Organizational Change and Strategic Thinking - Research Paper Example

?Organizational Change and Strategic Thinking Table of Contents Organizational Change and Strategic Thinking 3 Strategic Thinking – The Why-What-How Approach 5 The Connection between Strategic Thinking and Organizational Change 6 Organizational Culture and Strategic Thinking 8 Works Cited 10 Bibliography 11 Organizational Change and Strategic Thinking Enormous development in the prevailing economic conditions, structural shifts and challenging business scenario among others raise the need for an organization to develop its own unique competitive advantage in order to sustain itself in the long run. The major concern of the organizations these days is the adaption to the rapidly changing consumer demands in the market. This has increased the necessity for revaluation of the organizational policies towards organizational changes, in order to adapt and participate in the fiercely competitive prevalent atmosphere. In general, the organizations have to carry on delivering value and face the current challenges, while reorganizing and getting ready for the future challenges. In order to accomplish effective organizational change, whilst performing the difficult task of balancing the present business activities and the preparation for the future, there needs to be reasonable strategies in place. The existence of managers who employ strategic thinking for the planning of organizational development can ensure that the measures for organizational change do not lead to inadvertent consequences. With the rapid changes in the business environment, the managers need decisive thinking skills to shift from the traditional reactive decision-making process to the proactive foresight method, so as to enable the organization to be equipped to face the upcoming challenges (Bonn, “Developing Strategic Thinking as a Core Competency”). In the middle of the turmoil and intricacy of the modern business world, the successful organizations are those which are aware that, even as it is not viable to observe the future, they can acquire a perspective for the future that would offer them certain indications as to what might be in-store in future. Such organizations then plan accordingly to be prepared for the upcoming events as per their future perspective. For this type of approach, the management of an organization needs to accept an innovative planning pattern that consists of observing the organization in the perspective of an open system atmosphere.  Such observation will make the organization better positioned to recognize and respond to upcoming events (Bonn, “Developing Strategic Thinking as a Core Competency”). This would also enable the organization to bring about the changes necessary in those surroundings and also influence the probable changes effecting the organization. The sustainability and performance of an organization in today’s dynamic economic environment, thus depends on the application of strategic thinking to accomplish required organizational changes. This raises few apparent questions. What is strategic thinking? How can it be employed in accomplishing organizational change? What is the link between organizational culture and strategic thinking? Strategic Thinking – The Why-What-How Approach Richard Hughes and Katherine Beatty have described strategic thinking as “the collection, interpretation, generation, and evaluation of information and ideas that shape an organization’s sustainable competitive advantage”, in their book ‘Becoming a Strategic Leader’ (Switzer, “Strategic Thinking in Fast Growing Organizations”). Strategic thinking is a top-down overall observation of the whole organization on the basis of complete understanding of the business of the organization. Thus, strategic thinking consists of observing emerging trends, recognizing if the trends signify opportunities or intimidation to the business organization. Strategic thinking also involves developing a response of the organization to earn benefit from the prospective opportunity or to alleviate the potential threat or intimidation involved. When an organization is able to accomplish this more rapidly and effectively than its peers, it manages to attain a competitive advantage over others. Strategic thinking is very vital in the business organizations because, these days, change has become a constant thing. Moreover, the changes taking place are not always linear changes that possess a cause and effect association. The non-linear changes can be time and again typified by doubt and ambiguity, because at times a change in a small section of the business can have an impact on the overall business. The strategic mode of thinking and planning can help in effectively minimizing the gap between the organization’s present position and the position it ought to be in the coming days (Switzer, “Strategic Thinking in Fast Growing Organizations”). The seven stages in the strategic decision-making process, as described by Mintzberg are acknowledgment, identification, exploration, plan, screening, assessment of choice and approval (Bronn, “Communication Managers As Strategists: Can They Make The Grade?”). The management of an organization should employ strategic thinking so as to comprehend the prevailing external environment and recognize the competence of the organizations and also its long-term objectives. Strategic thinking enables the management of the organization to understand the association involving loosely related events, to identify the influencers, and to recognize the new opportunities. The Connection between Strategic Thinking and Organizational Change Bringing about an organizational change is a challenging task; John Kotter in his book ‘Leading Change’ had introduced eight steps for leading change (Naughtin, “Leading Change by John P. Kotter”). The first step is to increase a sense of necessity around the need for change, which would help to flicker the primary inspiration to get things stirring. The second stage is to induce people that change is required and to bring jointly an alliance, or team, of influential people in the organization. This alliance team has to work as a team, continuing to build necessity and impetus around the requirement for change. The third stage involves creating and clarifying the vision for change and then building a strategy to execute that vision. The fourth stage is the efficient communication of the change vision and assembling confidence from all points of the organization. The stage five of the process requires putting in place the constitution for change, and repeatedly checking for obstruction faced in it. In the sixth step, one needs to generate momentum through short-term achievements. The seventh stage for leading change in an organization is to build on the change by setting goals to continue building on the momentum achieved so far. The final step would involve incorporating the change in the organizational culture in order to sustain it (Naughtin, “Leading Change by John P. Kotter”). The initial four steps of the organizational change model can be inferred as the stages that are implicated in the strategic thinking process. The final four steps can be referred as the transition course from ‘where we should reach’ to ‘how we are going to reach there’ (Whitlock, “Strategic Thinking, Planning, And Doing: How To Reunite Leadership And Management To Connect Vision With Action”). Thus, the phases to attain successful implementation of organizational change can be considered as a progression from guiding change to administering change, where every step has been strategically thought and planned. Organizational Culture and Strategic Thinking The values of an organization in addition to its vision and mission form the foundation of the culture of the organization. As a result, the organizational culture acts as a magnetic field that draws and brings action in line with vision (Whitlock, “Strategic Thinking, Planning, And Doing: How To Reunite Leadership And Management To Connect Vision With Action”). Thus, it is very necessary that the culture of the organization is conductive to strategic thinking, because culture is one of the organizational aspects that can promote or constrain the assistance to the growth of a person’s strategic thinking capability. The leaders and the top level executives of an organization are the creator and transformer of the organization’s culture and can hence influence the association between the culture of the organization and the development of strategic thinking amongst employees (Goldman & Casey, “Building a Culture That Encourages Strategic Thinking”). The strategic thoughts that encompass the significance of the culture of the organization are effectual in setting up new route as well as generating successful change implementation (Whitlock, “Strategic Thinking, Planning, And Doing: How To Reunite Leadership And Management To Connect Vision With Action”). This article on “Organizational Change and Strategic Thinking” has been written observing guidelines of the Harvard Business Review. The article has practical implication for the managers of organizations as it would enable them to understand the significance of strategic thinking in bringing about successful organizational change and its impact on establishing the core competence of the organization. Works Cited Bonn, Ingrid. “Developing Strategic Thinking As A Core Competency”. Management Decision 39.1 (2001): 63-70. Bronn, Peggy Simcic. “Communication Managers As Strategists: Can They Make The Grade?”. Journal of Communication Management 5.4 (2001): 313-326. Goldman, Ellen F. & Casey, Andrea. “Building a Culture That Encourages Strategic Thinking.” Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies 17.2 (2010): 119-128. Naughtin, Pat. “Leading Change by John P. Kotter”. September 09, 2011. Book Review by Pat Naughtin, No Date. Switzer, Merlin. “Strategic Thinking in Fast Growing Organizations.” Journal of Strategic Leadership 1.1 (2008): 31-38. Whitlock, John. L. “Strategic Thinking, Planning, And Doing: How To Reunite Leadership And Management To Connect Vision With Action”. 64th National Conference of the American Society for Public Administration. (2003). Bibliography Eisenhardt, Kathleen. M. & Sull, Donald. N. “Strategy as Simple Rules.” Harvard Business Review (2001). Read More