CHANGE MANAGEMENT ADVISORY REPORT
By: Shashwat Srivastava
Course: Masters in Management Practice
Subject: Innovation and Change management
Code: B9MG074
Contents
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 3
Advisory Report 4
Q1: Advise how the organizational structure can be optimized to accommodate communications and control in the organization after the new businesses are merged into group companies 4
Q2. Advise what role stakeholders and sponsors play in global change. 5
Q3. Advise how risk management strategies can be implemented during the change to prevent loss of shareholder value. 6
Q4. Advise how customer research can be used as a driver for strategic change 7
Q5. Advise how the design process can be used to introduce continuous improvement processes 7
Q6. Advise how training and developing an “Open learning organization” could help facilitate change now and in the future. 7
Q7. Advice what tools can be used to ensure smooth change 8
1. Flowcharting 8
2. Metrics and Data Collection 8
3. Force Field Analysis 8
4. Culture mapping 9
5. Project plan 9
Q8. Advise on the measures and KPI’s need to be in place to measure success with change management. 9
Q9. Advice how value can be added from lessons learned when dealing with change management 9
Q 10. Advise how to create a strategy for corrective and preventive action (CAPA) including a change control process. 10
Conclusion 11
Bibliography 12
Executive Summary
Organizations undergo constant change and adaptability to remain competitive, noteworthy, ideal organizational changes seems to be rare (CarnaliL, 2014). Apparently, a successful implementation change program in enterprises is quite challenging. Generally, employees link low success rate of change programs to resistance. However, a more nuanced perception on change resistance and its factors might be more suitable. This report finds an in-depth analysis of change management processes and identifying vital organizational changes and the ideal evaluation of ideal techniques to be incorporated after a merger.
Ideally, change processes are compelled by various strategic considerations, which, includes the urge for more homogeneous ways of working and the necessity to enhance business performance. Organizations incorporating these considerations end up securing organized change programs premised on change management innervations that are objective, measurable and easy manageable programs realized within a short period. Organizations should attentively consider the dynamics of change processes that greatly contribute to betterment understanding of resistance, which is a major determinant of change management.
Advisory Report
Q1: Advise how the organizational structure can be optimized to accommodate communications and control in the organization after the new businesses are merged into group companies
Ideally, organizational structure encompasses job structure, roles and responsibility, command, order of hierarchy and the management system in an organization (Clegg & Amaro DE Matos, 2017). Thus, merger between two companies results to various issues that an organization need to evaluate to optimize control and communications regarding the new organization. For instance, the issue of duplicity because of scrapping and assignment of new managerial roles as well as inclusion of new staff and subordinate staff, the company needs to re-align itself in order to eliminate it. Further, due to new management, a new communication chain needs to be initiated in order to meet and fit the intent of the new organization structure widely adhering to the laws and policies purposed for the new company.
Hierarchical communication is very vital in controlling and dissemination of information in an organization. Typically, nearly all organizations information is channeled starting from the least employer to the top most manager. This evades chances of poor miss-information and enhances smooth flow of communication. The culture is a vital aspect that need to be considered.
Figure 1.0 integrating culture in change management
Q2. Advise what role stakeholders and sponsors play in global change.
Good corporate management guarantees corporations to incorporate welfares of a broad range of constituencies and of the communities that they operate in, and their boards are responsible to the shareholders and the company. In essence, it ensures that corporations exist for the beneficial of the whole society.
According to Gooey (2016), stakeholder is defined as a group, individual, or enterprise that mounts entitlement on the organization’s resources, attention or output accrued. Stakeholders are responsible for ensuring strategic objectives of an organization are achieved by influencing and interpreting organizations’ internal and external environments, further, by creation of strong cohesion associations with shareholder ideal management of their objectives, through internal and external interpretation and influencing markets and through creation of intimacy relationships with stakeholders and ideal management of their deliverables. Seemingly, sponsors are responsible for funding the organization and ensure ideal budgetary allocations are well organized for an organization. More so, they are responsible for ensuring the organizations attain the necessary resources that will render it successful.
Figure 1.1 stakeholders and sponsors
Q3. Advise how risk management strategies can be implemented during the change to prevent loss of shareholder value.
Risk is pervasive and is a norm in every matter of life. Business sectors, unanticipated circumstances generate adverse loss exposures. Further, to small enterprises and micro-companies where capital is not strong, they can be plagued financially jeopardizing operational activities and leading to losses and bankruptcy. Hence, this necessitates development of risk management strategies that will prevent loss of shareholder savings. There are various risk management strategies to mitigate this, and the following strategies will be ideal for the organization to prevent loss of shareholder during the change.
Risk avoidance: ideally, it includes designing of alternative strategies which has higher success profitability but generally at a higher cost linked to achieving a project mission. The ideal technique to use in avoidance risk strategy is using the proven and current technologies instead of adopting new techniques, despite the new techniques depicting cost effectiveness and showing promise of better performance. A project team may consider a rated vendor having exceptional record of accomplishment rather than a new vender providing fair pricing to avoid risk of a vendor with a proven record of accomplishment over dealing with unknown vendor.
Risk sharing: includes collaborating with others to share accountability of the risky actions. Various institutions, particularly, those working on international projects reduce legal, labor, political amongst others risk types by designing a joint agreement with a company situated in the particular country. In essence, merging with another company to share the associated risk is ideal when the in the event the company shows experience that the lacks in the managerial team. In the case of occurrence of a risk, the associate company takes either part or the whole negative outcome regarding the occurrence. The company takes part of the profit accrued by the project.
Risk decline: refers to reduction in a risk on a project by investing funds. Concerning international projects, companies occasionally buy the guarantee of a currency rate to cut the risk linked with currency rate fluctuations. An expert is hired to countercheck the technical proposal or cost estimates the project increasing the confidence in the plan and reducing the project risk. In addition, assignment of exceptional project staffs in the management of the high risks is another risk-reduction technique. Noteworthy, risky action managing experts ocassionally foresee complications and realizing resolutions which, avert events in resulting into negativity impact on the project. Further, companies minimize risk through rejecting important managers to travel on the similar airplane.
Risk assignment: is a risk technique, which, transfers the risk from one project to the other. Organization signing contracts with insurance company to have its’ risks covered is an example of risk transfer method. For instance, a multinational plc may acquire insurance for its business in case of fire razes up one of their offices in order to remain in the business spectrum.
Figure 1.2 risk implementation strategy
Q4. Advise how customer research can be used as a driver for strategic change
Customer is the most crucial aspect in any business. They are responsible for the success of the business and hence, their demands and needs need to be analyzed and synchronized in the organization to facilitate change. A customer research in essence, helps the organization to determine what the ideal consideration of the customers is and how customers react regarding a particular change in an organization (Taylor, 2009). Thus, by organizations revisiting and conducting customer research, a well strategic plan is designed to incorporate the customers on board concerning the change hence, propagating organizational change of the organization and success as well.
Q5. Advise how the design process can be used to introduce continuous improvement processes
Adoption of continuous improvement process helps organizations embrace improvement in their daily routines as well as challenges faced. It consist a series of techniques that enhance the improvement process. The organization should identify the areas of opportunity and target to particular problems. This will have great impact in determining where to focus a lot as well as invest. Further, generation of solutions through brainstorming sittings that enhances continuity and smooth flow of the process.
Q6. Advise how training and developing an “Open learning organization” could help facilitate change now and in the future.
To manage the constraints on changes in the business spectrum, it is essential to design new skills, knowledge, and ability to apply by incorporating ways of reasoning in a short period. Change demands the organizations to have ability, to develop and application of new knowledge and skills. This is very vital in the current state of increased globalization, high development pace of innovation. Uncertainty, inconsistency and ambiguity of business spectrum necessitates for organizational learning, renewal and diversity. Organizational open learning increases productivity. In addition, developing leaders across all the levels, which aids in succession planning. Noteworthy, training and open learning in organization enhances ability for individuals to change by embracing adaptability.
Q7. Advice what tools can be used to ensure smooth change
For effective utilization of change management tools, it is ideal to define change concerning your own situation and affirm everyone in the organization comprehends and supports the effort, however, does not necessarily suggest everybody is in agreement with the changes to be implemented, as consensus is quite impossible and generally slows down the process. It is worth noting various organizations have various needs hence, change techniques tools vary with the needs of organizations (Sharma, 2007). I will recommend the organization to incorporate the following five management tools techniques, as they are ideal and easy in using as well as cost effective.
1. Flowcharting
Flow chart making of all organizational process serves as a sketch particularly for those inside the organization who lack a wider view of some of the vital processes in an organization. Flowcharting aids in getting people on board with the state the company is and the projected state in the future. The ideal exercise is to have mangers give their views on how the current organizational flowchart should be, this will greatly have a variance and even conflicting views and thus the misunderstandings needs to be sorted out before going to another management tool. Any change initialization for implementation it is added to flowchart in order for all members to be at par with the change giving their feelings concerning commitment and contribution to organizational change.
2. Metrics and Data Collection
Collection of the right data and information is a vital step in change management. Focusing on facts how the organization has progressed on in the past and the current state with regards to risks, opportunities, and competition steer meaningful direction and abridge the decision making time. Ideally, metric design that is easy aids in correct data and meaningful collection. Cycle system must be included in the metrics and data collection, generally is the average time from beginning to the end.
3. Force Field Analysis
Categorically, this change management technique provides a view of change of problems that are to be tackled. It identifies the driver for change and change facilitators. Emphasis should be primarily focused on the benefits of the new change for it to be accepted by the whole organization. Notably, the organization should have constant discussions intended in comprehending and managing staff who do not like change.
4. Culture mapping
Organizations depict various ways of handling matters. In essence, every organization has its style of identifying concepts, norms and practices. Respect for the top management decisions are some of the common paradigms that most organizations have. The organization should fully understand the organizational structure, which highlights the appropriate practices. However, the norm mentality is the biggest hurdle to organizational change as it is deeply embedded in the organizational structure. Before working on the organizational change, the company needs to substitute the existing paradigms for change to materialize.
5. Project plan
Having a well-elaborated project plan is essential to remain relevant. It serves as an outline to work from, to identify the accepted flexibility and boundaries to avoid. Occasionally, the initiative will need many people working on multiple departments of the organization to actualize the new changes explicitly. The organization having the project plan helps the managers in deadline management and clarifying of roles and keeping the organization agile in times of turmoil.
Q8. Advise on the measures and KPI’s need to be in place to measure success with change management.
Key performance indicators reflect the important success factors of an organization due to their quantifiable measurements. Hence, organizations can reap benefits through its inception. They categorically help the organizations to define and measure progress towards organizational goals. The organization need to analyze its mission, identify its stakeholder and define its goals in order to use the KPIs to measure the progress concerning the identified goals. KPIs have a framework that actualizes the whole action and ensures the policy and objectives are achieved.
Q9. Advice how value can be added from lessons learned when dealing with change management
Change is inevitable in any organization. However, is the most crucial state in an organizational change management (Reiss, 2012). The change management is an inclusion of both the good and the bad things that can be derived in the course of the change management. Thus, it is ideal for the organization to learn from the mistakes, improve the management, and strengthen the business. I will recommend the following lessons in order to improve change management in the future.
Understanding the change acceptance index of an organization- when trying to actualize a change in the conduct of any organization, finding out the change index number ranging on a scale of one to ten, one being the least acceptance index while, ten being the most acceptance index. With this, an ideal decision can be achieved on whether or not to implement a change in an organization.
Focusing on a particular issue- focusing on a particular issue is essential in fostering change. In addition, it reduces cost that could be wasted on cultural credibility. More importantly, organizational change in an organization is best achieved through focusing on one central issue.
Change goes according to levels- ideally; the longevity for change propagation in an organization is premised on the hierarchy of the organization. Hence, it will be ideal for the organization to evaluate change rate towards measuring success and evade the risk of unfilled promises that jeopardize the change management’s credibility.
Q 10. Advise how to create a strategy for corrective and preventive action (CAPA) including a change control process.
An operational corrective action preventive plan needs exceptional accuracy and flexibility. Because of the demanding requirements that are present in the business industries, actualizing an efficient CAPA plan is ideal to avoid regulatory disciplinary. The constant use of CAPA system, that has an inclusion of corrective action plan, is critical in the company’s cost effectiveness and betterment of the process (Muchemu, D. N. 2007). The best CAPA process should have an incorporated effectiveness-checking feature for verifying and validating the CAPA system performance. The ideal methodologies and application of effective risk-based filters for the organization would be the following.
Identification- finding out the problem and issues arising is critical in problem mitigation by the organization.
Prioritization-after the establishment of the problem the organization then puts emphasis on what to solve first depending on its urgency and effects it could realize.
Acknowledgment-the organization managerial affirms the problem need to be solved by giving a leeway in handling of the problem or even funding to mitigate the problem.
Investigation-this is the most vital part as the managers find out if the problem raised really exist and can is executed through questionnaires or interviewing of staffs.
Correction- after a problem has been identified the remedy is initiated to return the situation to a normality.
Implementation- the organization then executes measures to mitigate the problems or issues that have been found. The problem is actualized through various techniques.
Conclusion
Conclusively, change is inevitable in any organization and every organization need to plan for it. It is worth noting that despite changing at times resulting to negativity the lessons accrued from the change experience should be well identified and rightly used to evade a similar scenario in the future. The tools for management should be greatly optimized for positive gains. Communication being the critical aspect in any organization change should be well articulated putting into consideration the culture and social aspect of the people in an organization.
The future recommendations is the organization has to research extensively on the effects of a change before it is initialized. Further, more discussion should be underway integrating all the stakeholders and even the subordinate staff before initializing a change. The technology aspect needs emphasis in carrying out the change as the globe and business field is becoming technological driven.
Bibliography
CarnaliL, C. A., & BY, R. T. (2014). Managing change in organizations. Harlow, Financial Times Prentice Hall.
Clegg, S., & Amaro DE Matos, J. (2017). Sustainability and organizational change management. https://nls.ldls.org.uk/welcome.html?ark:/81055/vdc_100049278117.0x000001.
Goksoy, A. (2016). Organizational change management strategies in modern business.
Muchemu, D. N. (2007). Change control for FDA regulated industries: a handbook for quality professionals : a risk assesment [i.e. assessment] approach. Bloomington, IN, AuthorHouse.
Reiss, M. (2012). Change management: a balanced and blended approach. Norderstedt, Books on Demand.
Sharma, R. R. (2007). Change management: Concepts and applications. New Delhi, Tata McGraw-Hill.
Taylor, B. (2009). Customer driven change: what customers know, employees think, and managers overlook. Dallas, TX, Brown Books Pub. Group.