The Perceived Requirement for the Strategic Change - Dissertation Example

The Perceived Requirement for the Strategic Change Introduction This paper is developed considering a fictitious company ‘Eutone’ and the change management took place in the wake of certain changes in the business. The focus of this paper would be to articulate the change management processes including the changes and the management of the same. Eutone was established way back in 1957. Until 2004, the organisation used to deal in the manufacturing of bus and trucks. However, after that the company has shifted its focus to the manufacturing of trains. Gradually, the company has been able to take a leading position among the truck manufacturers in UK. Even, during the economic downturn, the stock price of the company remained at a satisfied level. This reflects the fact that the company was capable of shielding itself against the adverse economic situations, when most other companies faced considerable losses. Eutone manufactured its products focusing on the engineering excellence and environment concerns. In the later segments, this paper would reveal what all were the basis for incorporating change in the company’s strategic alignments, the change process itself and evaluation of the same. The Perceived Requirement for the Strategic Change The organisation is well known for the manufacturing of trains, allowing the people and goods to travel through. The company has attained a renowned place in manufacturing trains and has its operation in many places across Europe. A considerable amount of the organisation’s success can be attributed to the company’s human resource management, responsible to manager around 50,000 employees. The employees are dealing in the manufacturing, designing, selling as well as supporting the products and services in the specific sector of rail transportation. In the recent economic downturn, the company has made extensive acquisition. However, after this acquisition the revenue of the company slowed down. At this phase, the company started experiencing many hurdles in both of its structure as well as its capabilities. This encourages a dramatic change in the structure, functions and strategies of the organisation. Till the time, the organisation used to feel greatly proud for its achievements in the respective industry. The performance was fetching good money for the organisation. However, the satisfaction was not there when the company accumulated the feedback from the customers. The customer views were quite different and they were not quite favourable for the company and its products and services. This issue raised a concern among the management and raised the requirement to drive the change management initiatives in the organisation. The organisation was losing on the customer base and at the same time, there was downturn in the consumer loyalty for Eutone’s products and services. It was of high importance that the issue must be fixed without much delay and an aggressive change management strategy is required to be implemented to motivate the human resources to encourage the change management. At the earlier stage, the focus of the organisation has been into manufacturing of the products with enhanced quality. At the time, the customer centric operation was not in there as t he company put less emphasis on offering an enjoyable experience to the customers. All of the employees of the organisation were pretty occupied in the development of the quality products. However, now it was time to shift the focus on the customers. The change activities was meant to direct the focus of the employees to offering enhanced service as perceived by the customers and attain their goodwill. It was pretty important that the employees must understand the significance of the customers’ concerns about their comfort and security rather than the hardware. The employees must understand that the organisation is putting its effort to enhance its products and service according to the customers’ preferences, rather than along with the best hardware technology. Eutone is required to make its employees to focus on the activities and drive their performance up. The organisation is required to entire change in the objectives and goals and furthermore, the entire workforce is required to be pulled towards a new direction to the achievement of the same goals and objectives. However, it was expected that the change process would be facing a considerable amount of resistances and hurdles regarding the employees’ perceptions as well as the available resources for the incorporation of the changes. Change Management Strategy & Process “Change management has typically been defined as a process involving unfreezing, moving, and refreezing values, practices, and procedures within organizations” (The World Bank, “Defining Change Management”). There would be a number of activity stages in the building of change management strategy and the implementation of the same. Establishing the Change Metrics Eutone is required to develop the metrics of change to effectively manage the issues confronting the organisation. The metrics represents the current accumulation of the organisational practices in Eutone, the desired activities as well as the transitional state which would act as to bridge the gap among the two (Brynjolfsson, Renshaw & Alstyne, “Building the Matrix of Change”). This metrics is required to assist the managers to identify critical connections among the various activity stages in the entire process. Specifically, this human resource tool is useful to help the managers to deal with the issues such as the speed of the changes taking place or the starting time of the processes. This tool would also help the managers to evaluate whether the proposed system would be stable and consistent. Critical Processes One of the most critical issues in incorporating the changes is taking the initiative to induce the changes in the system processes. The leader is required to be ready to take on the responsibility of the changes, incorporated. In such a case, the position of the leader can be at stake if the implementation of the processes is not done successfully (McKinsey & Company, p.50). The prime objective of the company is to bring in changes from encouraging the employees to attain the soft goals rather than the hard ones. Initially, the focus of the company had been on the production and manufacturing processes and now the focus has changed to offering of such services which would satisfy the customer requirements and expectations and would help the organisation to attain the goodwill. There were many options like curtail on the immediate expenses. A considerable change can happen in terms of the curtailment of research and development costs. However, as the company deals in the manufacturing of trains and it requires considerable amount of research and development to incorporate continual changes in the design and implementation. The company can opt to incorporate a cultural change within the organisation; however, this would happen gradually and would take a considerable amount of time. The company can also bring in changes in the workplace and environment to attain a secure and rewarding work environment, provision of enhanced service offering to the customers and a considerable reduction in the waste amount at each stage of production and manufacturing. The old processes are required to be removed and replaced by the new ones (Cleland, p.37). Looking into the System Interactions To successfully incorporate the changes within the organisation, it requires an effective interaction among the various verticals and systems. As there was a shift of focus from attainment of manufacturing and engineering goals to enhanced quality of service, a considerable shift was necessary to focus more into the quality management and control division. The organisation is required to restructure its way of offering service to the customers. The emphasis was now more to transforming the soft goals into financial success of the company. IT is a challenge for the company to incorporate the change management in a way, which could bring in the best financial results for the company. The leaders were accounted responsible for the effective collaboration of the individual effort from each vertical and accumulating the same in accordance to the goals and objectives of the organisation. The business leaders experience a number of challenges in managing the resistance (Hiatt & Creasey, p.4). Furthermore, it was also important to make the employees understand that it is pretty important to maintain the stuffs like factories, hardware in a proper way, which would help them to carry out the desired activities successfully and effectively. It was important for the employees to remove the presence of malware within the systems and make sure that they are functioning properly (Verbowski, et al., p.11). The company was primarily focusing more on the people who were more skilled in the handling of engineering and manufacturing technicalities rather than addressing the customer concerns. To bring in the change it was important to focus more on the front line employees, as according to the change strategy they are required to take on more responsibilities. However, in such case, incorporation of change would be difficult for the management as the design engineers would not like the focus to be changed from designing to more on servicing. The company is expected to face resistant as they would not want the operational way to change so rapidly and may reject to adapt to the new changes. It may become difficult for the company to attain the involvement of the employees in the implementation of the desired changes. Looking into the Transition Interactions One of the difficult scenarios in the change management seems to make all the employees get involved in the entire change process. The transition metrics would help the leaders to combine the horizontal as well as vertical metrics to measure the level of difficulties in shifting the current practices to the target ones. In this period, the leaders must give a clear and detailed explanation to the roles and job functions of the employees and a considerable amount of management interference would be visible in the system. The process is not easy and demands the leaders to gain the employees’ confidence, trust and participation. The involvement of both the employees and leaders is of utmost importance and pretty critical for the successful implementation of the change management framework. The implementation of changes in an organisation demands the entire management to get involved throughout the entire process (Axelrod, p.41); a significant part of it would be planning. The management is required to indulge themselves into extensive discussion with the leaders and employees to decide on the course of action and what would be the activities and focus for the same. The objective was to make the employees understand their roles and responsibilities and can align the same according to the organisation goals. In the process, the employees must clearly understand the regular activities which he or she is required to carry on to make the transition simple and easy. The Involvement of the Stakeholders It would not be wrong to say that the stakeholders are the significant most element of any organisation. The organisation has realised that the significance of considering the customers as one of the most significant stakeholders in creating an enhanced process. The first thing which has been more important in considering the customers as important stakeholder is the process of establishing an enhanced process. It was pretty important to make the employees understand the day to day activities. The idea has been to attain and retain the confidence which would consistently eliminate the apprehensions which could have arisen in the minds of the employees. The company must understand the significance of the leadership to make the followers to realise their roles and responsibilities. There may be challenges in it as the employees may find it pretty difficult situation and may face the fear of losing their identity as well as position in the organisation. They can also have the fear of failing to acquire required new skills and competencies in the new responsibilities (Siegelbaum & Suny, p.119). The management must ensure that the contribution of the employees is valued in the organisations and add the same to the company’s growth process. Along with it, they must be assured that after the change the employees would still have enough bargaining power (Whitehead, p.14). Another significant stakeholder is the customers. They must be assumed to be the king and the organisation must work towards the attainment of total satisfaction of the customers. Some of the most significant aspect of the company has been offering enhanced quality service to the customers to earn their goodwill, management of the inherent and possible risks, upholding the organisation name in the global talent management, attaining financial results through the change management and developing corporate social responsibilities for the organisation. Corporate Social Responsibilities can add value to the customers, suppliers and the surrounding community. Furthermore, it would not be wrong to say that the local people can be extremely helpful if they can understand the organisational objectives and values. It is significant to make the customers understand the values the company has been adding. An enhanced communication is required as it would be required to effectively communicate the values they had been adding. It is pretty important that the organisation must help the customers to have a favourable value about the organisation, its products and services. In such a case, it would be difficult for the organisation to further proceed with the change management process. The key players The leaders are the significant players in the organisation. They take the major roles, bear the pressure of the change agent, set goals, motivate the employees to work towards the achievement of the respective goals and take on responsibility for the success or failure of the change process. The prime role of any leader is to coach, counsel and consult the followers or it would not be wrong to say that the leaders are the facilitators of the emergent changes (Cameron & Green, p.134). “Leaders play an important role in setting an example for all those values, behaviours and considerations expected from employees” (Pagon et.al., “Leadership Competencies”). In the process, the supervisors and managers would have significant responsibilities and roles to play in. They have the responsibility to make sure that the processes are carried out without any disruption (Lientz & Rea, p.188). The employees are required to be encouraged to participate in the entire process to make it a success. Conclusion The trains manufactured by Eutone are of enhanced technology as well as would incur less cost than that of its competitors. However, after fetching the feedback of the customers, the organisation has felt serious need to change its strategic goals and objectives and pull off its entire employee base to work in a customer focussed business environment. However, that would mean that the organisation is required to change its entire operating business culture from quality centric operation of customer centric ones. It was of urgent requirement that the company must add the features which would add value according to the customers. There was complete transformation in the way of operation and functioning of the company in the specific industry. The transformation was in form of changing the engineering and manufacturing goals of the organisation to create a business culture where the focus would be on the customers, the employees and continual enhancement of service. The management is required to push their engineers to pursue the soft goals rather than stick to the strict manufacturing goals. The project has also revealed that the challenges were there in managing the changes across the organisation. Leadership is a crucial part of the entire change process. It is of utmost importance that each aspect of the processes, the organisation gives a considerable amount of importance to the people, the stakeholders of the organisation. The company is required to put enough emphasis on the teamwork, continual improvement and its striving for the results. Reference Axelrod, R. H. Terms of Engagement: Changing the Way We Change Organizations. Barrett-Koehler Publishers, 2003. Brynjolfsson, E., Renshaw, A. A. & Alstyne, M. V. “Building the Matrix of Change”. January 1997. The Matrix of Change: A Tool for Business Process Reengineering. May 06, 2011. . Cameron, E. & Green, M. Making sense of change management: a complete guide to the models, tools & techniques of organizational change. Kogan Page Publishers, 2004. Cleland, D. I. Strategic management of teams. Wiley-IEEE, 1996. Hiatt, J. & Creasey, T. J. Change management: the people side of change. Prosci, 2003. Lientz, B. P.. & Rea, K. P. Breakthrough IT change management: how to get enduring change results. Butterworth-Heinemann, 2004. McKinsey & Company. 2010. Voices on Transformation. May 06, 2011. . Pagon, M., Banutai, E. & Bizjak, U. “Leadership Competencies”. 2008. LEADERSHIP COMPETENCIES FOR SUCCESSFUL CHANGE MANAGEMENT. May 06, 2011. . Siegelbaum, L. H. & Suny. R. G. Making workers Soviet: power, class, and identity. Making workers Soviet: power, class, and identity. Cornell University Press, 1994. The World Bank. “Defining Change Management”. No Date. Change Management. May 06, 2011. . Verbowski, C., Kiciman, E., Kumar, A. & Daniels, B. 2006. Flight Data Recorder: Monitoring Persistent-State Interactions to Improve Systems Management. May 06, 2011. . Whitehead, D. V. Workers' financial participation: East-West experiences. International Labour Organization, 1995. Bibliography Ash, P. December, 2009. Fast and Effective Change Management. May06, 2011. . Cook, S., Macaulay, S. & Coldicott, H. Change management excellence: using the four intelligences for successful organizational change. Kogan Page Publishers, 2004. Doherty, P. & Waterhouse, P. 2006. Change Management: A CA IT Service Management Process Map. May 06, 2011. . Read More