Planning and Implementing Change - Ford Motor Company - Case Study Example

If adapting to new circumstances is an ever present challenge to organizations, why is it so challenging and intense and so difficult to achieve success when planning and implementing change? Name Institution Course Tutor Date Planning and Implementing Change This essay discusses the question, if adapting to new circumstances is an ever present challenge to organizations, why is it so challenging and intense and so difficult to achieve success when planning and implementing change? It is important to discuss this question in order to increase the understanding of how we can manage change given that change is inevitable in the current business environment. Change is a terminology that exists in both our personal and professional lives. It occurs within and outside our world, such as the way in which an organization is structured and performs its business operations. In a business context, organizations maintain their competitiveness in the industry when they embrace change and support continuous change implementation and transformation (Yılmaz & Kılıçoğlu 2013). This is effectively realized through leadership influence and behaviour. Change is an act of moving from one condition of understanding to the unknown. It causes a change in the perception of employees and therefore it could either be negative of positive (Spector 2010). Ideally, change has become a challenging feature of organizational being at operational and strategic levels. Nevertheless, organizations often find it so difficult to achieve success during the planning and implementation of change. Using Ford Motor Company as an example, this essay discusses what accounts for the trend in organizations. Before discussing why it is challenging for organizations to achieve successful change, let us first have a brief overview of Ford Motor Company which has been used as a source of reference in the essay. Henry Ford and other business associates founded Ford Motor Company in 1903 in the United States (Ursula 2008). Before the existence of the company, cars were known to be luxury items and only the wealthy could purchase them because they were very expensive. However, when Ford came in, it focused on changing this perception by insisting on use of the right technology to produce easily accessible cars by the public at an affordable price (Ursula 2008). Currently, the company initiated a program to develop new software that is meant to improve the process of production and management of the entire company operations. Despite the company being eager to transform its operations through this change, it experienced various challenges during the change process, which serve as a lesson to other organizations. Like Ford Motor Company, many organizations encounter challenges when planning and implementing change, which often affects the success of their change initiatives. According to Latta (2009) research shows that tow-third of changes in organizations fail. This is causes tremendous cost to organizations’ resources, money, and time. But, what accounts for this? What we should understand in the first place is that change itself is challenging and often causes some level of emotional concern among employees (Gilley, Gilley & McMillan 2009). On this basis, it is true to argue that an organization that wants to introduce change needs to bring together the diverse opinions of employees in solving complex issues within the organization. In particular, there are a number of factors that make the process or planning and implementing change in the organization challenging and unsuccessful. Some of the contributing factors are discussed in the proceeding paragraphs. On of the reasons that make it difficult to achieve success in the change process is inability for leaders to be authentic on the change initiative. To grab opportunities to achieve business success through change, organizational leaders need to display a set of behaviours. Organizations must build a strong leadership channel from within that has the right competencies to drive change to great success (Yılmaz & Kılıçoğlu 2013). One of the leadership competencies essential in a dynamic business environment is authenticity. Unfortunately, it is not demonstrated by some leaders when leading a change process which affects its success. As Griffin & Moorhead (2011) argue, leadership for change need to create clarity by articulating the vision for change and painting a picture on how the future will look like when the change is implemented. To build confidence and trust with employees whom the change will affect, they need to be sincere in their communications about the change. Normally, change creates confusion and anxiety among employees (Gilley et al 2009). As such, it becomes difficult to achieve success when leaders in charge of the change do not create some level of certainty about the way forward and develop a sense of purpose for people who would be affected by the change (Graetz, Rimmer, Smith & Lawrence 2011). Employees in Ford Motor Company experienced increased anxiety and confusion because they were not prepared for change and this greatly affected their level of productivity. Therefore, it is not adequate to simply develop the vision for change, but the vision must incorporate cultural elements and effectively be articulated to employees (Latta 2009) in order to build a strong means of promoting support for change among employees. Inability to develop and maintain a change team that is qualified also increases the challenges associated with planning and implementing change in the organization. According to Lunenburg (2010) organizations that lack the right people who are skilled in the right areas they may be required at any given time may not successful handle the change process. Because of lack of a well defined charter that classifies duties narrowly comparable to organizational strategy, some organizations do not establish a qualified team for change management (Griffin & Moorhead 2011). Definitely, this makes it difficult to effectively pursue the change process because they would lack the ability to give the right direction to people affected by the change. Additionally, during planning for change, organizations are expected to create a superior team to manage change (Lunenburg 2010). The challenge occurs when the organization is not able to form a team that comprises of authoritative, analytical, insightful, open-minded, and creative change experts who are well equipped with communication and management skills to drive the change effort forward (Jabri 2012). This is what happened to Ford Motor Company as it failed to adequately mobilize a dedicated change management team to control the goals of the change effort. This resulted to poor coordination among employees and most of them did not understand the benefits associated with the change. Therefore, it can be argued that the success of the process of planning and implementing change in the organization depends on the how qualified the change management team is. A team that comprises of qualified individuals would be able to manage change well while unqualified team would not be able to handle the challenges arising from the change process. Lack of motivation attached to the change initiative is one of the reasons for failed change programs in organizations. In most cases, organizations plan for change programs without adjusting incentives that would help strengthen the new behaviour of work procedure desired by the organization. They expect change to happen but they continue to reward the old behaviour (Scheeres 2010). This may not work in favor of such organizations and it is most likely to affect the success of implementing the desired change in the organization. According to Spector (2010) the organization planning for and implementing change must openly recognize and motivate employees who positively respond to change by rewarding them and linking these rewards to the desired behaviours towards the introduced change. In this case, the organization must eliminate rewards that underpin old behaviours and methods of working to gain support for the change. Additionally, the process of planning and implementing change will fail and employees will not be committed to the change, if they think it will not improve things (Scheeres 2010), something many organizations take lightly. The best scenario according to Gilley et al (2009) is to create a win-win situation fro all members of the organization. In this case, the change management is seen to present a positive outcome for people involved in the change process. Therefore, since during transitions employees often tend to contemplate about the possible effect of change to them, they must be motivated to embrace and support the change effort right from the planning stage and throughout the implementing stage; otherwise it would be so challenging for the organization to achieve success as it was the case for Ford Motor Company. The challenge to achieve success when planning and implementing change in the organization is also attributed to failure by management to engage employees, who the improvement affects directly or indirectly (Lunenburg 2010). Organizations need to consider how employees will individually be affected by the proposed change. This is in relation to the understanding that employees within the organization are not only the most significant resource and supporter, but also risk and barrier to the change process. Change uncertainty is likely to stimulate strong emotions among employees. These emotions may include anger, frustration, acceptance, elation, despair and enthusiasm (Yılmaz & Kılıçoğlu 2013). The kind of emotions employees encounter would depend on whether the change was simply imposed on them, or they were engaged in planning and implementing the change effort (Graetz et al 2011). Lack of awareness of a variety of reactions to change, for example, prevented Ford’s organizational leadership for change to respond properly to concerns expressed by employees when planning and implanting change. Consequently, they ended up introducing change in a way that does not anticipate, acknowledge and respond to employees’ concerns, which makes it difficult to achieve success in the change process. Lack of effective communication during the process of planning and implementing change in the organization is another critical aspect that is likely to make the change initiative unsuccessful (Gilley et al 2009). Unfortunately, some change leaders in organizations often mistakenly ignore the impact of communication to the process of change. Without effectively communicating the message for change to all people the change affects makes it difficult for them to accept and support the change, however good it may be. According to Graetz et al (2011) employees who are in one way or another affected by the proposed change must be made to understand what the change is all about to make them feel the need for the change and understand its directions like any other person in the organization. What happens in most organizations, as it was in the case of Ford, is that change leaders adapt change programs that do not articulate significant messages, through regular and timely guidance in a manner which is inspirational and practicable. As such, employees are not given the opportunity to give their views freely concerning the change and engage in discussions with the management which hinders the success of change (Jabri 2012). Although this is a challenge to management, it has no otherwise but to over-communicate the message for change to increase acceptance and support for change by employees. Conclusively, change in inevitable in organizations operating in the modern dynamic business environment. This is why adapting to new situations continues to be a challenge to organizations. To lead to positive outcomes, change leaders must effectively manage the change process with the realization that people respond to change differently. However, despite the pressure to adapt to change, organizations experience the challenge to achieve success during the process of change. The challenge occurs due to inability to authenticate the change, use of unqualified change team, lack of motivation, failure to engage employees in the change, and ineffective communication of the change. Generally, organizations must be prepared to encounter resistance to change and be ready to manage it and other challenges to adapt new situations. Reference List Gilley, A, Gilley, J. W & McMillan, H. S. 2009, ‘Organizational change: Motivation, communication, and leadership effectiveness’, Performance Improvement Quarterly, vol. 21, no. 4, pp. 75-94. Graetz, F., Rimmer, M., Smith, A & Lawrence, A. 2011. Managing Organisational Change, Third Australasian edition. John Wiley & Sons, Milton, Qld. Griffin, R. W & Moorhead, G. 2011, Organizational behavior: Managing people and organizations, South-Western Pub. Jabri, M. 2012, Managing Organizational Change: Process, Social Construction and Dialogue. London: Palgrave Macmillan. Latta, G. F. 2009, ‘A Process Model of Organizational Change in Cultural Context (OC3 Model) The Impact of Organizational Culture on Leading Change’, Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, vol. 16, no. 1, pp. 19-37. Lunenburg, F. G. 2010, ‘Approaches to managing organizational change’, Internationsl journal of scholary academic intellectual diversity, vol. 12, no. 1. Scheeres, J. 2010, ‘Strategies for Accelerating and Sustaining Change in Healthcare Organizations’. Spector, B. 2010, Implementing organizational change: Theory into practice. Prentice Hall. Ursula, H. 2008, ‘Ford Motor Company: Learning from the Automotive Industry’. Yılmaz, D & Kılıçoğlu, G. 2013, ‘Resistance to change and ways of reducing resistance in educational organizations’, European Journal of Research on Education, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 14-21. Read More