Change Management - ABC Organization 1

Change Management - Abc Organization 1
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Managing orgnanization change | Change Management | An organization process to change | | | 2/22/2009 | | February 22, 2009 Session Paper Executive Summary ABC Organization is a community impact non-profit organization that serves a 13 county metro region. ABC Organization identifies and addresses human care issues such as; making sure children start school ready to learn and helping families become self-sufficient. ABC Organization is a volunteer-driven and volunteer-led organization, so volunteers and donors are very important to and the measurable impact in the community. Through donations from donors volunteers can award Community Impact Fund grants to 379 programs, from 205 nonprofit organizations that align with ABC Organization mission. In 2007 ABC Organizations former President/CEO retired after more than 20 years of service. He was seen by some as a great visionary that brought the organization to a higher level. The former President/CEO was also the one to introduce the idea of a five year plan for the organizations transformation to a Community Impact organization but was never implemented. Later in 2007 ABC Organization received a new President/CEO and soon after a new COO followed. It has been more than a year since the new President/CEO began and he; along with the new COO is applying major changes with the leadership team and restructuring of departments without having a structured process in place for employees and staff to have involvement in the decision making process when it has a direct impact on their job and have their hard questions answered. For the past 18 months ABC Organization has been transitioning through a change initiative that involves the upper management (the President, CEO and COO) and department restructuring. Due to change management the vision for this organization changed and is now focused on a five year strategic plan to become a community impact organization, updating its image. Being a community impact ABC Organization involves creating a stronger support system through companies, agencies, faith-based organizations and government agencies in priority areas such as education, income, health and homelessness. Achieving this goal will allow the organization to bring together diverse people and resources to address issues that will build a stronger and safer community. ABC Organization has a great mission and many talented people within the organization.
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Although upper management is on the right track with the change initiative it could be modified to increase the morale and performance among employees during this change initiative; resulting in them feeling appreciated and also resulting in a higher probability of a successful and fixed change. Assessment The analysis that was done prior to the planned change was established by the announcement of the prior presidents retirement after more than 20 years of service. ABC Organizations Board of Directors conducted a search for a new successor that was named prior to the former presidents departure. The plan implemented included assessing and prepping the organization for the arrival of the new president. The assessment began with the forming of focus groups by departments within the organization. The purpose of these groups was to find out the issues employees felt most important and also employees current view of the organization. The groups consist of the vice president and managers of each department and if you were lucky a non-manager was among the ranks. Although this was put into process before the arrival of the new president for making adjustments; after his arrival most employees heard about strategy, change, or everyday decisions from top-down communications at weekly department staff meetings or the once a month staff meeting for the entire organization. The assessment of the survey was done for employees to somewhat make evident their issues of importance and find out the current view of the organization through the eyes of the employees was by a survey. The survey was based on 185 employees and carried a response rate of 61%. The key dimensions of this survey included: * Relationships topics included : trust, the community we operate in, working with coworkers, positive working relationships between the person the employee reports to and positive relationships with donors and volunteers * Leadership- includes topics such as: understand the purpose/mission; the vision of the organization is clear, upper management lives the values of the organization every day, the person I report to cares about the future, the values of the organization are very clear. * Involvement & Decision Making includes topics such as: I feel valued for the contributions I make, decisions I make stand, we have a structured process for making decisions, I am involved in the decision making process when it has a direct impact on my job. * Finance- includes topics such as: top leadership provides employees with the learning tools to clearly understand the business and financial strategies; financial consequences are discussed when working with coworkers to resolve or improve business issues and processes. * Teamwork & Career Development includes topics such as: encouraged to participate in development opportunities; employees feel that there are opportunities for career development and advancement and employees work well together cross-functionally * Change Management included topics such as: employees are given the opportunity to try new things, top leadership values diversity, employees receive recognition for the work they do, creativity and innovation are rewarded, and employees spend time learning from change efforts that did not succeed. * Communication included topics such as: the person I report to listens to me,
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employees get frequent feedback, employees get the information needed to do the job, the information received from top leadership is trusted, clear communication is a high value of the organization. The results of the survey were surely an eye opener for upper management; it allowed them to see how most employees felt. The most alarming opportunities of reflection came in the category of Involvement and Decision Making. When asked whether decisions employees make stand 36% were neutral and 15% disagreed. When asked if the organization makes effective decisions 39% of employees were neutral and 18% disagreed. Lastly when asked if there was a structured process for making decisions, 28% were neutral and 35% disagreed. The questions asked on this survey were quantitative questions. Employees were asked to select the answer that best described their future/desired experience and current experience at ABC Organization. The answers ranged from 1 Strongly Agree through 5Strongly Disagree. Answers categorized as Neutral may represent unable or unwilling to take a position and over 20% Neutral may reflect high levels of change, confusion or discomfort and could be an opportunity to shift employees to positive responses. Analysis of the Change Strategy There are several change models that can be used to implement a major change in an organization. These theories of change describe how to initiate and implement significant change in an organization. Some of the models of change were employed from: Lewins Change Model Lewins change model provides a foundation and framework for analyzing a complex change initiative. Lewins change model conceived of change in terms of a modification of the forces that stabilize a systems behavior. (Carter, Spring2008) Lewins basic change model is viewd as a profound psychological process that invloves painful inlearning and difficult relearning as one restructure ones thoughts, preceptions,feelings, and attitues. These steps included: * Unfreezing reducing those forces maintaining the organizations behavior at its present level. * Changing/Moving This step shift that behavior of the organization, department, or individual members to a new level; it involves intervening in the system to develop new behaviors, values, and attitudes through changes in organizational structures and process. * Refreezing this step stabilizes the organization at a new state of equilibrium. It is frequently accomplished through the use of supporting mechanisms that reinforce the new organizational state, such as organizational culture, norms, policies, and structures. (Leban & Romuald, 2008) Nadlers Congruence Model is an organizational model that is built on the view that organizations are systems and that only if there is congruence between that various organizationalsubsystems can there be optimal performance. It is a dynamic, not static model that neccessitates constant revision of the elements of an overarching model driven by strategic objectives. Nadler emphasized that there are three basic challenges that confront business leaders which are:
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* Recognition Can the firm anticipate changes that are going to happen in the business environment or that may have happened already? * Strategic choice Given all ctrategic choices to the firm, can it make the correct ones that will enable them to prosper and survive. * Organizational redesign How does management reshape the organizational components in order to implement the strategic imperatives? For each of the three critical challenges, there are three corelative potential failures that are: * Failure of recognition - failure to recognize customers taste and preferences. * Make the wrong choice What happens if you see whats coming down the track, lay out the optional choices in response, and choose the wrong one? * Failure of organizational redesign managers recognize the changes that are coming, make the correct strategic choices, but neglect to make the necessary changes to the structure, systems, processes, and skills/abilities of the workforce. Nadler also introduces a set of tools and rechniques for making organizational changes. These tools include Diagnosis and Preperation, Implementation, and finally, Consolidating and Sustaining the change. (Leban & Romuald, 2008) Kotters Process of Leading Change introduces an eight-stage model as a way of looking at the actual stages for the change process itself. Kotters model offers a process to sucessfully manage change and aviod the common mistakes made in the process. The eight seps are: 1. Not establishing a great enough sense of urgency. 2. Not creating a powerful enough guiding coalition. 3. Laking a vision. 4. Undercommunicating the vision by a factor of 10. 5. Not removing obstacles to the new vision. 6. Not systematically planning for and creating short-term wins. 7. Declaring victory too soon. 8. Not anchoring changes in the corporations culture. The Eight-Stage Model requires that all of the stages must be worked through in order, and completely, to successfully change. Jicks model is focused on the tactical level of change, emphasizing the change process as a ongoing process of discovery. The ten step model serves as a dual purpose, it can be used in evaluating and reacting to the process of change. Efforts that have already been launched can also serve as a roadmap for the issues to consider when launching a change effort. The efforts can be effectivley managed by a checklist. (Rothwell & Sullivan, 2005) The level of change for ABC Organization before the arrival of the new president was more of a fine-tuning, fixing problems, and making adjustments. Implementing modest changes that improve the organizations performance yet do not fundamentally change the organization. (Leban & Romuald, 2008) Once the arrival of the new president the vision for this organizations future have changed a bit. ABC Organization is now focused on a 5-year strategic plan to become a community impact organization and creating a stronger image. Being
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a community impact ABC Organization involves creating a stronger support system throughcompanies, agencies, faith-based organizations and government sgencies in priority areas such as education, income and health and homelessness. With this is process there is still no full engagement in employees in the decision making and change to drive performance. Instead employees are confused and feel as though they have no say so or power. I believe this is being felt more among employees that have been working at ABC Organization for more than 10 years as oppose to the employees that have been there less than 5 years. Many organizations have used employee satisfaction surveys as employee engagement surveys and added an action process in the hope that employee engagement will increase, which was done with the survey done beforehand. Beverly Hodges mentions in her article Change management:setting up an asthma camp for children, seven key points about employee engagement. They are: 1. Past patterns are best predictors of f uture behavior. The business situation and the history of the employer-employee relationshipwill influence the way employees respond. 2. Leaders approaches to employee engagement are often instinctive and irrational. Leaders are usually unaware of their preferred approach to employee engagement. 3. The primary driver of employee engagement is opening up decision making and be clear about what is nonnegotiable. 4. Look within for good examples of employee engagement. 5. Look for obstacles to change among the senior leadership, there are some people on the leadership team who will block change. They often have the most to lose. 6. Engage people in solving crisis as well as identifying opportunities. The highest level of performance come from engaging people in painful decisions as well as growth opportunites. 7. Engagement is a terrific opportunity for communication. (Hodges, 2008) ABC Organizationis supports the strategic change initiative of the 5-year paln to becoming a community impact ABC Organization includes putting together a volunteer Strategic Planning Council, it comprises of numerous board members and community agencies. Together they are gathering community input through several venues: Community Forums, leadership events, and a group called Impact Congress with delegates from each county. ABC Organization held (8) community forums in September and October across the region to discuss the most important issues surrounding education, income and health. Information gathered from these forums was categorized under three subject goal areas: * Coordination and Access Increases service coordination/improving provider training and technical assistance/increasing consumer knowledge of existing services and resources. * Public Will Increasing public education and engagement/ policy change, publicize available resources, extending health education beyond 9th grade, and national/universal health care coverage. * Service Delivery Maintaining or expanding service delivery capacity. Each content area below is described using the Four Dimension of Change: Strategy- ABC Organization is using a five year strategic plan that will build on their knowledge,
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credibility, and historic leadership of service. The plan will include the communitys input, ABC Organization objectives, strategies, and benchmarks to transform into a Community Impart Organization. Resources - ABC Organization is using the resources of its reputation and historic leadership. ABC Organization is also using the resources of partnerships that have been made in the community and over 100 of its agencies that their Community fund supports. Systems ABC Organization will continue to have forums and initiative meetings once a month with the leadership team, staff, strategic planning council and volunteers to ensure everyone is focused, progress is being made and the five year goal can be accomplished. Culture ABC Organization is a nonprofit organization that where its stakeholders are the communities it serves and the volunteers that drive the organization; so the relationship and trust between the employees and the customers it serves it very important for the operation of the organization. Sharing knowledge, quick response to customers, investors; keeping a commitment, and having diverse skills is what will maintain the reputation of ABC Organization and transform it into the community impact organization it would like to be in five years. ABC Organization has a very effective plan or shared vision for the community, citizen stakeholders and partners that describes the future direction of the organization step by step. The political support for the change in the organization is apparent. The support was obtained by presenting the vision to the stakeholders and the Board of Directors with ongoing communication. Since this organization has a sucessful reputation and historic leadership it was not hard to get gather political support and resources for this change. Momentum for the change is being built by marking each year that the organization is closer to its goal with a little celebration with the community, donors, and stakeholders. Also for ongoing commentment employees and upper management review prior departmental and organizational goals. Goals that have been acheived are celebrated and those that need reflection are revisted and placed back on the agenda. I am not sure how the monentum will be sustained. It seems as if the organization is just focused on the project at hand and the plan for subtainability will be developed and presented at a later date. I believe the change leaders put into place a few approaches to deal with resistance to change. Im not sure how effective the approaches were. One approach used was Education and Communication . Education came through information gather from several leadership forums and from top-down communication. Also monthly newsletter are printed with the most current updates as it deals with the change initiative. Emails from upper management and memos are also sent to employees are the organization progress through to change. Explict and Implicit Coercion is suppose to be used as a last result by making clear that resistance to change can lead to: job lose, dismissals, employee transfers or not being promoted at all. (Gotsill & Natchez, Nov2007). It seems as if this approach was used earlier in the process rather than later. Since the process began there has been an increase in turnovers and employee transfers. I believe this is due to miscommunication and different assessments of the reason for change by employees.
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Monitoring mechanisms used during this process is the Detailed Organizational Scorecard (Balanced Scorecard )The individual departments use an Annual Operating Plan that includes a department mission and a overall department measures of success. These monitoring mechanisms are effective because the information used is somewhat of a checklist that is used throughout the year to accomplish goals and measure the organization. This is important because stakeholders, donors and the community want to know if there dollars is going where is it suppose to be and that goals that have been made are being achieved. Results It has been a little over 18 months since the new presidents arrival and ABC Organization has been transitioning through a change initiative that involves a five-year goal and an organization image update. Since the change management and the five year strategy to become a community impact organization there has been no creating of a new vision . ABC Organization established annual operating goals aligned with its current vision, mission, and strategy. ABC Organization must meet the following goals to continue on the path of transforming to achieve its vision, mission, and strategy resulting in the creation of lasting results. The goals address each group and its own specific information needs. These goals include: Goal One: Community Strategies Implement the listen and think business model steps in areas identified as community priorities. Goal Two: Resource Development Implement both proven and new strategies to diversify funding. Goal Three: Citizen Engagement Involve key corporate, grantee and citizen stakeholders in priority community work throughout the year. Goal Four: Impact Achieve and report results on community impact issues, continue to provide ongoing support to partners serving children, youth, at risk and lower income population. Goal Five: Community Understanding Tell the community impact story more broadly and effectively. Goal Six: Capacity develops a skilled and results-oriented workforce and implement business model processes to deliver community results. ABC Organization does not have an effective communication plan for employees during this change process. As I learned during the course of HR587 effective ongoing communication in an organization during change allows the employee to better understand what is going on and persuades them that the change is needed. Ineffective communication causes employee stress; frustration and confusion which gives me a clear understanding of what most of the employees at ABC Organization feel as we move through the change initiative. There is no clear view for the employees on where the organization is moving and that could be the reason for the speculation, turnover and demotivation of employees. This is a key factor in a successful change initiative. As outlined in the case of British Airways another important factor that should have been emphasized to employees is keeping the open to feedback about the change process. Most employees felt that after the survey and the initial meeting about the change initiative, they can no long ask questions. This was one of the techniques used in the successful British Airline program.
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Evaluation of the Effort My assessment of the effectiveness of this change effort is based on the information I analyzed, ABC Organization has a very effective communication plan or shared vision for the community, citizen stakeholders and partners that describe the future direction of the organization step by step. What I noticed that is missing is that ABC Organization does not have an effective communication plan for employees during this change process. The change communication exceeds all standards and the proper processes are in order for outside support of ABC Organization. I feel the most important aspect of this change process (employees) have been put on the back burner. Employees suffer from the three key communication errors common to change initiatives: lack of vision, under communication, and failure to remove obstacles to the new vision. According to the text, Managing Organizational Change, change communication plays a key role in addressing the key issues in each phase by preparing and helping members to move through each of the three phases: unfreezing, change, and refreezing. Guiding ABC Organization employees would benefit greatly from being guided through each phase. It would definitely calm some of the speculation, turnover and demotivation of employees. I have also learned that culture is a key factor in an organizations success and a significant limiting factor in managing change. Organizational culture is defined as a complex shared beliefs, guiding values, behavioral norms, and basic assumptions acquired over time that shape our thinking and behavior; they are part of the social fabric of the organization. (Leban & Romuald, 2008) I was quickly aware of the culture of ABC Organization after my first week employed there. Evaluating an organizations culture is very valuable in ensuring the correct cultural elements are in place to support and align the vision. The organizations culture is a passive/defensive style. These styles promote people and security behaviors. (De Long & Fahey, 2000) The primary style of the organization culture is approval. The approval culture is described as a culture in which conflicts are avoided and interpersonal relationships are pleasant or at least superficially. In this culture members feel that they must agree with, gain the approval of, and be liked by others. (De Long & Fahey, 2000) The secondary style for ABC Organization is dependent. Dependent is described as a culture that is hierarchically controlled and non-participative. (De Long & Fahey, 2000) ABC Organization is a volunteer driven and volunteer led organization so it continually seeks approval from the public and its donors. I have learned a great deal in doing this project. It has made me look a lot closer into the changes that are be made within the organizations. I can also look back and see things that were done and acknowledge things that were not done effective in the change initiative by upper management and middle management. Though the teachings of this course I can now recognize what most of the employees feel as the organization goes through change is among the norm. I have seen many key factors to a successful change go without implementation. I dont think its due to lack of knowledge but lack of effort of upper management. This organization has come a long way and has a journey ahead. I always go back to what some
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long time employees say, This is much better that it use to be. With the knowledge that I received from this course I can go on to better understand what happens during a change initiative. With that, it will allow me to be a great manager in the future knowing how it feels being on the other end of the change. Works Cited Carter, E. (Spring2008). Successful Chagne Requires More Than Change Management. Journal for Quality & Participation , 20-23. De Long, D., & Fahey, L. (2000). Diagnosing Cultural Barriers to Knowledge Management. Academy of Management Executive , Vol 14, No 4. Gotsill, G., & Natchez, M. (Nov2007). From Resistance to Acceptance: How to Implement Change. T+ D , 24-27. Hodges, B. (2008). Change Mangement: setting up an asthma camp for children. Nursign Standard , 35-38. Leahey, J. K., & Kotter, J. P. (1993). Changing the Culture at British Airways. Harvard Business School . Leban, B., & Romuald, S. (2008). Managing Organizational Change 2nd Edition. Hoboken: John Wiley & Sons. Rothwell, W. J., & Sullivan, R. (2005). Practicing Organization Development. John Wiley & Sons.
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Change Management - ABC Organization 1

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Change Management - ABC Organization 1

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Change Management - Abc Organization 1