Hrmt20028 Organisational Change: Effective Change Assessment Answers

Purpose:

The purpose of this assessment is for you to reflect on the key characteristics of an effective change leader and to consider your own strengths and limitations as a future change leader.

Topic

The first step in this assessment is to identify and critique the characteristics of an effective change leader. Consider both theoretical and practical examples.

You are then required to reflect on your own change leadership style and analyse three of your change leadership strengths and three areas that you wish to further develop. Please also discuss the importance of self-development and self-managed learning. You need to relate your views to aspects of change leadership theory as well as practice and provide examples to illustrate and support.

Answer:

In any organization change is essential for bringing in progress, innovation, development and success. However, it is evident that an effective change can only be brought under the guidance of an effective leader. Therefore, change leadership brings in effective amendments that helps an organization to develop and grow towards the height of success (Gorran Farkas 2013) .

There are certain key attributes that are observed in an effective change leader. An effective change leadership have the potential of identifying the areas of probable conflict, address each individuals needs and effectively bridges the gap between the goals of executives, technical project groups and the individuals who are affected by this change (Lutz Allen, Smith and Da Silva 2013). Hence, an effective change leadership have the ability of recognizing the potential conflict area and make changes accordingly that satisfies every individuals needs as well. An example can be drawn from the change that was made in the year 2004 by the company named Shell. The company went through some major changes both internally as well as externally. The changes made within the company had to identify the key players in their market and recognise their needs. In addition to this, they aligned these needs with the change requirements. The company successfully implemented the Downstream-one change, an information technology initiative that simplifies the technical process of employees and affected upon 80 shell operating units (Wald 2018). Therefore, the company under the leadership of Jeroen Van Der Veer successfully implemented the change.

Another attribute that is evident in change leadership is implementation of creativity and innovation. A change leader are able to adopt an approach that others fail to recognise and this attribute of them makes them stand out from the rest of the individuals. Creativity and innovation can happen in the simplest form and still can make a huge impact (Csikszentmihalyi 2014). One of the example can be taken from one of the leading company Microsoft. In 2016, Microsoft made an innovative change in one of their existing product Microsoft Office (Kumar et al. 2016). The company decided to reorganise their product and combine everything into one application instead of selling individual product unit. Therefore, as a result, the company combined PowerPoint, Word and Sway into a single application whereas Excel and Access into another. This innovation was made to focus on future technology areas instead of focusing individual applications.

It is observed that in change leadership style, every change is brought with an intentional purpose (Hayes 2018). The leader is well aware of the fact that every change has the potential of making or breaking the company. However, the changes are made with an intent to serve a specific purpose or goal. Henceforth an effective change leader makes an intentional amendment for fulfilling a specific purpose. The leader efficiently sets the purpose and then makes change accordingly. Similar, example can be observed from the multinational retail company Walmart. The company initially started off as a traditional retailer however, the recent changes made within the organisation proves that they identify and recognise their purpose with which they could develop and expand further. The competitive market have been diving towards the sector of e-commerce. Walmart makes purposeful change in their organisation and acquired jet.com in the year 2016. Therefore, diving into the competitive e-commerce sector. Henceforth, the change management purposefully amended these changes within the organisation as they recognise the latest trend of e-commerce.

From the above discussion it has been observed that change leadership is extremely necessary for achieving growth and development (Huffman 2014). In my point of view, I have certain attributes of change leadership that would help me in my career. The ability to be creative and give out innovative ideas is one of the attributes that I possess. In my opinion, creativity is something that requires an individual differently in a situation. This action what gives an individual an innovative idea with the implementation of which unique phenomenon is witnessed. Therefore, I have the capability of thinking differently in a given situation that enables me to have a creative outcome. Another attribute of mine that aligns with change leadership is to be courageous enough for the actions we take in a situation. It has been observed from the above examples that, in each scenario the leaders made some major changes within the organisation and this action requires the attribute of courageousness within a leader that enables him or her to take bold action (Storey 2016). I possess the attribute of courageousness and taking up bold actions in a difficult situation as I believe, major steps are the only way that one could achieve success. In addition to this, strategic planning is one of the key characteristics that every change leader possess. It is evident from above scenario that, the changes that the leaders implemented was not made in a day and involved intricate strategic planning. Similarly, I believe planning the change beforehand and then taking strategic steps towards those plan enables a successful outcome.

However, there are certain areas as well where I lack and hinders my style of change leadership. I lack the ability to identify the potential problems that may be an obstacle in future. In change leadership, leaders have the ability to identify the probable conflict and then accordingly make changes. However, I fail to identify the potential conflict in a situation and therefore this hampers my ability to execute change leadership. Additionally, flexibility is another attribute that must be present within a change leader whereas I do not have the ability to be flexible in a given situation. Since, my experience and skills are not sharpen enough to handle the distinctive circumstances flexibly. Lastly, change leadership requires to be thorough of their actions whereas I lack in this attribute. I tend to ignore post evaluation process of any changes made and this hinders my change leadership skills where it is required to be thorough till the end of any amendments made.

Therefore, from the above discussion it can be said that change leadership is extremely necessary for growing and expanding into a successful position. The above analysis proves that I possess some of the qualities of becoming an effective change leader however, I require to work upon certain skills that will enable me to apply change leadership efficiently.

References

Csikszentmihalyi, M., 2014. Society, culture, and person: A systems view of creativity. In The Systems Model of Creativity. pp. 47-61. Springer, Dordrecht.

Gorran Farkas, M., 2013. Building and sustaining a culture of assessment: best practices for change leadership. Reference services review, 41(1), pp.13-31.

Hayes, J., 2018. The theory and practice of change management. pp. 157-160.

Huffman, J.B., Hipp, K.A., Pankake, A.M. and Moller, G.A.Y.L.E., 2014. Professional learning communities: Leadership, purposeful decision making, and job-embedded staff development. Journal of School Leadership, 11(5), pp.448-463.

Kumar, V., Loonam, J., Allen, J.P. and Sawyer, S., 2016. Exploring enterprise social systems & organisational change: implementation in a digital age.

Lutz Allen, S., Smith, J.E. and Da Silva, N., 2013. Leadership style in relation to organizational change and organizational creativity: Perceptions from nonprofit organizational members. Nonprofit Management and Leadership, 24(1), pp.23-42.

Storey, J., 2016. Changing theories of leadership and leadership development. In Leadership in Organizations. pp. 33-58. Routledge.

Wald, E. 2018. online Forbes.com. Available at: https://www.forbes.com/sites/ellenrwald/2018/08/22/look-for-oil-industry-divergence-if-aramcos-public-offering-is-nixed/#3a65656575d7 Accessed 17 Sep. 2018.