Change Management

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ASSIGNMENT
MBA SEM 4
SUBJECT NAME – Change Management

QUESTION: 1
Describe Kotter‘s Eight Step Change Model
ANSWER
To successfully react to windows of opportunity, regardless of the focus — innovation, growth,
culture, cost structure, technology — a new methodology of change leadership is required. Thirty
years of research by leadership guru Dr. John Kotter have proven that 70% of all major change
efforts in organizations fail. Why do they fail? Because organizations often do not take the holistic
approach required to see the change through.
However, by following the 8-Step Process outlined by Dr. Kotter, organizations can avoid failure
and become adept at change. By improving their ability to change, organizations can increase
their chances of success, both today and in the future. Without this ability to adapt continuously,
organizations cannot thrive. Dr. Kotter has proven over his years of research that following . The
8-Step Process for Leading Change will help organizations succeed in an ever-changing world.
The Eight-Stage Process of Creating Major Change
Step 1: Create Urgency
For change to happen, it helps if the whole company really wants it. Develop a sense of urgency
around the need for change. This may help you spark the initial motivation to get things moving.
This isn't simply a matter of showing people poor sales statistics or talking about increased
competition. Open an honest and convincing dialogue about what's happening in the marketplace
and with your competition. If many people start talking about the change you propose, the urgency
can build and feed on itself.
Step 2: Form a Powerful Coalition
Convince people that change is necessary. This often takes strong leadership and visible support
from key people within your organization. Managing change isn't enough – you have to lead it. You
can find effective change leaders throughout your organization – they don't necessarily follow the
traditional company hierarchy. To lead change, you need to bring together a coalition, or team, of
influential people whose power comes from a variety of sources, including job title, status,
expertise, and political importance.
Once formed, your "change coalition" needs to work as a team, continuing to build urgency and
momentum around the need for change.

Step 3: Create a Vision for Change
When you first start thinking about change, there will probably be many great ideas and solutions
floating around. Link these concepts to an overall vision that people can grasp easily and
remember.
A clear vision can help everyone understand why you're asking them to do something. When
people see for themselves what you're trying to achieve, then the directives they're given tend to
make more sense.

Step 4: Communicate the Vision
What you do with your vision after you create it will determine your success. Your message will
probably have strong competition from other day-to-day communications within the company, so
you need to communicate it frequently and powerfully, and embed it within everything that you do.
Don't just call special meetings to communicate your vision. Instead, talk about it every chance
you get. Use the vision daily to make decisions and solve problems. When you keep it fresh on
everyone's minds, they'll remember it and respond to it.

Step 5: Remove Obstacles
If you follow these steps and reach this point in the change process, you've been talking about
your vision and building buy-in from all levels of the organization. Hopefully, your staff wants to get
busy and achieve the benefits that you've been promoting. But is anyone resisting the change?
And are there processes or structures that are getting in its way?
Put in place the structure for change, and continually check for barriers to it. Removing obstacles
can empower the people you need to execute your vision, and it can help the change move
forward.

Step 6: Create Short-Term Wins
Nothing motivates more than success. Give your company a taste of victory early in the change
process. Within a short time frame (this could be a month or a year, depending on the type of
change), you'll want to have some "quick win " that your staff can see. Without this, critics and
negative thinkers might hurt your progress.
Create short-term targets – not just one long-term goal. You want each smaller target to be
achievable, with little room for failure. Your change team may have to work very hard to come up
with these targets, but each "win" that you produce can further motivate the entire staff.

Step 7: Build on the Change
Kotter argues that many change projects fail because victory is declared too early. Real change
runs deep. Quick wins are only the beginning of what needs to be done to achieve long-term
change. Launching one new product using a new system is great. But if you can launch 10
products, that means the new system is working. To reach that 10th success, you need to keep
looking for improvements.

Step 8: Anchor the Changes in Corporate Culture
Finally, to make any change stick, it should become part of the core of your organization. Your
corporate culture often determines what gets done, so the values behind your vision must show in
day-to-day work. Make continuous efforts to ensure that the change is seen in every aspect of
your organization. This will help give that change a solid place in your organization's culture.




QUESTION: 2
Explain the various steps at which control takes place in a Change Management Process
ANSWER
Change control is something that is inevitable even with the most successful projects. I‘m not sure
I‘ve ever worked on a project that didn‘t have at least one modification made along the way.
What‘s critical is that you know how to manage change and ensure the project remains on track —
and ultimately successful — despite it. When you‘re starting a project, it‘s important to ensure
there is a change control process available. If the company you work for doesn‘t have a
methodology, then it‘s your job to establish one.
Some Basics
―Change Control‖ is a formal process. It is set up to enable project teams to modify the scope of
the project using specified controls and policies. Change can include anything that would impact
the project — time, budget, scope, all of which can impact quality. Most of the time, it‘s scope that
impacts the other items.

Here‘s a simple process I‘ve followed to ensure changes are properly managed.
1. Define the Change Request
Change Control is the process. A Change Request is the documentation used to request the
actual change. Whoever owns the actual request needs to explain it in such a way that the team
understands it well enough to define it. This should be done through appropriate documentation
(whatever the project team or company expects). It can be as simple as an email or as complex as
a formal document.

When defining the change, it‘s necessary to have in hand the actual request with all supporting
statements. This should include:
•Actual Request: Statement of the need. This should outline clearly the change item for the project
team to analyze.
•Reason for the Request: Customer impacts if the request cannot be completed or if considerable
time passes before the request can be completed
•Conditions of Success: While this is an Agile term, I believe it‘s valid with Waterfall, as well. Call it
what you want, but customers must be able to define what they expect from the change.
•Expected Completion: The requester should provide an expected due date for the item. This
doesn‘t mean the change will be completed by this date. It‘s simply meant to provide more details
for the team to analyze when defining options.

2. Submit and Review the Change Request.
Once the Change Request is documented, it‘s submitted to the project team. Here again, the
process varies from the simple (a phone call or email) to the formal (a memo or meeting). Unless
the request is very simple, I prefer to review the change with the full team. That meeting provides
the proper venue for the request to be reviewed, and all members have a chance to ask questions
and help make decisions.
There should be two portions to reviewing the Change Request: the formal presentation or
meeting and the project team‘s review and discussion of impacts. Within the change control
process there should be an expected turnaround time for these. Discussions with the customer
should include setting expectations regarding response time, or at least when the team will provide
feedback.

3. Define Options and Create Response Document
Once the team has reviewed the Change Request, options should be defined. There should be a
minimum of two. When providing the document response, always provide each option with some
of the data points below as well as a team recommendation, which represents its view of the best
choice. The customer may not always go along, but it can help them make a decision.
The response should include:
•Option Number and Name
•Proposed Solution: This should include how to respond to the change request. It can be anything
from a technical direction and justification as to why this particular approach is being put forward.
•Proposed Timeline: The customer always needs to know how long something is going to take.
The estimated timeline is a piece of information they will leverage when making a choice based on
the options the team presents.
•Impacts to the Project: This is an essential part of the response. If changes are small, there may
be no impacts — for instance, if you‘re changing a series of messages or buttons. But most
changes will have some sort of impact. The scope change can impact the timeline, the budget and
therefore the quality of the product. This area should minimally explain the cost of the changes,
the impact on the timeline and potential quality results. There may also be resource impacts. The
team may either have to get additional people or may define a need for existing resources to add
or remove time on the project. All of these items should be defined clearly to enable the
customer‘s decision making.
•Expiration Date for Proposed Changes: This sets a timeframe for the client to respond to the
proposed solution and cost/time impacts. If the client goes outside of the set window, there could
be additional impacts to the project. That aside, setting an expiration date provides urgency to the
process.

4. Final Decision And Approval

The customer should provide a timely response. If the Change Control Response document
expires, it should be re-evaluated once the customer provides feedback. If too much development
has occurred to sustain the change, then that needs to be stated. If the delayed response has
resulted in other impacts, they need to be communicated as soon as possible. It‘s also possible
that an expired response could lead to an additional review and proposal.
Whatever decision results from all this needs to be officially approved. When you define the
Change Control process, be sure to include a list of sponsors, stakeholders and key decision
makers who can OK both the process and the decision.




QUESTION: 3
Discuss the various factors affecting the choice of a change Strategy
ANSWER
Strategic‖ may be one of the most over-used words in business today. This observation is
especially valid in the world of alliances, where managers must distinguish between those
alliances that are merely conventional and those that are truly strategic. This author outlines the
five factors that make an alliance ―strategic.‖
Due to the levels of organizational commitment and investment required, not all partner
relationships can be given the same degree of attention as truly strategic alliances. The impact of
mismanaging a strategic alliance or permitting it to fall apart can materially impact the firm‘s ability
to achieve its core business objectives.

The Seven factors affecting the choice of a change Strategy
1. Urgency of the need for change: While the most common type of alliance generates revenue
through a joint go-to-market approach, not every alliance that produces revenue is strategic. For
example, consider the impact on revenue objectives if the relationship were terminated? Clearly, a
truly strategic relationship would have a great bearing on the prospects for achieving revenue
growth targets.
Cost reduction may also be a core business objective of the alliance, particularly among supply-
side partners. By investing together in new processes, technologies and standards, alliance
partners can obtain substantial cost savings in their internal operations. Again, however, a cost-
saving alliance is not truly strategic unless it has an underlying business objective, such as ―to
achieve an industry-leading cost structure.‖

2. Degree of resentment to change : Another way in which strategy can prove to be strategic is
to play a key role in developing or protecting a firm‘s competitive advantage or core competency.
Learning alliances are the most common form of competitive/competency strategic alliances. An
organization‘s need to build incremental skills in an area of importance is often accelerated with
the help of an experienced partner. In some cases, the learning objective of the relationship is
openly agreed between the partners.

3. Power of the individual/group initiating the change: An alliance can be strategic even when
it falls short of establishing a competitive advantage. Consider the case of an alliance that blocks a
competitive threat. It is strategic to bring competitive parity to a secondary segment of a market in
which the firm competes, when the absence of parity creates a competitive disadvantage in the
related primary segments of that market. For example, competing in the high and medium price
range of a market with a premium product may leave the firm vulnerable to a low-priced entry. If
the firm‘s manufacturing processes do not permit the creation of a low-priced product entry, a
strategic alliance with a volume partner in an adjacent market can successfully block the
competitive threat.

4. Necessity for information and commitment: From a longer-term perspective, an alliance that
is not fundamental to achieving a business objective today could become critical in the future. For
example, in 1984, a U.S. consumer products company needed to expand distribution beyond the
Midwestern states. Faced with the prospect of competition at some point in the future, the firm
made a strategic decision to invest in an alliance with a distribution and support services company
that had incremental distribution capacity in the U.S. and a similar presence in Europe, rather than
invest in expanding its own local distribution capabilities. With the option to expand into European
distribution at any point, the firm could work to sew up the market before expanding too quickly
internationally.

5. Available Expertise : When an alliance is driven by intent to mitigate significant risk to an
underlying business objective, the nature of the risk and its potential impact on the underlying
business objective are the key determinants of whether or not it is truly strategic. Dual sourcing
strategies for critical production components or processes are excellent examples of how risk
mitigation can become the context for supply-side strategic alliances.

6. Target population: As process companies advance the yield of their operations, suppliers
often collaborate with the manufacturer to ensure their new products fit within its new operations.
The benefits of such an alliance are cost savings to the manufacturer and accelerated product
development for the supplier. In situations where the supplier‘s product is critical to the
manufacturer‘s operation, it may be necessary for the manufacturer to have strategic alliances
with two competing suppliers in order to mitigate such risks as unilateral cost increases or
degradation in quality of service.
7. Dependency factor: The management‘s ability to command of demand is limited if the
organisation is more employee oriented. Therefore, the management will have to involve the
individuals in the organisational change. One the other hand, if the management is powerful and
authorised the ability of the organisation to oppose or resist any management decision for
affecting a change is limited. The negotiating strategy can be adopted if there is a situation of
mutual dependency between the management and the individuals.


QUESTION: 4
What do you mean by Organizational Effectiveness? Explain the approaches involved in achieving
Organizational Effectiveness?
ANSWER
Organizational effectiveness is the concept of how effective an organization is in achieving the
outcomes the organization intends to produce. The idea of organizational effectiveness is
especially important for non-profit organizations as most people who donate money to non profit
organizations and charities are interested in knowing whether the organization is effective in
accomplishing its goals.
The approaches involved in achieving Organizational Effectiveness are as follows:
1. Goal attainment approach:
The rational goal approach focuses on the organization's ability to achieve its goals. An
organization's goals are identified by establishing the general goal, discovering means or
objectives for its accomplishment, and defining a set of activities for each objectives. The
organization is evaluated by comparing the activities accomplished with those planned for. These
criteria are determined by various factors.
2. The Systems Resource approach: This approach to Organizational Effectiveness was
developed in response to the goal approach. The System Resource Approach sees an
organisation as an open system. The organisation obtains inputs, participates in transformation
processes, and generates outputs. This approach emphasizes inputs over output. It sees most
organizations as entities which function in order to survive, at the same time rivaling for scarce and
valued resources. It assumes that the organisation consists of interrelated subsystems. If any sub-
system functions inefficiently, it is going to influence the performance of the whole system.
3. Internal-Process Approach
This approach has been developed in response to a fixed output view of the goal approach. It
looks at the internal activities. Organizational effectiveness is assessed as internal organizational
health and effectiveness. According to Internal-Process Approach effectiveness is the capability to
get better at internal efficiency, co-ordination, commitment and staff satisfaction. This approach
assesses effort as opposed to the attained effect.
4. Strategic Constituencies Approach
This approach suggests that an efficient organisation is one which full fills the demands of those
constituencies in its environment from whom it needs support for its survival. It assesses the
effectiveness to satisfy multiple strategic constituencies both internal and external to the
organization. Strategic Constituencies Approach is ideal for organizations which rely highly on
response to demands. The Strategic-constituencies approach takes explicitly into consideration
that organizations full fill multiple goals: each kind of organizational constituency (like proprietors,
workers, consumers, the local community, etc.) is supposed to have distinct interest vis-à-vis the
corporation, and will thus use different evaluation criteria.

However, the job of isolating the strategic constituencies from their environment within which they
function is a challenging and tricky task. Because the environment swiftly changes, what was a
crucial goal today might not be so tomorrow. Individual constituents may create significantly
diverse ratings of an organisations effectiveness. These constituents may use diverse factors or
weight the same criteria in a different way.


QUESTION: 5
What do you mean by Change Agent? Describe the characteristics of successful Change Agents.
ANSWER
Definition
A change agent is a person from inside or outside the organization who helps an organization
transform itself by focusing on such matters as organizational effectiveness, improvement, and
development. A change agent usually focuses his efforts on the effect of changing technologies,
structures and tasks on interpersonal and group relationships in the organization. The focus is on
the people in the organization and their interactions.
The characteristics of successful Change Agents are as follows :
Homophily: It is the degree of closeness and similarity between the change agent and the client.
The closer the relationship, the easier and more successful the change. It is similar to listening to
our close friend whom we trust and whose advice we seriously take.

Empathy: It involves an understanding of feelings and emotions and thoughts. This sincere
understanding leads to improved communications between the client and the change agent which
is very helpful in bringing about the desired change.

Linkage: It refers to the degree of collaboration between the change agent and the client. The
tighter the linkage, the more likely is the success.

Proximity: The change agent and the client should have easy access to each other. The closer
the proximity, the better the relationship between the two and the easier to develop the
collaborative linkage.

Structuring: This factor involves proper and clear planning of all activities that are related to
change. If these activities are planned in clear cut step-by-step sequential elements, then the
implementation of change would be easier.

Capacity: This factor refers to an organization‘s capacity to provide the resources that are needed
for successful organizational development effort and implementation. These resources must be
adequate and must be available when needed.

Openness: Openness refers to the conceptual environment which is conducive to the
development of respect and understanding for each other‘s ideas, needs and feelings. The degree
of openness between the change agent and the client would considerably affect the outcome of
the programme.

Reward: All members expect that the change will bring potential benefits. These rewards should
be both in the short run as well as in the long run. The greater the potential for rewards, the more
determined the effort would be in making the required change.

Energy: Energy refers to the amount of effort put into the change process. This effort involves
both the physical as well as psychological energy. The client‘s energy must be well spent and
channeled precisely into the change programme itself. The energy of the change agent should not
be spread over too many clients, for in that case, each of the clients individually may not receive
the needed energy.

Synergy: Synergy simply means that the whole is more than the sum of its parts. This means that
the previous factors, discussed above, involving a variety of people, resources, energies and
activities together result in synergy, if they support the success of the programme, mutually as well
as individually, and collectively are as favourable to the programme as possible.



QUESTION: 6
Write a brief note on the following:
a) Kolb‘s Learning Cycle
b) Peter Senge‘s framework on Organizational Learning
ANSWER
a) Kolb’s Learning Cycle:
David Kolb published his learning styles model in 1984. The model gave rise to related terms such
as Kolb's experiential learning theory (ELT), and Kolb's learning styles inventory (LSI). In his
publications - notably his 1984 book 'Experiential Learning: Experience As The Source Of
Learning And Development' Kolb acknowledges the early work on experiential learning by others
in the 1900's, including Rogers, Jung, and Piaget. In turn, Kolb's learning styles model and
experiential learning theory are today acknowledged by academics, teachers, managers and
trainers as truly seminal works; fundamental concepts towards our understanding and explaining
human learning behaviour, and towards helping others to learn. See also Gardner's Multiple
Intelligences and VAK learnings styles models, which assist in understanding and using Kolb's
learning styles concepts.
Kolb includes this 'cycle of learning' as a central principle his experiential learning theory, typically
expressed as four-stage cycle of learning, in which 'immediate or concrete experiences' provide a
basis for 'observations and reflections'. These 'observations and reflections' are assimilated and
distilled into 'abstract concepts' producing new implications for action which can be 'actively tested'
in turn creating new experiences.
Kolb's model therefore works on two levels - a four-stage cycle:
1. Concrete Experience - (CE)
2. Reflective Observation - (RO)
3. Abstract Conceptualization - (AC)
4. Active Experimentation - (AE)
4. Active Experimentation - (AE)

and a four-type definition of learning styles, (each representing the combination of two preferred
styles, rather like a two-by-two matrix of the four-stage cycle styles, as illustrated below), for which
Kolb used the terms:
1. Diverging (CE/RO)
2. Assimilating (AC/RO)
3. Converging (AC/AE)
4. Accommodating (CE/AE)



Kolb‘s Learning Cycle

b) Peter Senge’s framework on Organizational Learning
In 1990, Peter Senge published "The Fifth Discipline" (later followed by "The Fifth Discipline
Fieldbook: Strategies and Tools for Building a Learning Organization" in 1994). His books pulled
together his extensive research into what different organisations do to build learning capacity –
and why some organisations use learning better than others.
"A learning organisation discovers how to tap people's commitment and capacity to learn at all
levels…where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire,
where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free
and where people are continually learning how to learn together.‖ Peter Senge
More than merely a business best-seller, The Fifth Discipline propelled Senge into the front row of
management thinkers, created a language about change all kinds of companies could embrace,
and offered a vision of workplaces that were humane and built around a culture of learning.

Like any ideal, the perfect ‗learning organisation‘ is not an attainable goal, but rather a desirable
and useful set of guiding ideas and principles for people and organisations to aspire towards.
There‘s more to being a learning organisation than just amassing knowledge. Every organisation
creates and uses knowledge. The challenge is that few seem to actually learn how to manage it,
apply it, grow through it and use it effectively.

There‘s no one correct formula -- different organisations try different processes, strategies and
systems to share learning, acquire knowledge and turn it into the capacity to learn for change, re-
learn and continually improve. There are, however, some key elements that all learning
organisations have in common. Senge sorted many of these into 5 key learning areas or themes,
he called 'The Five Disciplines'.

The 5 Leadership Learning Disciplines in brief are:




Shared Vision: The key vision question is ‗What do we want to create together?‘. Taking time
early in the change process to have the conversations needed to shape a truly shared vision is
crucial to build common understandings and commitments, unleash people‘s aspirations and
hopes and unearth reservations and resistances. Leaders learn to use tools such as ‗Positive
Visioning‘, 'Concept-shifting‘ and ‗Values Alignment‘ to create a shared vision, forge common
meaning/focus and mutually agree what the learning targets, improvement strategies and
challenge-goals should be to get there.
Mental Models: One key to change success is in surfacing deep-seated mental models - beliefs,
values, mind-sets and assumptions that determine the way people think and act. Getting in touch
with the thinking going on about change in your workplace, challenging or clarifying assumptions
and encouraging people to reframe is essential. Leaders learn to use tools like the 'Ladder of
Inference' and 'Reflective Inquiry' to practise making their mental models clearer for each other
and challenging each others' assumptions in order to build shared understanding.
Personal Mastery is centrally to do with ‘self-awareness’ – how much we know about
ourselves and the impact our behaviour has on others. Personal mastery is the human face of
change – to manage change relationships sensitively, to be willing to have our own beliefs and
values challenged and to ensure our change interactions and behaviours are authentic, congruent
and principled. Leaders learn to use tools like 'Perceptual Positions' and 'Reframing' to enhance
the quality of interaction and relationship in and outside their teams.
Team Learning happens when teams start ‘thinking together’ – sharing their experience,
insights, knowledge and skills with each other about how to do things better. Teams develop
reflection, inquiry and discussion skills to conduct more skilful change conversations with each
other which form the basis for creating a shared vision of change and deciding on common
commitments to action. It‘s also about teams developing the discipline to use the action learning
cycle rigorously in change-work. Leaders learn to use tools like the 'Action-Learning Cycle' and
'Dialogue' to develop critical reflection skills and conduct more robust, skillful discussions with their
teams and each other.
Systems Thinking is a framework for seeing inter-relationships that underlie complex situations
and interactions rather than simplistic (and mostly inaccurate) linear cause-effect chains. It
enables teams to unravel the often hidden subtleties, influences, leverage points and
intended/unintended consequences of change plans and programs and leads to deeper, more
complete awareness of the interconnections behind changing any system. Leaders learn to use
'Systems Thinking Maps' and 'Archetypes' to map and analyse situations, events, problems and
possible causes/courses of action to find better (and often not obvious) change options/solutions.



Submitted By:
SANA MEHBOOB
Roll no : 1208001980

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