Organizational Change at Verizons Business Partnership Channel - Essay Example

Running Header: ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE AT VERIZON'S Page Organizational Change at Verizon's Business Partnership Channel Emailaddress Telephone number Introduction The CEO of Verizon Business Partnership Channel has found one of the departments continually underperforming and not meeting deadlines during quarterly departmental reviews. The report by the specific department head on the reason for poor performance was inconsistent and full of conflicting statements and un-based assumptions. The CEO is concerned as under delivery in this department negatively affects the performance of the other departments and is directly influencing the bottom line of the company. After discussions with the executive board, the CEO decided to appoint Merriam an organizational development (OD) practitioner from inside the company whom they have used before to address poor departmental performance in other departments. The CEO contacted Merriam and during their meeting, he clarified the function of the department and indicated that the department was underperforming and presented her with issues he believes is contributing to their poor performance. The issues are: Not meeting deadlines High absenteeism rate Low productivity rate Poor management He also stressed that this was influencing the ability of the other departments in the organization to deliver on their outputs, and this directly effects the bottom-line of the organization. The OD practitioner suggested the collection of preliminary data so that subsequent diagnostic and intervention activities can be focused on addressing the correct contributing issues. She explained that the issues mentioned by the CEO are most likely only symptoms of the underlying problems. To analyse the problematic department the OD practitioner used the Organizational Culture Inventory (OCI) survey, compiled through answers from questionnaires filled in by staff, to measure the characteristics of culture in the department. In figure 1, the results of the department wide survey has been plotted, giving a strong indication of an un-adaptive culture. Figure 1: OCI profile of Problematic Department (Kotter and Heskett, 1992). Problem Identification The OD practitioner deducted from the OCI survey that their was almost a total absence of constructiveness in the department, with a strong extensions on the Passive/Defensive and Aggressive/Defensive styles. This showing compelling reasons why the department is experiencing absenteeism, low productivity and staff having very little or no job satisfaction. When the OD practitioner discussed the results with the departmental manager, he stated that the reason for absence of constructiveness in the department was due to the staff's attitudes towards management and their lack of discipline. It was clear that there was a total breakdown of trust within the department. The OD practitioner used the comprehensive open-system model to do an in-depth analyzes, to better understand the functioning of the problematic department in the organization. "The organization serves to coordinate behaviours of its departments so that they function together in service of a goal or strategy. The general diagnostic model based on systems theory that underlies most of OD is called the open-system mode," (Cummings & Worley, 2001, p84). Diagram 1: Comprehensive Model for Diagnosing Organizational Systems Through the above method, the OD practitioner found some of the contributing factors to the overall poor performance of the specific department. Firstly, the individual based performance appraisal and reward system tend to interfere with team functioning as each member is more interested in his own performance. Then organizational goals seem unclear within the department creating confusion and frustration among staff. Thirdly, coordination of staff efforts and regulation of their task behaviours by management are almost mechanistic, allowing very little innovation or group interaction. Lastly, the performance norms within the group are very low when compared to the organizational standard, countering the organizations overall performance. Diagram 2: Diagnostic Process Cycle It was the overall conclusion that there is a real problem within this department and that quick and definite intervention would be needed to transform the environment and culture to a more productive one. Therefore, what would be the most effective measures that can be implemented to address under-performance in this specific department be Organization Transformation Topical Review It is clear to the OD practitioner that a transformation will be needed in the problematic department, by firstly implementing strategies to change the behaviour of employees, managers included to facilitate the transformation process. To make sure her analyzes of the department is correct, she perform some research on organizational change and transformation, and also the implementation tactics involved. Following are some of the literature reviews she did. In 1994 Chevron Chemical embarked on an aggressive growth strategy by implementing a Total Quality initiative that yielded some improvements in performance but not the substantial improvement they where targeting. After in-depth diagnoses, they found the company was inefficient and inflexible with respect to change. "What the company was lacking, was the focus on behaviours, the element that could help them execute their strategies, enable their processes, and make significant progress in their vision objectives," (Callahan & Nolan, 2001, p2). The Reinforcement Based Leadership (RBL) implemented by Chevron consisted of three components. Firstly, achieve alignment around critical results and behaviours that drive those results and ensure there is accountability and ownership for these results and behaviours at every level of the company. Second, help leaders develop and use superior leadership and coaching skills so that the people of Chevron Chemical Company would know what was expected of them; when they were doing a good job; and what they needed to do differently to achieve the targeted results. Third, arrange systems such as selection, compensation, recognition, and promotion so that they were aligned with the new desired behaviours specified for people at all levels (Callahan & Nolan, 2001, p12). According to Victor Tang's article on the internet, corporate culture cannot be changed overnight, but is an ongoing process that takes time and requires constant monitoring. "Changing corporate culture is about transforming the organisation through continuous influence and the shaping of beliefs, assumptions, values and patterns of behaviour of people towards creating a desired work environment," (Victor Tang, 2000). He went on to say that changing corporate culture is about changing mindsets of people to a new way of thinking and working that will facilitate effectiveness, efficiency and competition. He further stated that corporate change is not only about increasing the bottom line, but also about improving relationships and seeking meaning in work through a sense of belonging, shared values, and satisfaction. Victor working for KL Strategic Change Consulting Group whose Corporate Culture Change Model comprises of the following four phases: Phase 1: Culture assessment Phase 2: Culture gap analysis Phase 3: Changing mindsets: Influencing culture change Phase 4: Sustaining the new culture In the text book the Guru Guide, Boyett1 name five main reasons for resistance to organizational change: Perceived Negative Outcome: The individual or the group that must change will be negatively affected by the change or thinks it will be. Fear of More Work: Employees perceive that the change will result in them having more work to do and less opportunity for rewards. Habits must be Broken: Changes require that employees alter long-standing habits. Lack of Communication: The organization fails to communicate the what, why and how of change. Failure to align with the Organization as a Whole: The organization's structure, business systems, technology, core competencies, employee knowledge and skills, and culture are not aligned and integrated with the change effort. According to John Bryson and Sharon Anderson (2000, p.143-162), managers are increasingly benefiting from use of interaction methods within groups, which helps shorten the time needed to conceive and execute change. This is in strong contrast with the standard business model where senior managers make decisions and employees do the work. According to them the benefits includes: The change process is faster Buy-in is greater Draws on collective wisdom and experience Gets everyone together Builds coalitions In his book Management Challenges for the 21st Century, Drucker2 warns that the major factors for increasing knowledge worker productivity are the exact opposite for increasing manual worker productivity. He goes on to argue that knowledge workers perform best when given autonomy, and when continuous learning is built into their jobs. Work on knowledge worker productivity, he says, begins with the following questions: What is your task What should it be What should you be expected to contribute What hampers you from doing your task, and should be eliminated When looking at the above literature reviews it becomes clear that organizational change is a complex and involved matter and if implemented without extensive analyzes and buy-in from all stakeholders it is bound to fail. The first important point is that top management must not only be the initiators, but must become actively involved from the start and needs to lead by example. Next management should realize that organizational transformation is not only strategies and processes that needs to be put into place, they should first address the human behaviour of staff through alignment of these behaviours to achieving critical results, and insuring staff accepts accountability for their actions and performance at every level of the company. Next, it must be realised that people are scared of change and will only become part of the transformation if they understand why the change is necessary, how it is going to influence them, and what they need to contribute to facilitate change. In addition, if employees understand the change will result in greater work satisfaction through participation, innovation, autonomy, accepted norms and values, and a continuous learning environment, they will more readily become involved in the process. Only after the human behaviour of employees has been positively influence to accept and become part of the change can the required strategies and processes be implemented. Then the goals the business wants to achieve needs to be clearly formulated and each employee's task orientated towards achieving these goals no matter which department he works in, with clear performance evaluation and tracking systems giving staff precise indications on their progress and performance in accordance with accepted norms and standards. Lastly, organizational transformation is a continuous process, which needs to be monitored and evaluated against set targets and goals, to ensure improvement of performance, increased productivity, and greater employment satisfaction. This will help an organization achieve the competitive edge in a highly contested international market. Causes During analyzes of the environment and behaviour of the specific department the OD practitioner defined some of the underlying problems contributing to the low performance of the department. The information the conclusions was based on was obtained through survey's, interviews, performance statistics and on job observations. The conclusion was that the department was actually dysfunctional due to its current group structure, poor task design, ineffective management control, and communication overload. It was the OD practitioners view that through transformation the performance of the department can be brought in line with the rest of the company. The department's currently has no clearly establish goals and objectives which supports those of the organization at large, resulting in staff not knowing who their stakeholders inside and outside department are, and how their poor performance directly effect the other departments. Further more the group design and structure are ineffective and is not compatible with the rest of the organization as it do not support cooperation between highly skilled and experienced within the department with those in other departments, as all communication have to go through departmental managers. The next cause can be seen as poor task design. Staff is highly skilled and experienced, but tasks are designed in such a way that it is monotonous, with little or no flexibility or autonomy. Offering staff no real challenges or opportunity for innovation. Management have implemented strict control measures and all work and communication have to go through them first for approval, resulting in more red tape and missing of deadlines. Even though this effect performance of the department, management overlooks this when doing staff merits, and shift blame to staff, penalising them for the delays. Management have also established their own set of criteria they measure staff's performance on, which do not align with those of the organization. Lastly staff suffers from a communication overload as they are bombarded by messages from inside and outside the department and they may only work through management to communicate, resulting in confusion and frustration. In addition unsolicited mail is sent out throughout the department without any control, worsening the situation even more. Diagram 3: Departmental Communication Channels Interventions OD interventions are aimed at improving organizational effectiveness, but certain interventions aim at successful implementation of change within the total system. The system-level intervention may be described as a structural design framework for viewing an organisation that examines (Donald Brown & Don Harvey. p402): The way the organization is designed The work processes Interactions of individual and teams This when looking at the current dysfunctional department and taking its design into account, it is clear that its structure and bureaucratic management style using procedures and strict policies to direct and control staff are outdated and ineffective in today's competitive environment. Organizations that encourage individual ability and holding employees accountable for achieving goals are most likely to succeed, (Donald Brown & Don Harvey. p409). The suggested intervention will be to introduce a flatter departmental structure, where the employees are given more responsibility, accountability and autonomy, with clearly established goals supporting that of the organization to enable them to work innovatively towards achieving their outputs. The next intervention is to open up communication between all stakeholders, so that employers can directly contact other departments and their employers, managers or even the customers. This will reduce turnaround time of information and will reduce the possibility of wrong or misleading information. In addition staff can find out directly from the customer what they require, which may reduce waste and increase customer satisfaction. Combining this with a more effective communications system, which filters bogus information and offers better control and ordering of information received by staff. Lastly staff should be trained and coached on how to work effectively together as a team and how and when to take the responsibility for leadership, and when to function as a follower. Together the team's main goals must be too effective and efficiently work towards meeting goals and objectives of the department and organization within set deadlines, and the performance of teams and individuals should be evaluated against mutually agreed upon merits and achievements, which will be awarded accordingly. Reflection During this course I have obtained the knowledge and exposure of the method and processes involved to analyze a organization as a Organization Development Practitioner, to help find problems and their root causes, and help plan interventions to improve work practices and cultures within a organization to facilitate reaching the mission and goals of a company efficient and effectively, while insuring job satisfaction and self actualization of employees. Personally I have grown during this course as many of the concepts are as valid in my private and social life as it is in my work environment. References 1. Cummings, Thomas & Worley, Christopher. Organizational Development and Change; Seventh Edition. 2001. 2. Kotter, J. P. & Heskett, J. L. Corporate Culture and Performance. New York: The Free Press. (1992). 3. Callahan, Darry & Nolan, Timothy. Changing the Corporate Culture at Chevron. 2001. Accessed 01 April 2006. 4. Tan, Victor. Change your corporate culture. 19 Aug, 2000. New Straits Times. Accessed 02 April 2006. http://adtimes.nstp.com.my/jobstory/aug19b.htm 5. Boyett, Joseph H & J.T Boyett. The Guru Guide. Wiley. 1998. 6. Bryson, John & Anderson, Sharon. Applying Large-Group Interaction Methods in the Planning and Implementation of Major Change Efforts in Public Administration Review. March 2000, p.143-162 7. Drucker, Peter. Management Challenges for the 21st Century. HarperBusiness. 1999. 8. Brown, Donald & Harvey, Don. Organization Development(seventh edition). 2004 9. Auditor General of Canada. Report of the Auditor General to the House of Commons, Chapter 7. Literature Review and Annotated Bibliography on Changing Management Culture. April 2002. Accessed 01 April 2006. www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/cmo_mfc/ resources2/review-revue/litreview_e.pdf Read More