Change Management Innovative Practices Managing

Question: Discuss about the Change Management for Innovative Practices Managing. Answer: Introdution: According to this theory, change management is divided into eight stages. The following are the eight steps of organizational change management according to John Kotter. Increasing urgency. In this step of change management, people in the organization should be encouraged to move, set objectives and make them real as well as relevant. This encourages people in organizations to set themselves goals and work towards achieving them. Building the guiding team. There is the second step in managing change in an organization. The management of an organization should gather the right group of people with a combination of the desired emotional commitment as well as right set of skills. Understanding the vision of the organization. The management together with the team that has been put in place should come up with a vision and strategy. They should then work on emotional and creative issues that are important in delivering efficiency in service delivery. Communicate for buy in. In this step communicate the vision of the organization to all people involved in the organization. The management should focus on responding to the needs of the people accordingly. Make proper use of technology to impact positively on your organization. Empowering action. Take actions that are geared towards the vision. Remove obstacles and allow feedback information and take advice from people especially leaders. The organization should appreciate and reward progress and good performance. The sixth step involves setting achievable targets bit by bit until the overall objective is achieved. Step seven involves encouraging and following up on continuous change in the organization and reporting on progress. In the final stage, change should be emphasized through activities such as promotion and recruitment. Nudge theory This theory emerged from the studies of the early 21st century. Its a very innovative and powerful tool of managing change in the organization. This theory elaborates that people think and act emotionally and through their instincts rather than by being rational and logical in their thinking (Green, Hauser, 2012). This pattern of thinking will influence the decisions that individuals are likely to make. The theory explains that this type of thinking can influence people to behave in ways that are not helpful and even dangerous. This can happen when people are subjected to pressure or manipulation from various sources. Principles of nudge theory can be applied to influence people`s behavior and line of thoughts. This can happen through intervening indirectly rather than forcing people to adopt to change (Rei, 2012). After reviewing the above two theories, change management can be defined as the process by which the management of an organization can help people to accept and adopt to changes in processes, organization, other people and even change in their environment smoothly and successfully through psychologically influencing their patterns of behavior and thinking (Wallace, Fertig Schneller,2007). The above definition is influenced by John Kotter in that it is a process that needs to follow all the steps in order for change to stick. The definition is influenced by the nudge theory by stating that change management involves influencing the thoughts and behavior of people positively so as to accept change without coercion or force (Beech MacIntosh, 2012). Yahoo is an American multinational company which was started in the year 1994. it was started by two students, Jerry Yang and David Filo who were electrical engineering students at the Stanford University. Yahoo grew rapidly throughout the 1990s and made various acquisitions during this period. The company was a major player in technology as well as internet provision services until a wave of organizational change and mismanagement brought it to its knees (Parkin,2009). The years between 2004 and 2008 saw major changes in the management of the organization especially the top management. This was followed by board room intrigues many of which came to public light. After the Scott Thompson took over the company in the year 2012, he oversaw a major layoff of the companys employees. Yahoo announced lying of 2000 of its employees in April 2012. Before the lay-offs, there was a series of resignations by high profile management team individuals including the chief product officer as well as the vice president of computational advertising. Many of the top managers were poached by its competitors. The new CEO announced major re-organizing the organization with focus on customer needs. There were changes in the culture of the organization after a new CEO took over. The company was known to have a bureaucratic culture which discouraged innovation. The new CEO made the organization more democratic and flexible. The CEO made new appointments and changed the comp ensation policies of the company. However most of this tactics backfired because, she wanted to make this changes within a very short period which was impossible. The change agent in this case was the top management of the organization, employees and the shareholders. The change in the management of the organization brought about fear among the employees due to the uncertainty about their jobs. Most of the employees were affected psychologically and this may have affected their productivity. The poor financial performance of the organization also put employees at a very undesirable state of mind. The sudden change of culture in the organization may have been met by resistance from the employees. This is because they were not prepared well and adequately for this change. The top management of the organization also did not involve the employees in the change process (Wallace, Fertig Schneller, 2007). The definition of organizational change as described above is relevant with the change that is going on at yahoo in that organizational change is a process. This process takes time to be implemented to work appropriately. It should also involve the people who are to be affected by the change. Managing change in the organization as in my definition above should involve preparing the minds of those involved so that their behavior and thought can be aligned to desired organizational change. Failure to follow the step involved in organizational change management as well as implement the nudge theory may have resulted in failure by Yahoo to achieve the organizational change they desired (Johnson Paton, 2007) Table 1: SWOT analysis of Yahoo inc Strengths l Large number of Yahoo mail users l Large marketing revenues l Large product portfolio Weaknesses l Decreasing market share in search engine l Decreasing market share in mail services l Unhealthy financial position l Decreasing advertisement revenues Opportunities l Advertising in internet and social media is becoming common hence an opportunity for growth l Increase use of mobile phones and internet in developing nations provide it with an opportunity l Well structured business directory which could be customized to generate revenue Threats l Increasing competition l Role of advertising is being taken up by social media hence reducing Yahoo`s revenues From the above SWOT analysis of Yahoo, deductions can be made on the why the company had to make the organizational changes discussed in question two above. When you analyze the strengths that the company possesses, the company may have made the organizational changes in order to maximize on the strengths of the company to generate extra revenues (Johnson Paton, 2007). The large number of Yahoo mail users could be used by the company to generate additional revenue. The major reasons that made Yahoo to make the organizational changes that they made were due to the weaknesses that they have and the threats that exist in the market. Changes in the top executives of the company severally over a short period show a determination by the directors and the shareholders to turn around the fortunes of the company. The layoff of over 2000 Yahoo employees was in order to reduce the costs of labor which will in turn reduce the losses that the company is making. This change was made because of the financial difficulties that the company is facing. The executive aims of implementing change in the company were taking advantage of the opportunities that are available in the market (Sharma, 2007). The acquisition of flickr an upcoming social media company was is an indication of how keen the management was on taking advantage of the available business opportunities. The company also poached several management talents from its competitors so as to help the company with the right management skills which would help the company weaken their competitors while at the same time becoming stronger. The main advantage of SWOT analysis is that it is simple to analyze and understand. This technique can reduce very many factors into small number which is easier to work with. The disadvantage of the SWOT analysis is that it is subjective. This means that same thing can mean different things to different people. An example is that one organizations strength could be seen as a weakness for another organization. Another shortcoming of SWOT analysis is that it tends to simply things hence may result in making conclusions that are inappropriate (Finch,2011). Change agents can be simply defined as the people within or outside the organization who are affected by transformation that occurs in an organization. There are various types of change agents in an organization. This includes; outside pressure type. People change technology type and development of organization type. The role of change agent refers to how the change agents affect realization and implementation of change in an organization. There are three different roles played by change agents in organizations (Green Hauser, 2012). They include; training, consulting and research. Other roles of change agents in organization are; the mediator, the facilitator, counselor, advocate and detective. These roles are explained below; This role can be played by both the external agent and the internal agents. A consultant manager connects employees within the organization with the data from outside the organization. He/she also helps employees within the organization to access data emanating from inside the organization. The general role of consultants is to help people within the organization to solve problems and overcome challenges through data analysis (Paton McCalman, 2008). Apart from performing the consulting role, an agent may play the role of training. The change agent here helps people in an organization to learn how they can use data to implement change. The change agent offers members of an organization set of skills which may include retrieving, translating and using data for problem solving. Agents of change also play the role of researchers of the organization. They may train other people within the organization on the skills and knowledge needed to evaluate how effective actions that have been taken. The change agent investigates the hidden or unknown factors that may affect the implementation of change in the organization. The will help the organization to effect change in an organization successfully. Dealing and interacting with the behavior and attitudes requires a lot of knowledge and information on various aspects of change implementation. This therefore means that the change agent has to search for information in order to determine the issues that may be hindering change in the organization (Little, 2014). The detective needs to be very keen. Organizational change needs to be backed up and pushed by a particular change agent. This change agent keeps all the aspects that are involved in achieving this change in line with the path that planned change is designed to take. The change agent should ensure that people within the organization keep focused on achieving the required change. The agent of change in any organization must be an expert in that particular field. This will help the change agent to command authority and respect from among the people in the organization. By sharing and demonstrating knowledge and skills, the change agents will show that they can be relied upon to provide guidance and leadership to the others in the organization. People in an organization that is experiencing change will have different views on how change should implement change in the organization. This therefore means that an agent of change should help solve conflicts in an organization which may distract the organization from achieving their objective concerning change. They help to improve understanding and ensuring harmony among the people in the organization. The above roles of change agents in the organization apply in each and every organization that is experiencing change. The above roles apply for Yahoo inc in many ways. The top management of Yahoo are involved in the consulting role where, they collect data from outside the organization. This data from outside the organization can be used in decision making by the management. The managers of Yahoo are also highly trained and posses a lot of knowledge and skills that they use to impact change in the company. The CEO can train the companies` staff and impact the special skill on their workforce. On the aspect of research, the top management of Yahoo Company has to do a lot of background research. The management should collect information from outside and inside the organization. This information helps yahoo managers to prevent any undesired effects of change in that organization. Research by the managers will also help them to learn from the cases of organizations that had taken simila r organizational change and they had either failed or succeeded (Sharma,2007). A problem centered approach to organizational is an approach used by managers of organizations to manage change in their organizations through the context of a real problem. Managers are presented with a real problem in the organization that calls for changes to be made in the organizational. This technique helps managers acquire problem solving methods and technique (Andriopoulos Dawson, 2008). The dialogic approach to organizational change is a method of implementing change in an organization by following the three transformational processes discussed by Bushe and Marshak. This process involves breakdown of current social construction. The status quo in the organization is done away with and the old ways of doing things are no longer seen as effective and efficient hence bringing about change. The second step in this approach involves changing of narratives which gave meaning and made the organization coherent. The final step involves the introduction of new ways of doing things, new behaviors and thinking patterns. The John Kotters 8 step approach to organizational change is under pined to the problem centered approach to organizational change. This is because the John Kotters model is focused on the steps that managers should follow to implement change in the organization when they are faced with challenges hence fitting the problem centric approach. The approach does not focus on the behavior of the people who are to be affected by the organizational change. This model is therefore about making sure that change takes place successfully in the organization no matter the effect the method used will have on people (Green Hauser, 2012). The dialogic approach is under-pined in the nudge theory which focuses on the behavior of people within the organization. It emphasizes on nudging or encouraging them to change by applying principles of behavioral science. This approach emphasizes that choices should be should be aligned to the way people behave. The dialogic approach as well as the nudge theory uses the exploits of the psychology of the human mind and their behavior to bring about successful organizational change (Smillie Hailey, 2001). The benefits of the problem centered approach include: The problem centered approach to organizational change helps managers develop problem solving skills. This approach gives managers of an organization to encounter challenges and problems firsthand and this gives them experience which can be used to solve problems of similar nature in future. The drawback that is experienced with the problem centered approach is that it does not consider the behavior of the people in the organization and its focus is purely on solving the problem at hand. The advantage of the dialogic approach is that it involves the people within the organization a lot. This helps the people adapt their behavior towards the change hence it wont have an adverse effect on their productivity (Little, 2014). The short coming of this approach is that it cannot be applied where change needs to be implemented within a short period to solve a particular problem in the organization. I would use the dialogic approach to manage the change in Yahoo. This is because, the approach is more friendly to the people who may be affected by the change in the organization. This will reduce the resistance to change that may have been experienced in case another approach was used. This approach makes organizational change smooth and successful. References Guidelines for the Management of Change for Process Safety. (2011). New York, NY: John Wiley Sons. Green, A., Hauser, J. (2012). Managing to change the world: The nonprofit manager's guide to getting results. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Rei, M. (2012). Change management: A balanced and blended approach. Norderstedt: Books on Demand. Wallace, M., Fertig, M., Schneller, E. (2007). Managing change in the public services. Malden, MA: Blackwell Pub. 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