Question

n Leadership Operational Plan, Part III, you evaluated the existing organizational structure, control systems, and behavior of your organization. Given the optimization issue(s) you had identified, you proposed an implementation plan to affect organizational change. For this assignment, you will assess the operational changes necessary to address those optimization issues. Building on work in prior courses, you will evaluate how operations can be optimized to achieve the organization's performance goals and meet stakeholder needs.

Write a 1,050- to 1,750-word analysis of the actions your organization must make as it seeks to optimize operations given the issues you identified. This analysis should include:

• The organization's stated performance goals, such as revenue, profit, market share, stock price, and new retail or manufacturing sites.
• The changes necessary to achieve those goals, such as raising capital, finding partners, developing new technologies or products/services, establishing new physical locations, and revising supply-chain management or sourcing strategies.
• Development of a proposed implementation plan to affect organizational (operational) changes needed to support operations optimization:
• Integration of concepts, theories, and best practices to develop a list of recommendations to address issues and circumstances.
• Discussion of anticipated outcomes achieved through successful implementation.

Answer 1

Create a vision for change

People, whether employees or family members, want to know two things-what is it and why is it. If they are convinced of these, then they perhaps accept the 'how' of it that you might dictate to them. In other words, the participation of people on how to do a thing in a changing way is contingent upon their understanding of what it is and feeling convinced why.

For this, we need a clear vision that can be understood by everyone. Having said that, one must admit that vision building is a rather interesting but tedious process. It is interesting because it answers the question anew. It is tedious because it has to cater to the requirements and view a lot of stakeholders. But its power is something like the power of a man who has discovered himself.

Remove obstacles

Once you have kick-started the exercise and progressed, your staff would want to change and enjoy the benefits that you have been promising. But there would always be people who are resisting change. Structures, systems, and processes will also be resisting. Here the leader has to play the role of obstacle remover which involves, at times, dropping some people from the organization. It is like the train that you want to pilot. You may have some ticketless passengers which you might tolerate, but if you have someone who pulls the chain, you have to take the hard decision of getting him down. If you create strong structures, systems, and processes, it would be easier to change.

Create short-term wins

Success begets success. Morale goes up, motivation rise, and performance increase when one has one success after the other. Create them by planning systematic small wins. A changed condition is not one avalanche that ends up in something huge. It is the accumulation of small but frequent wins. Without the small wins, the critics will get better of you. People want to see results.

Don't declare victory too early

Many change projects fail because the victory is declared too early. Real change takes time to percolate. When you have a quick win, you might be disoriented but do not mix it up with the ultimate success. Let not the victorious battles be constructed as the victory of the war. For example, you can launch a new product in a shortened cycle. Surely, it is a success but it is a true win only if you can do that several times over. Each success gives an opportunity to ride on the success and keep on building.

Anchor the changes in corporate culture

Since change is inherently dynamic, there is a danger of it falling back. To make it stick, change the core of the organizational culture. We must make every effort to ensure that change is seen in every aspect of your organization. The leaders should continue to support change, talk of what it has done to you and what it can do to you further, and keep the fire burning for quite a long time before it gets into the culture. Once it becomes part of the culture, things move on. If we lose the support of the people, we will end up where we started.

Change management is an integrated approach to repositioning employees and teams in an organization from an existing state to a needed state in the future. It is a process aimed at assisting the workforce to accept and welcome the changes in their present business environment. In project management, change management refers to the processes where changes to the project are officially brought in and sanctioned.

Examples of change management

--Goal changes

--Strategic changes

--Technological changes

--Changing the attitudes and conduct of employees

--Operational changes

Principles of change management

--Involve and get support from people within the system

--Understand the present position of the organization

--understand your changed goals

--Understand what measures you have to take to reach these goals

--Plan in an appropriate and measurable stages

Every project is unique. Resources and customer demands change. Therefore the change process is a continues process. It will never stop.

Cummings and Worley's 5 -phase change model

Cummings and Worley organization development and change in 1995 explains a complete 5 -phase process for managing change.

1.Motivating change

Motivating change includes getting ready for the change in a project team. The project managers should explain to the team members about the need for change. the project managers should also listen to the workers and make them feel that change will need their strong input and involvement.

2.Creating a vision

The project managers must have a clear vision. the vision should clearly show how the changes will help in the growth of the organizations.

3.Developing support

In developing support the project managers must realize that power is important among team members. In a change. there are often changes in power structure it must have the support of all main power players.

4.Managing transition

The project managers should have a clear idea of all the action plans and activities needed towards the change initiative and how to implement them.

5.Sustaining momentum

It is the hardest phase of managing change. In this phase, the project managers have to work hard to maintain the momentum of the execution. many people roadblocks are encountered in this phase such as resistance from employees, an abrupt departure of a key leader, or a drastic reduction in sales. For sustaining the momentum, it is necessary to get strong support from the top leadership.

Yahoo

A truthful example of organizational change is often found in Yahoo.

Marissa Mayer took over as CEO in 2012, she faced a frightening challenge. The stodgy previous company had no vision, no direction, and no apparent future. Her fight to save lots of the corporate typically attained her scorn from workers and therefore the public who alike.

Samples of her debatable initiatives include are as follows

• After her appointment, she immediately brought her own people and ousted several existing managers
• She bans on telecommuting, which include a great deal of friction and ridicule
• A performance review system that placed workers a bell curve — those at the low end were to be fired
• She overhauled Yahoo properties multiple times throughout her tenure

Despite some claims that she created some enhancements to Yahoo traffic and its core apps, most in agreement that her changes did rather more hurt than sensible. when her 4 roller-coaster years within the CEO’s chair, Verizon finally purchased Yahoo and Mayer left the organization.