Managing Organizational and Personal Change - Essay Example

Managing organizational and Personal Change Name: Course: Institution: Date: Personal Change Experience The process of change is always a challenge to all. Personally, I have experienced change, but similar to all individuals had my initial change challenges as well as downfalls. I grew up in the countryside during my formative years. In this case, I grew up knowing and believing that there existed a difference between the county States people and the urban state dwellers. In fact, I was under the impression that in order to assert rule and influence over the urban employee, one hand to be assertive and apply the autocratic management system. As such, I developed an attitude that to be a leader I should be autocratic and influential. This was based on an evaluation of the autocratic leadership theory that this ensures respect and devotion on the organizational management system. Change Process Start This was clearly evident after I joined college to further my education. Unlike high school where individual learning and personal tasks were encouraged, the college presented a different learning model and opportunity. In this regard, besides the traditional personal evaluation exams, the college management advocated for teams and peer groups through which students would learn. In fact, as a form of encouraging team management and relations, the students were offered the opportunity to develop their own groups as well as the group management systems. I joined a group with a total membership of seven team members. Fortunately, being the only team member from the countryside, the members resolved to appoint me the team leader, to ensure balance and serve as a guarantee of equality among the team members. In this regard, upon my appointment as the leader, I convened the first team meeting where I had resolved and developed an agenda for the establishment of a schedule through which our meetings would be held. In this case, I had developed a draft schedule through which I read out to the members for adoption and noting down. Although the team accepted and adopted the schedule, challenges were to follow afterwards. During our first scheduled team meeting, I allocated each of the members a role and task to complete as per the team task requirements, a task which required a three week evaluation for research and compiling. Fortunately, all members completed their tasks on time and I presented the task to the entire class where team performances and tasks reviews were offered. To my dismay, our team was the last. This led to a growing dissatisfaction among the team members and we resolved to hold an evaluation meeting to analyze on the team’s poor performance. This was the first stage at which I applied the cognitive change model in my scenario. As such, I accepted that my leadership approach could have highly contributed to the teams’ failure. As such, I developed an initiative to evaluate areas in which my leadership skills and approach could have led to the team’s failure, a process I conducted through benchmarking with peer team leader performances. Mistakes Recognition In this case, I realized two critical mistakes in my leadership approach. On one hand, I developed the meeting schedule on my own without due consideration of the members input. Consequently, most of the members were mostly tired at the scheduled meeting time as they came shortly after outdoor games, thus reducing their active participation and contribution to the team discussions. Moreover, in assigning the respective tasks, I realized that instead of inviting the members to undertake tasks they felt competent in, I allocated the tasks based on my own evaluation and perception in a bid to exert and demonstrate my leadership, influence and control over the members. As such, based on the cognitive change approach model, I entered the second change stage, which involved a change of mind and perception. In this case, resolved to adopt and apply a different approach to the team leadership on our second task allocations. First, I invited the members to decide the team’s ideal meeting times as well as select tasks they felt could handle better. To my surprise, besides early and timely task completion, the team performance was rated among the best in class. Consequently, as Sussex and Scourfield (2004, p.20) in reference to the Kolb’s (1984) change model stated, an individual change process involves and incorporates the process of personal evaluation and reflection, I resolved to a reflection of my perception and approach to leadership. In this case, the process involved an evaluation of the merits of the two adopted leadership approaches, namely the autocrat and the participative leadership approaches. In this regard, I concluded that with increased participative leadership in the team management systems, there was increased team cooperation as well as outcomes quality. Therefore, based on the personal reflection and the cognitive theory, principles of change I resolved to apply and adopt a different management approach. Change Completion Since, then, I have over the years encouraged participative team management both as a team leader or member in subsequent college learning teams as well as in the co-curriculum teams. This change process and gains illustrated to me that indeed the participative leadership approach was the ideal process. Since then, I changed my perception and leadership approach to an inclusive participative approach in which I always consult with others. My own experience on a character change is a common phenomenon among a majority of individuals where a change process starts with the realization that their initial behavior and practices were wrong, the initiation of a change process and the consequent stabilization on the new adopted changes. Organizational Change Experience An organizational change process is a challenging process that requires commitment and devotion by both the organizational management and employees. In this case, an understanding and joint collaboration between employees and the management stimulate change success. In this regard, Sharma (2007, p.87) noted that a major organizational change success challenge is resistance from the employees. As such, key among the existing challenges is the fear of the unknown which causes the employee to challenge and resist change in the fear of losing their job security as well as influence. The case of organizational change process can be cited in the case of British Airways. The organization in the pre 1981 period was a State owned organization and had a high employee workforce, laxity and a demotivated employee culture. Consequently, this led to a high organizational operating costs. Upon the recruitment and hiring of a new organizational CEO, a change process was initiated. In this regard, the proposed changes were on the change of an organizational leadership and ownership structure in the market as well as the employee number. Change Process Defreezing Stage In order to reduce organizational resistance to change as well as the enhancement of the change process success, the CEO applied the behavioral change approach, Under this change approach, the CEO targeted and focused on changing the respective employee behavior and perception on the organizational management and operational systems. The first step under this change process was the development of an understanding. In this regard, an understanding involves a process through which an organizational management educates and trains its employee on the expected changes in the market. As such, through this approach, the employees are educated and braced for the expected changes, consequently negating and reducing the fear of the unknown amongst the employees. One of the behavioral approach steps is the application of an employee’s motivation system. In this regard, the change process involves the development of both financial and non financial employee motivation systems. Through the development of a motivation system, the behavioral change process argues that the respective employees change their perception on their activities and organizational operations. On one hand, a financial motivation includes the increment of employee’s earnings as a reward system. As such, this ensures that the basic employee needs are met thus aligning their interests with the organizational needs. One of the reasons for challenges and low organizational motivation in the British Airways was a low rewards system that led to discrepancies between the organizational strategic goals and the employee needs in the market (Kotter and Leahey, 1990, p.47). Therefore, through the development of an increased employee reward system financially, the employee motivation was essentially increased. Change Process On the other hand, the development and adoption of non-financial reward system such as the recognition of the employee of the year among others increased the organizational value proposition to the employees as well as the development of a connection between the employee and organizational needs. Thus, the CEO successfully integrated the employee needs with the organization and changed their perception of the organization as a large family with a shared objective. In addition, the behavioural change approach argues on the need to develop an understanding and jusitification for change to promote long term behaviour change in an organization. In this regard, the process involves the development of support structures to promote the behavior change in the long term. In the case of the British Airway an institutional and structural change was effected through a two faced system. On one hand, the management initiated an employee appraisal system to evaluate and establish individual employee performances. In this case, the appraisal system advocated for an evaluation of individual employee ratings, which was adopted and used to rank the employees for retention and retrenchment as a move to ensure merit and honesty in the process. Although the retrenchment process ended in the late 1983 period, the organization applies the employee reward and appraisal systems (“British Airways”, 2014). Change Achievements Refreezing Stage In this case, the organization expanded its reward system to incorporate an internal corporate social responsibility through which the organization supports the employees and their families have been developed. In this regard, the approach has served successfully over the years as a tool to align the employee and family interests with the organizational interest. In addition, the organization still applies the employee appraisal system based on employee experience, qualifications and performance as an employee rating system. Consequently, this has served as a strategic behavioral change approach support tool for the British Airways. Indeed, statistics and organizational analysis, reviews have over the years established that the high employee motivation and alignment with organizational strategic goals developed in 1981 has remained steadfast and persistent over the years. The above British Airways is a critical evaluation of a successful organizational change process. In this regard, the change process, aimed at developing a new employee culture of commitment and productivity was based on the behavioral approach. As such, this analysis argues that the change process success can be cited in the development of an employee understanding of the need and necessity of the change process prior to initiating the change process. As such, this reduced the fear of the unknown among the employees, thus reducing resistance as well as increasing change process support across the employee base, making it not only a success , but als sustainable in the long term organizational operational period. Consequently, into the future, this analysis recommends that other organisations willing and intending to apply the behavioral change approach should develop a sufficient support base prior to initiating the change process. Linking Personal and Organizational Change The change process, whether individual or organizational is interrelated. In this regard, as demonstrated under the British Airways case study change analysis, organizational change is based on individual change that grow to an organizational systems change. Therefore, individual change experiences among leaders and employees in an organization serve as a basic platform for eventual organizational changes. Need Justification Based on this review, I argue that my personal change experience offers me a platform into understanding and effectively managing change in an organization. On one hand, the change experience made me realize the need for establishing a change need. As such, I only succeeded in my change process after realizing and fully understanding the role and relevance of initiating a change process. As such, into the future when faced with a need to change in an organization, I would effectively manage the change process through starting off with a need evaluation and justification stage. As such, I would ensure that prior to initiating any organizational change process, Iwould successfully enlist the employees and other organizational stakeholders on the role and rationale for such a change (Alinsky, 2010, p.28). Therefore, this would promote change process success as well as reduce the overall perceived resistance. Change Review Role On the other hand, my personal change experience enlightened me on the need to review change process success. In this regard, upon initiating a change process, I evaluated the implications on the second team task performance where the results were positive. As such, this offered me an opportunity to review the adopted change process and consequently develop any relevant execution alternatives. Although this was not applied in the case of British Airways it is an important change tool. As such, into the future when dealing with an organizational change process, I would increase change management effectiveness through an evaluation and milestone systems establishment. As such, the milestone approach ensures that the change process execution is on course. Therefore, this would ensure that in the event that there are change execution challenges, such can be resolved early enough to counter long term challenges. Continuous Improvement Finally, my personal change experience taught me the need and relevance of a continuous improvement practice. In this case, on a personal level I embraced increased continuous improvement to fully embrace a participative leadership approach. Therefore, as Doppelt (2009, p.35) stated, this can be applied in an organizational change process. In this case, an effective change management in organisations to promote not only a change process success, but also a change process sustainability. Therefore, through this approach, such an increased continuous improvement system on employees appraisal and reward system by the British Airways organization increased its change process to date. Therefore, this analysis establishes that an individual change experience serves as a vital tool for leaders and employees successful organizational change management. References Alinsky, S. D., 2010, Rules for radicals: A practical primer for realistic radicals, Vintage eBooks, New York. British Airways, 2014, Information. [Online] Available at < http://www.britishairways.com/en-gb/information/partners-and-alliances/oneworld?source=MNVINF1oneworld&link=main_nav> [Accessed January 6, 2015]. Doppelt, B., 2009, Leading change toward sustainability: A change-management guide for business, government and civil society, Greenleaf Publishers, Sheffield, U.K. Kotter, J. P., & Leahey, K., 1990, Leadership And Managing People: Changing the Culture and British Airways, Harvard Business Review, London. Sharma, R. R., 2007, Change management: Concepts and applications, Tata McGraw-Hill, New Delhi Sussex, F., & Scourfield, P., 2004, Social care: Level 4, for foundation degrees and NVQ, Heinemann Educational, Oxford Read More