an organization’s surroundings and its management of internal activities shows that, at times, it may be sore following the idea that not all suppliers, consumers, and other actors in the outside environment will find the organization’s systems, activities, and processes convenient. This indicates that the nature of the relations shared between and among these agents undergoes residual changes based on prices and time (Collier and Agyei-Ampomah, 2009:44). According to evolutionary models that include adaptive models and systems theory, expound on organizational change management as cognitive. Today, organizations are facing a primary problem, which is the disconnection between organizations internal activities and their external aspects. Formerly, organizations were able to disconnect their external relations from their internal functioning activities mainly because there were just a few communication methods between the outsider and insiders (Shah, 2007:82). Public relations, purchasing, marketing, top executives, and the strategic planning sectors of an organization handled the external functions (Mcdavid and Hawthorn, 2006:41). On the other end, the production, engineering, accounting, human resource management, both middle and lower level managers attended the internal aspects of the organization. However, when the facade of networking, flexible manufacturing, business process re-engineering, and redefined production as well as the new customer service focus entered the market, organization relations changed (Ramanathan, 2009:60). These constructive changes indicate that all people involved with any organization need to engage both their knowledge from the marketing aspect with that from organizational studies. Not so long ago, culture was, still is, an inextricably bound to organization’s internal and external environment. It is also the main factor in determining the temperament of the relationship between an organization’s environment and management of its internal systems. In most cases, organizations that do well in their respective areas of operation tend to have their internal systems, process, and activities relate effectively with the organization’s environment (Hoque, 2006:101). Some of these internal systems and activities as well as processes range from contextual factors such as structure, size, technology, business strategy, and the life cycle of the organization. With regard to these contextual factors, the nature of the relationship between the organization’s environment and its internal systems, processes, and activities is a measurable link between the internal aspects of an organization and its external spectrums (Harigopal, 2006:146). With reference to the social evolution theory, a day in life as a manager will prove that the relationship between organizations’ environment and the internal systems, processes, and activities is continuous and inevitable. Particularly, organizations need clientele to continue surviving in the business while customers need organizations to manufacture certain goods in order for them to continue enjoying them (Stockmann, 2008:112). The marketing personnel of an organization play a crucial role of linking the organization’s demands and those of their respective clientele. The functional departments in an organization must coordinate with others for them to meet the demands of the organization and those of the outsiders (Watson and Noble, 2008:98). According to organizational literature, the way internal processes and activities, which include recruiting, training, and retention among others, relate, describes the organization’s concept of image and brand (Mathis and Jackson, 2009:84). This concept of image and brand identify expresses the relationship between the organization’s environment and the internal processes and activities as identical. Evaluation of key issues arising from the management of change Communication Communication is one key issue arising from change management. In most cases, change can happen to be good to business given the point that without change things remain unchanged. However, at some point, bringing change into an organization’s operations can prove to be challenging since there are issues that may come along with that change. Literally, instituting a practical change in an organization through a management plan highlights that there is a need for managing any change administered into an organization’s systems, processes, and activities (Hussey, 2003:87). Failure to address issues that come along with change often result to failure of the organizations’ operations as well as the proposed new plan. One of the primary issues that result from change is communication. In every organization, communication is key to succeeding especially when the management and the other actors within that of organization link or corporate well (Walker and Greenhall, 2011:75). Ideally, when making a transition, effective communication acts as a profound measure of success hence functions as a key facet of success. In order to solve the issue of communication in an organization, managers, employees, customers, and stakeholders should make their communication to be an open-ended dialog. The kind of communication issues that arises from change in an organization is not just the obvious communication issues (Yaeger and Sorensen, 2009:109). As such, those who come up with the change need to explain why the organization’s processes, systems, and activities needed change. Additionally, they should explain the procedures that the institution is planning to asset with the aim of ensuring it works in line with the set plans. In such a case, team players, leaders, stakeholders, and end users need to up their game by reciting a “road map to success” and adopt the aspects of complete involvement in order to see things work as planned (Wattis and Curran, 2011:83). Agreeably, managing change and its issues is something that requires engagement of all employees as opposed to leaving the task of managing change to the management. Resistance to new ideas Resistance to new ideas is another key issue, which arises from change management. Frequently, employees tend to appear rigid and stringent when an organization adopts a new change. In many cases, this issue result from the idea that employees feel unaware of the change and feels the change might compromise their performance or other related working activities such as time and skills (Armstrong, 2011:48). Nevertheless, organizations that find it necessary to avoid the issue of resistance to new changes by employees employ certain models of managing change and issues that come along with it. To manage resistance, organizations apply the ADKAR model, which involves awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, and reinforcement. This model emphasizes on steps that, resistance can never happen if employees are aware of the need for the new change. When there is the desire for new change and employees know how to change with reference to the new change, resistance plays no role in accepting change in an organization. If employees posses the required abilities needed to necessitate change, it becomes easy to manage or rather sustain change via reinforcement. During the management of change, so many key issues arise. Particularly, this happens because the institution used to have certain processes, systems, and undertook just a number of activities. However, when change occurs many activities transform meaning those employees and other actors in the organization must transform with the introduced change (Blackard, 2004:93). Overly, for an organization to manage change effectively, it must commitments aimed at meeting the new state of change. In this world of shorter innovation cycle, embracing effective change that involves the participation of all employees is essential. Anyway, in areas where employees may resistant to that change, it can become almost impossible to integrate the new plans into the organization’s systems, processes, and activities. Therefore, dealing with resistance requires management to introduce a platform that ensures employees of their ability to continue functioning almost the same way they used to despite the presence of the induced new plan. Perceptual barriers Perceptual barriers are yet other key issue that arise from the management of change. Change in an organization may result to perception among the internal and external actors of the organization. Even thought managers can apply a number of processes to manage change, barriers of perception causes problems that hinder successful implementation of change. Failure to find the real of the problem may result to failure in managing change (Creasey and Hiatt, 2003:65). Often, perceptual issues take place when managers are trying to identify internal weaknesses and when doing an analysis of their own situation as well as at the time doing of evaluating options. A closer outlook into this process shows that this may result to a sub-optimal solution, which may not be in a position to indentify the root cause of the main problem. Hence, managers become ineffective in managing their own induced change. Of course, the result of this worst-case scenario is a waste of resources, which range from finances to commitment to time. Emotional barriers Barriers related to individual emotions are key issues that affect the management of change in an organization. When introducing and subsequently trying to manage change, barriers opined to personal emotions arise. In this case, there is the issue of risk aversion where everyone is afraid of making mistakes or doing anything that may end up failing. At this time, people tend to experience an inability to process any contradictory or incomplete information (Lorenzi and Riley, 2003:124). Thus, solving problems becomes an issue, which may result to omission of vital information with promising ideas. Specifically, emotional barriers are very risky and cause the inception of change within an organization’s activities, processes, and systems become obscure and complex. This results to failed induction of the new plan. Emotional steams make the change ambassadors fail to take time to think things through mainly because they feel pressurised from either their superiors or the given period. Consequently, they end up making serious mistakes in change procedures as their emotional state hinders them from generating new approaches and ideas. Cultural issues Cultural barriers are part of the issues that arise from change in an institution. Some issues in an organization have characters of a taboo and therefore, they are extremely hard to analyze and thereafter change them. In a culturally ruled organization, problem solving appears in the form of a serious matter (Singh and Waddell, 2004:100). In these scenarios, humour has no place in problem solving hence people lack the willpower of freedom of thinking and creativity. Hence, it becomes hard for change to take place in such organizations as reasoning and intuition enjoy minimized freedom. Generally, it is acceptable that objective analysis, figures, facts, logic, and critical reasoning are essentially substantial in business (Yaeger and Sorensen, 2009:128). The issue of culture is a serious matter when it comes to inception and integration of change in an organization. Truthfully, changing traditions of an organization and its internal or external actors may prove cumbersome as overcoming traditions is indeed challenging. With reference to sociological perceptions, it is burdensome to manage change especially when the internal and external actors of an organization do not see the relationship between that change, the existing problem, and their traditions (Cameron and Green, 2004:187). On the brighter side, traditions or cultural beliefs may act as the basis for individual commitment within the processes of inducing change in an organization. Nonetheless, indicating that cultural barriers deter the evaluation and development of solutions or alternatives for the existing as well as the foreseeable problems in the organization is good (Watson and Noble, 2008:130). In addition, these barriers limit the options for any new approaches in the processes of change. Environmental issues Organizational surroundings influence the transformation of an organization’s management. Management of change is not that simple and the process of engaging change may be lengthy and coupled with many relenting perceptions. If there is the lack of support during change, many employees tend to consider that change as a threat on their individual status. In many cases, when change occurs, it moves everything including all employees from their so-called comfort zone (Senaratne and Sexton, 2011:107). This means that, a number of employees will tend to ignore the change processes or try to stop the change itself. At times, those who come with change in an organization may set up issues related to change management when they happen to ignore justifiable criticism (Hussey, 2003:110). Lack of power to accept criticism is not healthy for change management since this factor is a major precondition suitable for gaining support and establishing trust. Cognitive issues Management of change may bring about cognitive barriers. Critically, evaluation of issues that may arise from change management show that some managers may be a burden to their own change processes because they may resolve to use the wrong terminologies. Substantially, successful management of change involves the application of terminologies and language, which is receivable and appropriate for change adaptors (Coakes, 2003:62). This is effective since a well-understood message has the ability to support motivation and creativity. In order to avoid cognitive barriers and manage change efficiently, change ambassadors should stick to the proposed strategies without failure. In business, organizations have many strategies that managers can employ to solve problems and manage change simultaneously. Another major problem that fall under cognitive issues but a barrier to management of change is the lack of correct and complete information (Purcell, 2007:154). To solve this problem, managers should place a balanced mix of information with creative options and ideas. Cognitive issues have great influence on all phases of change management. Management appraisal and leadership responses in relation to change According to business analysts, when people ask questions, feedback conversations take place immediately, and all over sudden everything is back to normal, one should be certain that something is not right. Specifically, the end of appraising management and leadership responses should not signify the conclusion of the process rather than its beginning (Armstrong and Brown, 2006:80). Decisively, the resources and time spent on appraisal of management and leadership responses raises expectations. It also raises questions based on what the future holds for those managers involved. As seen, these contemporary organizations are accepting and coping up with the changing environmental needs (Walker and Greenhall, 2011:133). They are also excelling in their field of business operations through setting up adaptive capabilities able to manage change in their external and internal activities and systems. Traditionally, the management appraisal and leadership response system could not suffice the needs of the changing environment since organizations used it solely to evaluate the performance of managers (Wattis and Curran, 2011:99). During these scenarios, organizations impelled top executives to come up with subjective judgements regarding the behaviour and performance of managers with reference to predetermined job standards. Management and leadership responses in relation to change Presently, organizations appraise management and leadership responses in relation to change based exercised control over performance, activities, and operations carried out by employees. Purposefully, management appraisal and leadership response in relation to change helps increase managers’ morale and capabilities since the appraisal involves packages of rewards, disciplinary actions, and promotions (Thompson and Martin, 2010:54). Since management appraisal involves rewards that may be in the form of cash prizes, holidays paid in full by the organization, and/or special treatment, it gives managers and other leaders the motivation to function effectively and relevantly with response to the set rules, regulations, objectives, and goals (Hernandez and O'Connor, 2010:143). As such, management appraisal acts as a morale booster, which in turn results, to effective performance among employees, managers, regulators, suppliers, and other actors within the organization’s environment. Since organizations are no longer focusing solely on performance appraisal but management appraisal due to globalization of business activities and internationalization of human efforts and resources, implementation of development programs and management of talent is becoming more vibrant (Rigolosi, 2013:96). Organizations should thus appraise their management teams and leaders after some given time while focusing majorly on strategic human resource management practices. This is crucial because it enhances the management’s competencies, observed behaviours, and concrete outcomes. Such practices provide a basis for adoption of smart objective management aimed at producing not hypotheses but facts and/or figures capable of revolutionizing the entire change process with response to management performance (Coens and Jenkins, 2002:87). Such a scenario dictates whether the appraisal will play the role of a facilitator or coach in meeting the expected objectives. Conclusion In conclusion, when appraising management, organizations start deciding the mutual objectives of the whole exercise at the beginning of the functional and performance season. After going through the standard performance evaluation spectrum, they present the performance appraisal forms to employees who fill in which managers they feel suitable for scooping a management performance award (Mathew, 2011:102). This feedback is very extensive as it does not only provide a way to appraise management leadership responses, but also helps to identify whom can lead the organization in case of promotions or otherwise. Precisely, management appraisal is a far-reaching tool for motivating managers and other leaders therefore should be part of every organization’s activities, systems, and operations (Rao, 2004:140). This paper has critically analyzed and evaluated the nature of the relationships between an organizations’ environment and management of internal systems, processes and activities. Again, it has vitally evaluated key issues arising from the management of change and significantly appraised management and leadership responses in relation to change. 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