Readiness for Leading Change

Readiness for Leading Change

Introduction

Implementing strategic change is one of the most important undertakings of an organization. Successful implementation of strategic change can reinvigorate an organization, but failure can lead to catastrophic consequences including the death of the organization. Today, virtually every organization has faced significant change. Organizations in all industries have encountered some form of global competition, technological change, product obsolescence, or downsizing.

Organizational change management has supported the members of the organization to effectively manage the change towards organizational success. Change is a process, not an event, which takes time yet has a deep impact and does not occur quickly. Change management has been a method that was developed to address required changes in procedures, individuals, companies, and societies—enabling the change from the current state to a preferred future state.

Numerous studies have been conducted with the aim of identifying the characteristics and conditions that antecede successful organizational change (Hughes, 2012, pp. 106-07). Most of these works have adopted a macro perspective, focusing on factors such as the organization's structure, environment, and strategy.

The purpose of formulating the following based on the questionnaire that attached in the appendix, and on the basis of the questionnaire, different areas highlighted below that that need to be focused to provide strength in the several coming months. Therefore, the specific activities are highlighted below to provide the readers a proper understanding of self-assessment.

Specific Activities

Employees Resistance to Change

Whether large or small organizational change initiatives have been undertaken, executive management has created the expectation that organizational members should be able to continuously adapt to these changes. Due to the increasing amount and complexity of organizational changes, substantial literature has emerged that examines various change phenomena. However, much of the literature has failed to understand an organization's resistance to change to determine if adoption of the proposed change will succeed.

Organizational change has been difficult and most attempts to initiate and implement change have failed. One problem, identified is the tendency of companies to look for the convenient way to reduce resistance to change, rather than addressing root causes of the failure. However, it has been found that resistance to change has been prevalent in a culture built on tradition and stability rather than a focus on responsiveness and flexibility (Kale, 2012, pp. 5-13). Therefore, a company must create an environment that is comfortable with change. Earlier studies suggested that organizational change requires an adaptive behavior and frequent modification of the change management plan to ensure that resistance to change will be addressed.

The time component is a unique aspect of change management research. Change management is a process that occurs over time, rather than an event, with different concerns being dominant at different stages throughout the process. The decision to adopt an innovation takes time because of the inherent uncertainty to adopt an innovation. Cognitive and affective actions must be taken in order to evaluate the new idea and decide whether or not to put the innovation into practice. The time component consists of innovation-change ...