I’ve been reading two books during the past couple of weeks, “Awaken the Giant Within” by Tony Robbins and “What the Dog Saw” by Malcolm Gladwell. Whenever I read a book, I read it with an eye towards lessons or insight I can use in organizational change. Robbins’ book is full of insight; Gladwell’s has its moments. These disparities of insight stem from the difference in construction and intent of the two books. Robbins wrote his book as a roadmap for helping individuals change; whereas, Gladwell’s book is a collection of his previously published articles. This makes Gladwell’s book somewhat disjointed in its flow. But what really sets the two books apart is how Gladwell does a great job presenting information, but fails to connect the stories with any insightful takeaways. So while there are a lot of “that’s interesting” moments, there aren’t many “ah ha” moments in his book. He merely tells a bunch of interesting, but loosely coupled stories that leaves you with an “interesting story, but so what?” feeling. Robbins, on the other hand, overwhelms you with insight. His stories are designed to give insight (and action plans) that leads to transformational change.
That being said, there are two essays in Gladwell’s book that are worth reading and thinking about with respect to the process of organizational change. These essays are “The Pitchman” about Ron Popeil and “What the Dog Saw” about Cesar Millian.
In the “Pitchman”, Popeil’s major premise is that -- first and foremost, the product has to be the star. The way I related this to organizational change is that the purpose for organizational change has to be the star. The purpose for change is everything. If people don’t understand the purpose for change, change will not o...
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...mmunicative intent. So the secret to Millan is his ability to phase – to communicate with the dogs in the language of posture and gesture. Likewise, one of the “secrets” of a leader is their ability to phase – to synchronize their posture with their intentions. Don’t ever underestimate subtle symbolic gestures. People are far more subliminally perceptive than you can ever imagine.
Phasing is a skill organizational change agents need to develop – they need to learn that the delivery of a message is as important as its content. If you want to motivate a group to bring about a substantive organizational change you have to be sincere, act with the organization’s best interest at heart, listen well, use phasing and establish a sense of presence -- because all eyes will be on you. The symbolism of your actions and movements can enhance or destroy your message and intent.
Leading Change was named the top management book of the year by Management General. There are three major sections in this book. The first section is ¡§the change of problem and its solution¡¨ ; which discusses why firms fail. The second one is ¡§the eight-stage process¡¨ that deals with methods of performing changes. Lastly, ¡§implications for the twenty-first century¡¨ is discussed as the conclusion. The eight stages of process are as followed: (1) Establishing a sense of urgency. (2) Creating the guiding coalition. (3) Developing a vision and a strategy. (4) Communicating the change of vision. (5) Empowering employees for broad-based action. (6) Generating short-term wins. (7) Consolidating gains and producing more changes. (8) Anchoring new approaches in the culture.
With this mindset in place change can happen without any problems. Having transformational leaders being viewed as change agents, the culture within an organization should transform smoothly. Effective leadership is enhanced when leaders can inspire their followers to accept change by communicating a compelling vision of the future and motivating willingness to work in the new manner (Jones & Rudd, 2008).
Change is the only constant in life. And therefore it should be understood as part of a continuing work in progress that calls for a much broader canvas that seeks out competing voices, and works with the resulting ambiguities, contradictions and tensions of messy reality (Graetz, F. & Smith, A., 2010). In this submission I try to show that organizational change is majorly based on the environment surrounding it much more than the desire of the members or change agents working in that organization. This view diverts from that of Lippitt, (1958) who suggests that implementing planned organizational changes successfully depends on premeditated interventions intended to modify the functioning of an organization. It also diverts from the traditional approaches to organizational change that generally follow a linear, rational model in which the focus is on controllability under the stewardship of a strong leader or ‘guiding coalition (Collis, 1998). In this discussion therefore, comparison made between the different philosophies of change and I try to show that successful change implantation largely depends on an organizations appreciation of what goes on around it rather than what they have planned as a strategic direction.
In today’s ever changing world people must adapt to change. If an organization wants to be successful or remain successful they must embrace change. This book helps us identify why people succeed and or fail at large scale change. A lot of companies have a problem with integrating change, The Heart of Change, outlines ways a company can integrate change. The text book Ivanceich’s Organizational Behavior and Kotter and Cohen’s The Heart of Change outlines how change can be a good thing within an organization. The Heart of Change introduces its readers to eight steps the authors feel are important in introducing a large scale organizational change. Today’s organizations have to deal with leadership change, change in the economy,
Kotter, JP 1995, Leading change: why transformation efforts fail. In Harvard Business Review on Change, Harvard Business School Press, Boston.
“Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail” is an article written by John P. Kotter in the Harvard Business Review, which outlines eight critical factors to help leaders successfully transform a business. Since leading requires the ability to influence other people to reach a goal, the leadership needs to take steps to cope with a new, more challenging global market environment. Kotter emphasizes the mistakes corporations make when implementing change and why those efforts create failure; therefore, it is essential that leaders learn to apply change effectively in order for it to be beneficial in the long-term (Kotter).
Management and leadership are viewed as two different perspectives in the business environment. As described by Dr. Warren Bennis ‘Managers are people who do things right, while leaders are people who do the right thing’, this means that managers do things by the set rules and follow company policy, while leaders follow their own intuition, which may in turn be of more benefit to the company.
3. Organizations must change in order to meet the needs of the changing workplace, environment, technology, and economy in order to be competitive. Change is good for an organization if it is done in a controlled and structured manner. Change is also risky because it is often met with resistance. For example, people may feel threatened and fear power loses and subsequently, resists the change. Change can also be ineffective if it is narrow and doesn’t concern itself with people and is over determined. In Enron’s case, the organization was constantly changing with no collective rhyme or reason.
As the theme of my essay I have chosen to find out what our contemporary society must not forget in order to be able to make organizational theory evolve well into the 21st century. For this task I have decided to take a look back to Aldous Huxley’s modern dystopia “Brave new world”, that warned against totalitarian regimes that intended to suppress individuality in order to advance the interest of the state in its time. Even as those regimes might not be a direct threat nowadays we can eerily conclude that some aspects of it are quite accurate for the times we live in. According to Phillip Yancey who suggested that “there is a much more subtle enemy inchoate within each of us - a natural tendency for people to trade autonomy for comfort, safety and amusement.” This for the most people does not set off alarms but I will argue that it is the most basic requirement that has to be met in our day and age in order to tackle the wide range of issues that we face at the crossroads leading to the future, whether we talk about humanity or organizational theory itself. I think the novel gives us the perfect opportunity to draw parallels with our contemporary society, and see what must be corrected within post modernity based on how things evolved over the course of history and from prophetical books like Huxley’s even as at his time it was only intended to be satire. In the World State people are controlled by technologies like genetic engineering, sleep-learning and drugs like soma to satisfy needs and gently induce masses to enjoy their servitude. If one were to describe postmodernism in just a word or two, "skepticism" and "relativism" would probably best capture the overall ethos of its adherents. Deep skepticism about...
When organizational change proves necessary, all people at all levels of the organization should address change as a “how,” “what,” and “why” problem in order for the change to be sustained over time.
In our BA-509 Leadership Development course, we learned about the Transformational Leadership Theory. This theory states that, leaders with a tendency toward transformational leadership, are creative, brave, risk-takers and sophisticated thinkers. They work eagerly and optimistically and become the role models that employees seek to emulate. Additionally, they encourage their employees to be innovative and creative and reward them for doing so. Transformational leaders develop unique relationships with their employees tailored to their various needs and backgrounds in order to help the employee realize their potential. As a result, a spirit of teamwork and commitment in the organization is nurtured. Welch was a transformational leader
kills: A leadership wake-up call, Available: http://www.selfgrowth.com.html, (Accessed: 2004, April 8). Robbins, S.P. (2002), Essential of organizational behavior, 6th ed, Prentice Hall. New Jersey. Sarantos, S.T. (1994), Managing change by creating a synergistic environment, World Wide Web ed, Vol.
Organisation change is very important and every company should have resistance to change by time to time to get a better performance and motivation. According to the (Burnes, 2004) Change is becoming a present character of organisational life and it is an incremental change. In this case study of Castle home ltd we can see that it was based on emergent planned, Foremen had the knowledge of understanding of the organisation structures, strategies and its culture which will allow managers to choose the most specific approach of resistance to change (Burnes, 1996) but now it is a planned changed which describes a situation where a change agent takes purposeful actions for the change of the organisation from one state to another (Ulster Business School, 2014, p. 24). Wagner, E. (2006) Communication plays a very significant role in term of organisational change strategy which is necessary from time to time in order to having a strong desire to be more successful than competitors and it becomes more efficient so that everyone in the organisation can easily understand it. The main reason of planned change for the organisation is to maximise their effectiveness and to achieve their goals and aim for the higher performance.
... best effort in order to accept change, implement it, and establish a new method of working and learning in the organization. Change essentially is what keeps an organization alive and moving towards higher levels of success.
Combinations of different experiences and education have developed a variety of assumptions about how an organisation works. The use of metaphors when describing organisation movements and change is an important way in which we express these assumptions (Cameron and Green, 2012). Gareth Morgan’s (1986) work on organizational metaphors is good for understanding the different assumptions and beliefs about change that exists. He identifies eight organizational metaphors; machines, organisms, brains, cultures, political systems, psychic prisons and flux and transformation (Morgan, 1986).