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[Research Paper written under the Guidance of Dr.
Bonvillian For Organizational behavior(0102-740)]
Introduction
Leadership
Communication
Team Work
Conclusion
Work Cited
"An Organization's employees can be the impetus for innovation and
change, or they can be a major stumbling block. The challenge for manager is to stimulate
employee creativity and tolerance for change"
Stephen P. Robbins
San Diego State University
In a world characterized by global competition, de regulations, sharp technological change and political turmoil discontinuous organization change seems to be determinant of adoption to environment. Those firms that can initiate and implement discontinuous organization change more rapidly and/or prior to competition have a competitive advantage. The trend and competitive areas forces the change. To improve customer satisfaction a change is needed by implementing TQM. Trend of continuing diversity in work forces force to organizational behavior. Significant change agent include Technology breakthroughs , individual preferences, social needs, political sentiment and the like. One paramount problem is resistance to change often phrased as a conflict between doing efficiently what you do and at the same time challenging it through innovation. People are not against change, if everything stayed the same from the first day to the last they would be bored to death. One way to manage change is to identify the critical catalysts of change and implement the change with the identified strengths of these catalysts. Expert writers on this subject area emphasize on a list of catalysts, but in my opinion critical change catalysts include Organizational Leadership, Communication and Team work. In this thesis I attempt to develop a frame work for successful CHANGE MANAGEMENT by building on the growing literature in Catalyst of Change Management, the literature I learned from extensive reading and my personal observation.
Leadership is a critical factor in initiation and implementation of large organizational wide change. As reorientation's are initiated ahead of the competition and in advance of environmental shifts, they require visionary executives. Organizational changes will require very different kinds of leadership behavior in initiating, engrossing, and implementing the change. Visionary and/or Charismatic leadership is not enough to sustain large system change. The organization must build a model of Leaders that goes beyond the inspired individual, model that takes into account the complexities of the system wide change in large, diverse, geographically complex organizations. The extension on Charismatic Leadership is defined as Instrumental Leadership and analyzed clearly in this thesis.
While the subject of Leadership has received much attention over the years the more specific issue of Leadership during periods of change has only recently attracted serious attention. What emerges from various researches of Leader and organizational change is a picture of the special kind of leadership that appears to be critical during times of strategic organizational changes. That is Charismatic Leadership. This leadership style enables the leader to mobilize and sustain activity within an organization through specific personal actions combined with perceived personal characteristics. This Leadership style successfully brings changes in an individual's values, goals and needs or aspiration. I focus on three major characteristics that enable these leaders to play a effective role in organizational change. The three roles played are Envisioning, Motivating and Supporting or Enabling. Envisioning involves the creation of a picture of the future sate with which people can identify them selves and the organization and which can generate excitement(Tushman, Reily & Nadler). This is a kind a process by which the leader transform his visionary insights to ordinary people. By creating vision, the leader provides a means by which people can develop a commitment, a common goal. Envisioning can be accomplished through articulation of a compelling vision in clear and dramatic terms. People must believe that it is possible to succeed in the pursuit of the vision. In Motivating the leader directs generation of energy among members of the organization. This can be accomplished by demonstration of their own personal excitement and energy and by direct large contact with large numbers of people in the organization. They express confidence on their ability to succeed. The third and final one is Enabling. Here the Leader psychologically helps people to act or perform in the face of challenging goals(Tushman, Reily & Nadler). The charismatic leaders demonstrate their ability to listen, understand and the feeling of those in the organization. They express support for individuals by means of mass communication. Perhaps most importantly the charismatic leader tend to express his/her confidence in peoples ability to perform effectively and to meet challenges. The behaviors of charismatic leaders provide a standard to which others can aspire. Through their personal effectiveness and attractiveness they build a very personal and intimate bond between them selves and the organization. The charismatic leader is a very necessary component but not sufficient enough for effective organizational change.
One of the limitations to the effectiveness of the charismatic leadership is many stemming from risks associated with leadership which revolves around a single individual. There is need on making sure that individuals in the senior team behave in ways needed for a change to occur. An important Leader leadership role is to build competent teams, clarifying behaviors, built in measurement and administration awards so that individuals perceive that behavior consistent with the change is central for them in achieving goals. The leadership that play such roles is called the "Instrumental Leadership", since it focuses on the management of teams, structures and managerial process to create individual instrumentality's (Tushman, Reily & Nadler). If the charismatic leadership focuses on the macro aspects such as envisioning, enabling & energizing, instrumental leadership focuses on micro aspects such as structuring, controlling & rewarding. The structuring involves building teams that have the required competence to execute and implement major change programs. This aspect is analyzed clearly in the latter parts of this thesis. The controlling involves the creation of systems and processes to measure, monitor and assess both behavior and results and to create corrective action. The systems operated during periods of change should emphasize feed forward controls, rather than the feed back controls operated during periods of consistency. Rewarding involves the administration of both rewards and punishments contingent upon the degree to which behavior & performance is consistent with the requirements of the change.
A radical change goes unexplained in the organization when the message is poorly communicated. The real purpose of communication within an organization is to achieve a common understanding of and focus on what the organization is trying to achieve in the market place. One of the communication styles which primarily required during times of rapid change is Strategic Communication. This method proved to be successful due to its emphasize on the 21st century business slogan "Customer is the King and Employees are the Masters". The Strategic Communication, a process by which the organization deliberately manages its communication proactively so that they are open, candid, and focused on the market place and the customer as the first cause. All of the organizations actions are described as reasoned and logical responses to customer needs and to the forces of the market place in which the organization is navigating (D.Aprix, Page 5). The first step in this process is to create and communicate a clear and simple case for change, based on market and customer realities(Page 23). It should be clearly told that survival of the organization depends on meeting the customer needs. Also there is a need to clearly identify and communicate the market forces that the organization faces in doing the business. This enable the people to understand the critical factors behind the change, ranging from innovation to customer satisfaction. For e.g., if the organization tries to reengineer its processes, the change in process should be communicated as a need of the market place. The organization should constantly educate employees about what organization must do to serve its market place and survive the competitive threat. The second step is to formulate and communicate a responsive business plan (Page 23). This facilitates open ended communication, one of the most important factor stimulates successful communication. This enables employees at all levels to understand what organization faces and solutions designed to solve those problems, because by means of this step they are dealing with it. What this people need is the conviction that their leaders have grasped the problems and moving to address them with a reasonable plan of action. The challenge is to develop messages that further people's understanding, commitment and productivity. The people should be taught how the business will run and what the key measures of success will be. For e.g., if the organization designs and implement a new performance evaluation and reward system, employees should informed be clearly the need for such systems. It should clearly told how this new systems will drive the organization and its employees to meet the needs of the market place. The third step is to outline the consequences of success and failures. Here the goal is to inspire hope and, frankly, to raise the specter of what could happen if the problems went unaddressed(Page 24). All organizations will, at times, have product failures, delivery delays, customer complaint or similar problems. The issue is how comfortable people feel in communicating those problems. When bad news is candidly reported, a climate is created in which people aren't afraid to be truthful and good news gains increased credibility (S.Robins, Page 392) . Finally it should be ensured that progress is continuously communicated in a timely manner. The management must be committed for continuous improvement to the Strategic Communication process. The process should be evaluated and the feedback should be obtained from the employees in order to see the communication is working and on target. The timely communication lessens the power of the grapevine and increases management's credibility. The cost of not communicating in timely manner is disaffection, anger and loss of trust(S.Robbins, Page 394). Through out the process the messages should be communicated through the employees preferred source of information. This is one area where companies fails in attempting to implement effective Strategic Communication. When communicated through undesired sources the information is turned down by the employees. The preferred source of information defers from industry to industry and at various level of organizations. For e.g., employees at a high tech company may prefer e-mail as a source of information, where as production workers at a car manufacturing plant prefer the notice board at canteen or the speaker system in the company buses.
Team work is a significant vehicle for organizational change and development on both a local and global level. In a changing social and economic environment with shifting structures and roles played by members, Team work becomes an critical element for organizational success. In managing change "Cross Functional Teams" plays an important part, despite of the needs for other team structures such as Task Teams, Self Managed Work Teams and Business Groups. Cross Functional Teams are defined as employees from about the same hierarchical level, but from different work areas, who come together to accomplish a task (Robbins, Page 350). The effectiveness of Cross Functional Teams depends largely on its members diversified functional strengths. These teams should be formed at all possible levels between different functional departments during the on going process of change. The functional diversity boost innovation, and brings group synergy. The team development should begin with recognition of recognition and appreciation of this diversity and establishment of Commonality. Commonality assumes some shared values, norms and objectives in working together (Felkins, Chakiris Page 192). This commonality establishes the mission for the group and try to develop trust and respect explained by the values and norms. One of the major task required during periods of changes is "Problem Solving". New technologies and changes in process will carry considerable amount of problems and confusions. How ever these teams maximizes overall knowledge, skill, experience and the number of options and approaches to problem solving. By working in functionally diversified teams, team members understand the whole process that is taking place in the organization. This comprehensive understanding of organization processes enables the team members to bring new ideas and new approaches to carry out the existing tasks. The advantage of forming teams at all possible levels is that coworkers will be more satisfied because they were receiving more attention and confirmation from the supervisors. These individuals are more motivated and satisfied with their work when they are part of a team with the information and the responsibility they need to do their job and influence change. This overcomes one of the main barriers to change, RESISTANCE. Rewarding the teams & team members during and after the periods of change is a hypercritical factor for current & future change management programs. The individual team members should be rewarded in relation to their contribution for the team tasks. Further the teams tasks should be formed and coupled in relation to the overall organizational strategy. The reward systems should be designed in a way to avoid conflicts between groups. The theme for team work during period of change is that people must believe that their teams are authentic and able to influence the organization and not just an empty archetype or the latest management fad to improve quality, productivity, and service. This believe is the essence behind innovation. Many organizations are now in a transition period in changing from an old bureaucratic paradigm to a new participative paradigm. During this transition phase employee involvement and team work can help people to do what needs to be done.
Event though I emphasized on Leadership, Communication and Team work as critical catalyst of Change Management, successful change management depends on many other factors such as organizational culture, innovation and resources etc. But main critical elements of change are what those mentioned in this thesis. Organizations engage in reorientation requires both charismatic and instrumental leadership. Charismatic leadership is needed to generate energy, create commitment, and direct individuals towards new objectives, values or aspirations. Instrumental leadership is required to ensure that people really do act in a manner consistent with their new goals. Either one alone is insufficient for the achievement of change. Since leadership role played by managers in different levels differs training programs carried out in Leadership should be modified accordingly. The organization should implement effective team structures that will effectively manage organizational wide change. Organizational wide training programs should be carried out in team working. External consultants can be carried out to teach and train people in team working. Needless to say Communication will play a critical role in managing the change. All the efforts will be wasted if the strategies and objectives are not communicated effectively. Effective top managers are the managers who talk about the organizational strategy with employees at lower levels of the organization. This is my personal observation over the years.
P.K.Felkins, B.J.Chakiris, K.N.Chakiris, Change Management - Quality Resources
M.Tushman, C.O.Reily, D.Nadler, The Management of Organizations : Strategy, Tactics and Analysis - Harper & Row
Roger D'Aprix, Communicating for Change - Jossey-Bass
Stephen P. Robins, Organizational Behavior - Prentice Hall
R.T.Golembiewski, Approaches to Planned Change - Transaction Publishers