Analysis of Woodlandhall - Case Study Example

and Section # of HEADING The hard systems model of change is basically a model that describes and promotes bringing change in situations that are characterized by ‘Hard Complexity’ i.e. situations that display the following characteristics; most people involved in the situation have a good idea of the complexities that exist in the situation, where the change options can be evaluated on a quantitative basis, the system that already prevails is a simple system which is understood by most of the people that are involved with in the system and lastly a unitarist ideology of relationships exists within the system that is prevalent. A unitarist ideology is defined as one where people within the system have a common ideology, share decision making processes and act according to objectives that have been predetermined. There are eight stages of a hard systems model of change and these stages have to be followed in order to successfully bring about the change and all the stages are inter related and have to be completely understood and communicated across the channel so that everyone involved in the process is completely on board with the idea. Stage 1 Stage one of the hard systems decision making system is characterized by identifying the components that need to be change in the case of woodland this would be marketing strategy that needs to be changed, it needs to promote itself in a different manner but the boundary or the limit for such a change would be that it would still need to retain its reputation for quality as well as exclusivity. Another requirement at this stage is basically to identify the overall purpose for the change that is being made, in woodlands case the overall objective is to bring more people to the resort, there is only factor that is affecting the woodland hall and hence the question for inter relatedness is not appropriate in this case. Stage 2 Stage 2 basically comprises of identifying the overall objective and making sub segments of the overall objective, in woodland hall case the core objective would be to promote woodland hall as a leisure complex and the sub segments to achieving this core objective would be to how to promote the hall, what methods and what media tools should be used in the promotion of woodland hall and what budgetary constraints are there if any. These three would be the basic constituents of the sub segments of core strategy. These sub segments are very compatible with each other because they are quantifiably measure and are not in direct conflict with each other in fact they are supportive of each other. This stage basically marks the end of the identification stage and special care must be taken that each and every objective has been identified and communicated across the channels so that all members of woodland hall are on board with the change that is to take place. Stage 3 In this stage performance measures need to be specified as well and all measures should be quantifiable as this is very important, in woodlands case these are basically the expenditures that need to be met and the membership changes that are going to be there would be a direct indicator of the success of the marketing campaign, all people who join as a direct result of the promotion would be the ‘quantifiable measure’ in this case. Budgetary constraints would need to be identified before hand as well and a target has to be set for example a minimum of $20,000 needs to spent and a maximum of $200,000 and the finally when the money is spent it should be between the minimum or the maximum limit, anything above this would mean that the objectives have not been fulfilled. Stage 4 Stage 4 is the stage where basically having identified and defined the objective the decisions on how to reach and meet those targets and objectives have to be taken, creative thinking techniques can often be used as well, these include brain storming and other techniques, however in the case of woodland halls it is advised that they use discussion amongst themselves and reach a consensus on the basis of that discussion much similar to brain storming. The options that would be generated in this case would be that people would be for a higher budget or a lower budget for example someone might want a limit of $200,000 where as someone else would want a higher limit, someone would want to use the radio and the televisions for the mass promotion of the woodlands hall and someone might point out that using mass media tools would only help in destroying the image of woodland halls as an exclusive club, all the options have to be listed down and these would have to be further discussed and this is the next stage of the hard system of change management. Stage 5 In this stage options that have been discussed in stage 4 are refined so that a decision can be reached in a much shorter amount of time, continuing from the example given above if someone is for mass advertising of the club he or she has to convince the whole group why so and so is the case for the person who is for a much more subtle channel of communication to its customers which are basically from the upper end of the consumer market. Arguments have to be given and one argument in favor of not using mass media is that the most effective media tools would have to be used, woodland halls is an exclusive and expensive set up that is targeted at the upper end of the consumer market and hence mass promotion of this is not feasible at all because the boundary identified in the first stage is that it needs to retain its exclusivity in order to do well hence the most effective channel that should be used to promote woodland halls are magazines that are aimed at the higher end of the consumer market as well because this would get the message across in a more appropriate manner and achieve the restriction of being marketed to an exclusive class as well. So is the case with the sub objective of budgetary constraints, woodlands hall needs to define how much it can set aside for advertising purposes and from where are they going to finance this expenditure are they going to take it out from their retained earning? Or are they going to take a loan for the advertising campaign. The argument in this case is that since they are limiting the scope of their marketing by choosing to advertise only in high end consumer magazines they probably do not need to take a loan for this purpose but rather they should take it out from their retained earnings as this is just a one-time expenditure and taking a loan would prove to be expensive in the long run as interest payments would have to be made on it. Stage 6 In this stage evaluation of the options that survive the 5th stage are made and a grid can be made to evaluate the options and the ones which meet the needs as identified in stage 3 should be selected. For example the budget decisions once refined would still be unclear in the 5th stage as well and hence they need to be matched with all the other options and objectives that need to be met and the best ones would then be selected. Stage 7 Stage 7 is basically the implementation stage of the systems change model, usually difficulties are not faced when the nature of the problem is hard but as mentioned before people who are involved within the process should be consulted before making the change as there might be some inhibitions in the minds of the people that would be implementing the change, all these inhibitions would have to be removed, the inhibitions would not be there if the people who are implementing the change were also part of the process of designing the change process itself. In woodlands hall case the pilot studies leading to change because in this the resistance level is the lowest and the old system is changed gradually, this means that the repositioning of the woodlands hall has to be gradual and they would face the lowest level of resistance because people would be much more involved within the process. Stage 8 Stage 8 is the stage where consolidation is required and gathering feedback is important because that is the only means by which you can support the system and ensure that it runs smoothly over a long period of time. CONCLUSION The 8 stages are a comprehensive tool to make changes to problems that are characterized as hard problems and these can be followed to ensure that a system that is favorable to the organizations is implemented with as less friction as possible for the people and the organization itself, in case of the woodlands hall it is very feasible to implement this system and bring about the change as mentioned above. . Read More