Applied Leadership Theories Concerning Public Sector Organization - Business Plan Example

Executive Summary

This Transformational Implementation Plan (TI Plan) reflects the need of improving the service delivery of City hall to the residents of City of Mount Pleasant. The City has enjoyed periods of relatively successful service delivery. However, challenges have arisen in recent times thus necessitating the need for this TI Plan. Certain areas or issues that need to be transformed by the City Hall include business and economy, living conditions, working and learning and the overall development of the city. These are the key areas that the TI Plan focusses its efforts in a bid to turn the City into a pleasant place to live and work. The TI Plan main goal is to change the culture of the Mt. Pleasant’s Council-manager government by identifying leadership theories that will be make Mt. Pleasant an attractive place to residents and visitors alike.

The successful implementation of the TI Plan will necessitate certain leadership theories. These theories include the successful engagement of the stakeholders, use of innovation, forming of teams that are made up of young, ambitious employees and managerial supervisors, and identifying barriers for the benefit of coming up with solutions to potential problems before hand.

The TI Plan will affect different stakeholders and such; they need to be identified so that they can be engaged effectively. Knowing the relevant stakeholders is critical to the successful outcome of the TI Plan and attainment of the goals set out. A feedback mechanism is required to help in determining the effectiveness of the TI Plan. Hence, resistances will be highly employed to ascertain the efficiency and effectiveness of the TI Plan.

Introduction

The City of Mount Pleasant is a city well known for its rich heritage. It is conveniently located at the crossroads of highways that connect to the other major cities of the Midwest. The City prides itself in having loyal and hardworking employees, whom together with a dedicated Council strive to make Mount Pleasant a unique experience enjoyed by the residents and visitors alike. In order to achieve high levels of expectations, the Council and other employees employ accountability, accessibility, efficiency, and fiscal responsibility. As such, the city continues to enjoy many accomplishments, both economically and culturally. The City of Mount Pleasant’s mission statement has been at the forefront in guiding the actions of all the stakeholders, helping them to achieve a safe and attractive city.

The reason for the need for the change (diagnosis)

However, like other cities, Mt. Pleasant has had its share of challenges. Hence, the need for this TI Plan that will ensure the delivery of the vision and the ambition of the city by changing the culture of the council government. Core to this plan are the various stakeholders whose views and contributions will help to shape the growth and ensure its successful delivery. Therefore, the main purpose of this TI Plan is to come up with a framework that will push forward a strategy that will facilitate successful cultural change and deploy staff working at the City Hall to embrace change. A well-orchestrated plan will ultimately ensure that the city’s objectives for its citizens and its strategic goals are achieved.

Current Culture

Mt. Pleasant has an extremely vibrant organizational culture. It employees, management and leadership all enjoy a good working relationship with each other. However, at times, instances of miscommunication between the stakeholders, poor policies and philosophies have affected the otherwise a good working environment.

In order to change the current culture, it will be necessary to employ a top to bottom approach. The leader at the top will need to become a transformational leader. Innovation amongst all the stakeholders will be necessary.

Vision

To evolve into a high performance organization where its employees and staff are considered associates, who are highly productive through empowerment, motivation, and development leading to quality dispensation of duties

The mission heading City Hall of the City of Mt. Pleasant is solely based on habits that define highly effective organizations. These are:

• Continuous strategizing based on a desired future to be achieved by successfully implementing the TI Plan
• Successful grooming and development of leaders who are transformation minded
• Reaching out to partners in various business fields who will help to push their agenda in achieving the desired outcome
• Encouraging a culture based on innovativeness aimed at improving the status quo.
• Careful and powerful pre planned branding that accurately identifies what the council stands for

The transformational implementation plan (TI Plan) focuses on the culture at City Hall so that it can embrace changes on Mt. Pleasant’s emerging themes. Successful culture change will ensure that the emerging issues are tackled to the benefit of the City at large. Some of the changes that will occur include:

Transformational plan identifying within the plan

• Changes which will impact Business and economy

Once the Council-manager government of the City of Mt. Pleasant embraces change, it will come up with new policies, legislation, and innovative ways of attracting more investment into the city. New investment made within the boundaries of the Mount Pleasant will not only provide employment and improve the standards of living of the residents but also provide new sources of revenue streams for the council through taxes. In addition, change of culture will foster business growth and strengthen business relations within the city thus making it easy to do business. This will be achieved through reducing red tape at the Council level. Cutting back on red tape, which a major concern for would be investors, will help to avoid the duplication of roles.

• Changes making the Living Conditions better

The Council is mandated in undertaking its duties so that the residents can enjoy their stay in the city. Such duties are to reduce the gap in health inequalities, improving its community relations, and the general improvement of the neighborhoods in the city. A change in culture at City Hall would ensure that it could carry out customer relations with the aim of getting feedback from the residents on the proposed and implemented actions. Hence, the improvement of the living experience in the City, since City Hall will be able to interact with the residents and provide solutions.

• Changes to improve education

The change in culture at the City Hall would introduce new working values that will enhance service delivery to the benefit of the residents. The Council by focusing on improving the existing educational inequalities will help the residents acquire quality education that will fuel growth of the local labor force. A well-educated labor force will not only improve the level of skills but also increase their employability status.

• Changes that guarantee the City’s Growth and Development

Outside the confines of the TI Plan, many locations around the world that are well developed and managed often attract and command attention from interested groups all over the world who would want to come and share the experience. Hence, through integration of the TI Plan in the City and Development values, the Council of the City of Mt. Pleasant would promote and position the City as a tourist attraction. In addition, to promoting the city as a tourism destination, a well-implemented TI Plan will attract key strategic projects form well formulated policies.

Framework of the Mt. Pleasant

The City of Mt. Pleasant has a strong elected political leadership, which is known as the Commission. The Mayor, who is elected by the commission members annually, chairs the seven-member commission. The City has a council-manager who is elected by the Commission. The duties of the council-manager include the day-to-day running of the City’s business together with implementing the policy recommendations made by the Commission.

Since the organizational framework of the city takes the form of a political cum professional combination, the frames used in the TI Plan that will enable the successful implementation of change in culture at the City Hall are the Political and Human Resource Frames.

Political Frame

A political frame of the TI Plan views City Hall as an arena where various individual interests are played out. The interaction of the various interest groups and individual will define the success of the change in culture to embrace change. According to Lee and Deal (2013), there exist five assumptions that may be utilized in summing a political frame:

• A coalition of individuals and groupings with varying interest
• These individuals and groups have varying differences in their perceptions, values and belief systems
• Major decisions consists of deciding where the major resources will be channeled
• Day-to-day conflicts are the norm brought about by the limited resources and differences in the various interest groups. As such, power is at the focal point
• Decisions and goals are arrived on based on a series of negotiations among the interest groups who are looking after their own interests.

Leadership and management roles in plan

The Council-manager will spearhead the implementation of the TI Plan. The opportunity to be in charge will come naturally, since the manager is also responsible for the day-to-day activities at the Council. The Council-manager will provide a general endorsement that will help in directing the City Hall to construct detailed plans that will facilitate the changes. However, the Council-manager will not be acting alone. He will need the cooperation of the mayor and Commission and the rest of the City employees to achieve the cultural change at City Hall. The rest of the Council may help in setting out completion timelines and setting up of new policies. Change at first glance may be seen as unwarranted disturbance of the norm. Instances may occur where people at City Hall may be reluctant to embrace change.

Changes occurring within City Hall need to be introduced by the Council-manager in an organized and gradual manner so that people are given opportunity to embrace the changes. There would be no cost implications with the TI Plan. However, one diversity issue, consistency, may be involved. In order to ensure a one hundred percent change in culture, all the stakeholders will be required to incorporate daily practice, which demands consistency.

Management components in plan

Human Resource Frame

This frame will help both the Mayor and the Council-manager in implementing the TI Plan.

The success of the change in culture at City Hall depends on the effectiveness and the ability of its leaders and managers to effectively utilize the human resource frame. According to Lee and Deal (2013), “Organizations that understand the need to develop an approach to people will enjoy benefits from hiring talented, motivated, and loyal workforce.” (p. 140)

The culture change at City Hall can be effectively managed by the leaders and managers who will take into consideration the fact that they are working within a team which has needs and expectations. In order for them to get it right the first time, they must come up and implement a strategy that will share the philosophy of the change that is warranted at the City Hall. In addition, the human resource frame will provide managers the tools empowering the workers so as to encourage the sharing of information and support that is received as feedback (Lee and Deal 2013).

In order to implement the changes that will be anticipated with the adoption of the TI Plan, certain leadership theories will be required. Relevant leadership theory include:

Applied Leadership Theories

Transformational theory

Northouse, (2016) argues that the transformational theory is a leadership theory that gravitates towards charismatic and effective elements of leadership. It is part of a process, which seeks to transform people. It is more concerned with values, ethics, and emotions while looking out for the long term. Key to this theory is treating people as full humans and in this case the stakeholders. The Council-manager, who is in charge of the implementation of this TI Plan, will benefit if he puts it into practice. Through this leadership theory, the stakeholders will be strive to accomplish more than what is expected from them. This means that the change of culture among the stakeholders will be embraced and the change will be quickly adopted. Processes that are at the disposal of the Council-Manager will easily iron out the existence of any resistances. According to Northouse (2016), by using the transactional leadership theory, the Council-manager will raise the level of motivation among the stakeholders in anticipation of the culture change and will also help in establishing a deeper connection with them. Some of the actions that a leader and manager can undertake to ensure a successful TI Plan include:

• Engagement of all the stakeholders who will be affected by the TI Plan

When the stakeholders are involved in all the processes involved in a TI Plan, there is less occurrence of rejection as most of the input will have been submitted. Hence, stakeholder involvement will help in winning the support that is desired to see the successful completion of the TI Plan (Edwards 2011). A leader will thus employ a bottom-up model that allows for easy engagement of the stakeholders. In addition, mission definition can be harnessed to come up with a vision that is recognized by all the stakeholders (Reisner, 2011). A most effective way to foster engagement in the working environment is to have each employee make the mission of the organization his or her personal mission

• Take up reliable innovative measures

In order to successfully implement the TI Plan, the Council of Mount Pleasant must adopt an innovate process that will allow the generation of key imaginative initiatives. As such, it must recognize that innovation is at the heart of the transformational plan (Edwards 2011). A reliable innovative process will be able to come up with a new vision that will ultimately ensure the TI Plan is well adapted in the field. It will also enable the staff and employees connect with the TI Plan. The success of the TI Plan requires a homogeneous interaction with the existing vision and mission of the council. Innovation is at the core of enabling this smooth interaction and, therefore, it will assist the stakeholders in understanding and absorbing the new processes that are in the TI Plan (Reisner, 2011).

• Ability to recognize any barriers that may arise

Implement the TI Plan is bound to have drastic changes on not only the employees and staff but also to the day-to-day processes, the Council undertakes daily. These drastic changes can ultimately lead to barriers such as the employees who are not adopting changes as fast as anticipated or other normal obstacles that may arise in the course of introduction of new systems. Therefore, it is imperative that a list of probable barriers be created beforehand to enable easier identification and allow any mitigation measures to be put into place. As such, the ability to recognize the barriers as they occur will enable swift correction measures and allow for feedback (Reisner, 2011).

The TI Plan focuses on four key issues that are to be transformed. As previously, illustrated, these include the Business and economy; City and development, Improve education; and Community living experience. These issues are critical to the growth and wellbeing of the City of Mt. Pleasant. The major reason that they were selected was because once the council incorporates the TI Plan, the above issues would have a huge impact on not only the day-to-day living but also the welfare of the city as a whole. The economy of the city will be positively affected: the pleasant environment to visit and enjoy will attract new visitors, the good environment that fosters business growth, which will drive the development of the city as a whole, will attract investors. Moreover, the improved environment will require news skills, which will push educational facilities to introduce new courses to cater for the increased demand. As such, residents working in the city will have higher skills levels that they will be able to obtain and apply in their work environment.

The TI plan is likely to go over a long period since it may take a very long time to get all the people to adapt to change and make the plan successful. Furthermore, change that takes place slowly and carefully is most likely to yield better results than change that takes place very fast. People need time to get adjusted and processes must be well considered. A ten-year period would be ideal for changes to be realized fully. Since the changes are massive, it is likely to be very costly hence the need for the changes to take place gradually. Gradual change is likely to be more cost friendly and allow any modifications to be made.

Innovation as a tool for improving the culture at The City of Mt. Pleasant City Hall

The change in culture proposed by this TI Plan will be successful if the stakeholders embrace innovation as a means or a tool for bringing about the change process. Innovation is an effective tool. It is at the heart of the TI Plan. Through it, innovative ways may be adopted by the stakeholders in helping to come up with a new culture. For instance, workshops for both the leaders, managers and employees can be held. This will be on a round-the-table basis, where each person is free to contribute ideas on the proposed changes. This will ensure the inclusion of all the stakeholder’s ideas in the new culture.

The effectiveness of the leadership adopting new leadership theories and stakeholders adopting innovation can be monitored easily. The first obvious measure of successful implementation is the improved in service delivery done by the City Hall. Residents will easily acquire the services that they seek. The second pointer of successful implementation is the improved business environment. The City Hall will able to collect more taxes and most of the City will experience growth.

Stakeholders in the TI Plan for the City of Mt. Pleasant

The stakeholders who are relevant to the TI Plan are the ones who will be in intimate contact with it. Key stakeholders at City Hall will include Council-manager, The Mayor, Commission, and employees working for the City. Since the TI Plan targets to change the culture at City Hall, a human-based organization, it is expected to encounter opposers as well as supporters. Any change that occurs within the working environment may not be wholly embraced by the people it targets. The Council-manager is the manager, the main authority who ensures the successful implementation of the TI Plan. As such, he and the leader, the Mayor, who heads the Commission, will be the major supporters of the culture change at City Hall. Some opposition is expected at the Commission and at the employee’s levels, since some members of the Commission and employees may find the changes that occur to be new to them. However, any occurrences of opposition can be easily dealt with. The Council-manager can organize for seminars and interactive sessions with the stakeholders to highlight the benefits of the change in culture at City Hall.

Feedback mechanism

The main feedback mechanism that is critical during the implementation of the TI Plan is resistance. During the course of running the TI Plan, tension often occurs brought about by the changes. During the course of the TI Plan, resistance can be harnessed and leveraged. It is a positive force that acts as a catalyst for responding to issues involving stakeholder management and agreement in the Council’s implementation of the TI Plan. As a result, resistance feedback, which takes the form of three dimensions, helps to even out the tension: behavioral, cognitive, and emotional resistances.

Cognitive resistances can occur when the staff or employees have a perception that the TI Plan will curtail their ability of voicing new ideas that they may harbor (Edwards 2011). As such, it would be identified when the staff only shows little bits of commitment or willingness to effectively communicate or participate in the matters of the TI Plan. The second is the emotional resistance. This form of resistance occurs due to the changes in the existing organizational belief and value system. It can be affected in one of two ways. The first is a buildup of resistance leading to a situation of low emotional commitment on the TI Plan or a situation of over commitment on the TI Plan resulting into a chaotic environment. The last of the three resistances is behavioral. It is a mesh of the other two resistances that have been previously illustrated. However, it is not as visible as the other two forms as it tends to be covert. Instances of behavioral resistance are characterized mainly by the spreading of rumors on the effectiveness of the TI Plan.