Essay On Change Management And Organizational Development

This assignment has been designed to provide you with an opportunity to demonstrate your achievement of the following module learning outcomes:

 

 

1. Synthesise unplanned and planned change and organisation development approaches

 

 

2. Critically assess the key areas of organisational and individual resistance to change

 

 

Using your PR1 content, guided by the feedback you have received, you are to write a 2,000 word professionally written and presented business report which:

 

 

1) Identifies and rationalises a strategic change that LPHY can take.

 

 

2) Uses a change management model to outline a planned change approach to this proposed change.

 

 

3) Addresses the potential for organisational and individual resistance of the proposed change plan.

 

 

Change Management Can Be Termed As a Specific Systematic Approach For Dealing With The Entire Transition As Well As Transformation Of The Organizational Objectives, Technologies and processes (Jayatilleke and Lai 2018). The main purpose of this change management is to deploy different strategies for impacting changes, controlling them and even helping out the members for getting adapted to changes. The five major stages of this change management procedure are preparing the company for changes, identifying a vision and planning for changes, deploying the changes, embedding the change within the organizational culture and finally reviewing the overall progress and analysis of the results. This report provides a brief discussion on the strategic change that would be taken by LPHY with a change management model. 

 

LPHY is a local charity that aims in supporting the best hospice care for local people. It is being done primarily through the gift to an NHS hospice. In the current pandemic situation of COVID 19, it was required to restructure the business processes for their retail and non retail services. There is a sensitivity regarding the changes or decisions, originated from the head office. It is also noticed that most of the shops require proper support of information technology and hence they would be investing heavily in a new IT structure at the head office. There is also a vacancy for suitable candidates and the current rate of payment would be needed to be considered. For the non retail sector of LPHY, they have taken the decision to invest within high skilled employees with experiences in highly specialized areas of fundraising and the strategy was proved to be financial successful for the organization. Due to the lack of the HR, the policies and processes are left unread and they are not using the performance management system for the business. The requirement of project management is also identified the senior management team.

 

The requirement of a change is inevitable in the business processes and operations of LPHY and it would be needed to ensure that they are focusing on the major aspects accordingly. It is being observed that all the departments and segments of the organizational management would be requiring these changes and hence the consideration of a new and effective leadership would be beneficial for them (Cameron and Green 2019). Since the HR has left the organization from the COVID 19 pandemic situation, they are not being able to identify the processes in an appropriate manner and the restructuring has not been effective for them. It would be required to ensure that the organizational management is involving a new leader and a new leadership style in their business.

 

 

The change in leadership in LPHY would be a transitional change as it would be moving the company away from the current state to the new state for the purpose of solving a problem related to COVID 19 pandemic and the exiting issues would be resolved successfully. Moreover, the change would be responsible for radically or fundamentally changing the core values, operations and even culture of the business. LPHY would require to consider new attributes in the business processes for such changes (Doppelt and McDonough 2017). 

 

The proposed change of a change in leadership can be successful with a change management model of Lewin’s change management model. Three stages of the model are unfreeze, change and freeze. It refers to the fact that in the initial stage, the organizational management and members would require to change their usual position, before implementing the change and after the change is implemented, they would be returning to the desired change state (Hussain et al. 2018). The new change of leadership in the organizational management would be required to be completed with the initial stages for ensuring that a complete transition would take place. The change management model of Lewin with a planned change approach for LPHY is provided below:

 

i) Unfreeze: The first and the foremost stage of the change management model is unfreezing. LPHY would be requiring to ensure that all the members and the management is accepting the fact that a change is required and the existing status quo is broken down for building up a new way of operation (Matthews et al. 2018). It would be required for the members to understand that they need a new leader for their business and also checking the business processes as a useful tool for helping out the team in understanding whether the change would be inevitable or not.

 

 

LPHY would even require to ensure that they are determining the requirements to change by completing a survey on the team and the business, so that the current state after COVID 19 pandemic is well understood. A stakeholder analysis and stakeholder management would be used for identifying and determining the support of the most distinct individuals in the business (Schmidt, Groeneveld and Van de Walle 2017). A clear communication with the team members and individuals would be needed in the business processes, so that the existing members in both retail and non retail sectors of LPHY are able to identify the processes and even addressing the concerns of their members successfully. This particular approach of communication is quite distinctive for the members 

 

 

ii) Change: The second distinct and noteworthy stage of the change management model is change. As soon as the uncertainty is created in the unfreeze stage, the respective change state is where the individuals would be initiating to solve their uncertainty and checking for newer methods for doing things. The individuals would initiate to act in methods, which provide support to the new direction. The entire transformation from unfreezing to changing does not take place easily and hence the organizational management of LPHY would be considering time to hold the new direction and even participate proactively within the change (Domingues et al. 2017). The change curve would be focusing on the specified issue of personalized transformations within a changing environment and would be useful for understanding the aspect. 

 

 

For the purpose of accepting the change of new leadership and even contributing to make it successful, the individuals would be requiring to understand the process of providing advantages to the members. The members of LPHY would be requiring adequate time for accepting the change and a proper communication would be needed to be considered. They would require to communicate properly and even ensuring that the overall planning and implementation of the changes would be quite distinctive (Bögel et al. 2019). The communication should mention about the benefits of the changes impacting every member and even preparing the other people for the aspects to be followed accordingly. It is needed to deal with the issues immediately and even relate the requirement for change back to the operational necessities. The management could even empower the individuals by involving them in the procedure, whenever needed. LPHY would also ensure that the line managers would be providing a day to day direction with the new leadership and successfully generating short term wins for reinforcing the change (Bligh, Kohles and Yan 2018).

 

iii) Refreeze: The final stage in the change management model is refreeze. As soon as the changes are eventually taking shape and individuals have comprised the newer methods of working, the company is ready for refreezing (Betancourt et al. 2017). The outward signs of the step are a stabilized organizational chart and consistent description of the roles and responsibilities. It even require to identify the individuals causing resistance to the new leadership in LPHY for a proper internalization of the change. As soon as these members would be identified, the changes used all the time would be needed to be implemented for the regular processes and operations accordingly. 

 

 

With such a change in the leadership, the investment and financial issues would also be reduced and the employees would be feeling comfortable with the new methods of working. New motivation should be provided to all individuals for accepting these changes. The inclusion of a leadership support would be beneficial for the business and a reward system would be created successfully (Kobus, Westner and Strahringer 2017). The senior management of LPHY would be establishing new feedback systems and even adapt the organizational structure as per requirement.

 

 

The resistance to change is needed to be reduced successfully for both organizational and individual. The proposed change of leadership in LPHY can create a few issues related to resistance and the existing members might not be readily accepting the changes accordingly. Resistance to change is the unwillingness to adapt to new circumstances or methods of doing things and it could take place with individuals and even with the organizational management (Stouten, Rousseau and De Cremer 2018). The organizational resistance to the proposed change plan of new leadership would be impacting on the culture of the organization of LPHY and as a result, the values and principles of the business would be impacted and the employees would tend to resist these changes. New leadership would also bring change in power and operational procedures and it would be the tendency of the individuals to work with the older processes (Gupta and Cannon 2020).

 

 

There is also a high chance of individual resistance to change for the proposed change. The individuals can resist changes at the individual level without even undertaking collective activities. There could be two types of individual resistance and the first one is when a strong individual would resist openly through the criticizing and challenging change. As this type of individuals show open resistances, it would be easier for the management and even the change leaders of LPHY to deal with the resistances (Khan and Smuts 2019). A proper communication would be needed in such aspect and the second type of individuals are the ones, who would be replaced by the new leader in the company.

 

 

The resistance to change can be successfully overcome and the change would be implemented successfully in LPHY by overcoming the opposition and even effectively engaging employees of the business for maximum benefits and efficiency. The change should be communicating properly for reducing the impacts of individual and organizational resistance. Since there had been a concern for selecting PM for the business by the senior management team and a few staff; it would be needed to ensure that a suitable solution is identified and there would not be any kind of conflict of interests between them (Murray, Woodside and Braunscheidel 2020). The root causes of resistance would be identified and the selection of the most appropriate resistance managers would be done accordingly. 

 

 

Moreover, for the purpose of reducing resistance at individual level, the management should ensure that the previous leader or manager is able to identify their own gaps or weaknesses; so that the requirement and strengths of the new leader is successfully identified and the changes are implemented in different stages. It would be needed to take the required steps for mitigating resistance in the entire project lifecycle, so that the individuals could make their own successful transitions to the futuristic state with a desired level of usage and adoption (Geada 2021). Hence, various objectives and benefits to the business of LPHY would be identified, even after COVID 19. 

 

Hence, a conclusion could be drawn that a suitable approach of change management model is required to be considered for a better and effective result. LPHY would require to ensure that a proper and distinct process is being followed for change management, so that the negative impacts and issues are eradicated and the entire change can be implemented successfully. Organizational change management eventually considers the entire organization and the requirement to change and it should be utilized for the process of people and teams getting impacted by the entire transition and hence a few aspects are required to be considered. This report has provided a detailed discussion on the change transition and management in LPHY.

 

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Bligh, M.C., Kohles, J.C. and Yan, Q., 2018. Leading and learning to change: the role of leadership style and mindset in error learning and organizational change. Journal of Change Management, 18(2), pp.116-141.

 

 

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Gupta, U. and Cannon, S., 2020. Impact of Organizational Culture and the Need for Change Management. In A Practitioner's Guide to Data Governance. Emerald Publishing Limited. 

 

 

Hussain, S.T., Lei, S., Akram, T., Haider, M.J., Hussain, S.H. and Ali, M., 2018. Kurt Lewin's change model: A critical review of the role of leadership and employee involvement in organizational change. Journal of Innovation & Knowledge, 3(3), pp.123-127.

 

 

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Murray, M.K., Woodside, S. and Braunscheidel, M., 2020. Project Management and Change Management: Working Together for Effective Organizational Change. The BRC Academy Journal of Business, 10(1). 

 

 

Schmidt, E., Groeneveld, S. and Van de Walle, S., 2017. A change management perspective on public sector cutback management: towards a framework for analysis. Public Management Review, 19(10), pp.1538-1555. 

 

 

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