Change and innovation in an organization
According to Aravopoulou (2016), the three examples of change are, strategic, planned and transformational. The strategic change is the process where an organization moves from its current state to a future state. It is also the process of recreating an organization’s business and marketing plan to achieve an objective. The strategic change will help the organization to find new structures that will be more suitable for the organization. Planned change in an organization is the process of preparing an organization for new objectives and a new direction. This is an effective change because it is intentional and focuses on the challenges of the organization and how to make them better. It ensures that the organization can meet the demands of the internal and external environment. Transformational change which is people and process-oriented is a complete change that involves redefining the organization’s strategies, structure, and culture. In response to the crisis of the organization, transformational change will be effective to maintain their successful performance.
Top-down, bottom-up, and integrated are the three approaches to change leadership. According to Jabri (2017), the top-down approach is where the involvement of organization members is very minimal. Using the approach means making rapid change without involving people which might cause a lack of cooperation from the employees and other members in the organization since the change is initiated by the senior managers. The top-bottom approach is where members of the organization are involved and allowed to participate in the changes. This enables the employees and the recipients to contribute to the changes and here, the employee needs are considered. The integrated approach is a combination of top-down and bottom-up approaches. This approach is the most suitable to use because there is a representation of all the approaches. In this approach, the CEO will structure the plan for the change and to make everyone’s need to be met, he will involve them in the change. This will be effective since every member of the organization will participate in the change process.
According to Bradutanu (2015), employee resistance is a major reason that leads to the failure of change in an organization. The reason for resistance from the employees is the lack of being involved in the change plan of the organization. When employees are left out and not allowed to participate, share their views and needs, they feel left out and not part of the organization. Employee resistance should not be eliminated rather it should be viewed as a positive situation that will favor the change process. Knowing the reason why the employees are resisting will give more ideas on what to do during the change process hence encouraging the generation of new ideas from the employees.
Two approaches that change leaders could use to manage employee resistance are communication, participation, and involvement. Bradutanu (2015) states that for the communication approach, conversations between the resisting employees and the change managers can lead to improvements in the change process. This is because the change managers get to listen to the employee’s ideas and views on how they would want the change implemented. Participation and involvement approach, when the change managers allow employees to be involved to participate in the process, they feel valued and their needs are taken care of. Their opinions are taken into consideration and some are even used in the process.
Lack of motivation is one of the restraining forces from Lewin’s Force Field Analysis model. Lack of proper drives, needs and desire make a change to become difficult to accomplish. For a certain objective to be accomplished, lack of motivation leads to low productivity and a lack of cooperation. Another restraining force is the lack of training. Training is important when a change process is taking place to aid in following the right procedures. Lack of training leads to a failed change process because there is not enough knowledge to run the process. This leads to stagnation of the process and eventually fails. According to Singh (2015), driving forces include competition. This leads an organization to make changes so that it can get to the level of competition with other organizations. Competition motivates an organization to enhance its quality and quantity of their product. Another driving force is information technology which improves communication, and decision making processes. Through information technology, the change managers get more knowledge on ways to develop the change process.
According to Singh (2015), unfreezing is a process that will be used to make sure that everyone is aware of the necessity for change. This process helps to avoid and discourage employee resistance. It will help people to open up and be ready to accommodate the new changes. Changing is the process of moving from an organizational old way of doing things to a new way. This process will include reorganizing the organization and implementing change. The change managers will begin making changes in the different tasks, technology, and people and anything that will change the activities that currently exist in the organization. The refreezing process is where the change made will be stabilized and the long term conditions developed. In this process, the change is made permanent and normalized in the organization. In this process, people will internalize new working ways and accept them as part of their life onwards.
To create a new strategic vision, Wheeler & Holmes (2017) state that it will include having a clear understanding of the things that need to change and the reason as to why they need it. I will need to know how many people need the change and how useful it will be to them. I will set a time limit for the change process and work on a budget. To create a new strategic vision, I will need to know if the customers will be satisfied with the change. To effectively communicate vision, the change managers will have to communicate to develop an understanding of the required change. The vision will be communicated regularly about the relevant topics of change to give the needed information and make sure it is understood. This communication will be done through workgroups, and organization meetings.
Sales Key Performance Indicators and Metrics (2020) state that it is important to use KPIs in the organization because they are financial and non-financial measures that will be used to determine their success in accomplishing long term goals. Measuring what is working and what is not will determine the progress, reduce costs, and make the organization maintain its competition in the market. Manufacturing KPI measure is the volume of production and the target is to improve the efficiency of production. Monitoring the production costs to know how much production of product costs and how much it represents for a finished product. This will be done from the beginning of production to the end. Sales KPI is the measurement of performance used to track sales activities and how effective they are in an organization. It is used by sales teams and the top managers. It will measure the number of new contracts signed over a certain period, and how much you expect to earn from each of the new contracts. The source will be from the time spent on the sales follow up and this will determine the net sales done monthly. For financial KPI its measure is the sales that will lead to growth in revenue. The data source will be the profit and loss account which will be done monthly.
According to Anderson R. N., Potočnik K. & Zhou J. (2014), creativity is built on knowledge. Knowledge includes having facts, information, skills, and understanding which is acquired through experience and education. Having the ability to think and develop new ideas and put them in action makes the founder creative and becomes capable of complete a task or process. High self-esteem enables creative people to believe in themselves and thrive in making changes. Self-esteem enables a person to face their fears, make communication with the relevant people effective and eventually succeed. It makes people believe in you and your ideas and this makes it easy to implement a process.
According to Sammut (2015), hyper-competition will shorten the product life cycle because the objective will be to generate short term goals. Because a company has to react fast to gain their competitive advantage, the life cycle of a product is shortened due to its quick sale. The product design cycle will be shortened because of the little time it has on the market and the company focused on profits and competition. In hyper-competition, the company’s norms of operation are not followed and this causes a shortened design life cycle.
Encouraging teamwork and employee diversity in the company would develop more creativity. Anderson R. N., Potočnik K. & Zhou J. (2014) state that teamwork will require workers to contribute and work together towards a certain task. This will enhance creativity in the company because each one of them will bring forth their knowledge and ideas, and put them together as one. Employee diversity will help the company to come up with different ideas and information from diverse people. Employees from diverse backgrounds will enhance creativity by bringing ideas from their diversities. This sometimes causes disagreements which positively encourage creativity because of the mix of ideas.
Technological innovation is important in an organization. Anderson R. N., Potočnik K. & Zhou J. (2014) explain the importance of the internet and social media which helps in developing and distributing ideas and information. This could be encouraged by installing internet connections in the company so that everyone could have access to technology. This could be encouraged by creating employee and management groups that will enable employees and the management to share information. Creating a company’s website could enable more people to know about the organization and what it entails. Social media and the internet act as a marketing tool for the company and therefore should be highly encouraged. Through this, everyone gets an opportunity to air their views even the ones who do not like to give their opinions in normal meetings.
Imagining in innovation would have been done by generating ideas. Mariello (2007) states that this comes about by the pressure to finish and succeed and have the freedom of exploring. Getting all the facts right and visualizing the end product and its effect should be considered in this step. After generating the ideas, a second opinion is sought for to make sure if it will progress. The designing step is where the advantages and disadvantages of the idea are weighed. The weighing process should be direct and standardized so that it considers every aspect. The experimenting step tests how sustainable the ideas will be at a particular time and in a specific environment.it is at this stage that the customer target is determined and the reason for the innovation to them. The assessing step is where the company focuses on its customers to be sure that innovation satisfies their needs. Analysis of the costs is done at this step and the benefits of the innovation are determined.
References
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