Management of change in the life cycle of an organization

A Company’s Evolution: Organization Life Cycle

A company’s various stages of evolution are described by the organization life cycle (OLC). Each team’s success is primarily attributed to these phases. The OLC goes through several significant phases, including startup, growth, maturity, decline, and revival/diversification. The firms must go through each of these stages as they develop, just like any biological growth model. They involve the majority of the organization’s actions and are interestingly sequential, impending, accumulating, and irreversible. The manufacturing company has clearly reached full maturity in all areas, therefore applying the fifth OLC of diversification is necessary to assure its continued expansion. The company’s software, inventories, and systems processes are reportedly out-of-date, necessitating fresh strategies in order to keep going. On the hand, the company has not trained their employees for a decade and thus needs to educate about the new systems, software, and inventory processes. Finally, the management approach must be changed from top-down to bottom-up so that the employees can contribute to the processes that they feel are good enough to work. In short, the company must allow training, development, and acquisition of new software, and inventory as well as management to ensure continued growth.

Learning Organization vs. Traditional Organization

The difference between a learning organization and a traditional one is the continuous improvement programs. A learning organization is committed to training and developing their employees each time there are any changes in technology or even management approach. Learning involves any practice even finding solutions to company issues such as employee turnover. On the other hand, a traditional company sticks to the plan and never changes even with changes in technologies.

Moving Forward: Woolner’s Stage Two

The company is Woolner’s stage two of creating momentum. The company is at that stage because it needs to move forward from its traditional methods of performing tasks. For instance, the company should stop making decisions based on top-approach management and start involving the employees in decision-making. Notably, the company has already done its vision and so far have succeeded, nevertheless, there is need to change to improve decision-making process as well as the production process such as inventory which is backdated according to the new technologies.

Senge’s Five Disciplines for a Learning Organization

The company should use Senge’s five disciplines while changing into a learning organization since it will enable the company to tap on the employees’ commitment to all levels when undertaking the new procedures. Additionally, the five disciplines will enable the people to learn and work together. Notably, Peter Senge (1990) controls are shared vision, system thinking, team learning, mental models, and personal mastery. A shared vision will guide the employees towards forming a common goal while mental models are the mindsets, beliefs, values, and assumptions that will guide the people towards achieving this aim. Personal mastery guides all stakeholders in their self-awareness and thus control of their behaviors in the presence of others while team learning ensures that people have shared experiences in skills, knowledge, and insights. Finally, systems thinking will show the organization stakeholders the bigger picture such as the need to involve the employees in decision-making.

Balogun and Hope-Hailey’s Model: Facilitating Change

The Balogun and Hope-Hailey’s Model has three rings that help a company to facilitate change from a traditional to a learning organization. According to Balogun and Hope-Hailey’s Model, the three rings are strategic changes, contextual, and intervention choices to changes. On the other hand, Figure 1 shows the extent and speed of change within an organization. For this scenario, the company needs to undertake Big Bang at a scale of revolution.

Figure 1 Balogun and Hope-Hailey’s Model

The revolution is selected so that it can bring out the transformational changes required in a simultaneous front. Notably, the company must change its leadership approach as well as the other processes in the enterprise.

Action Research Model: Transitioning to a Learning Organization

The Action Research Model (Sagor 2005) consists of four steps which can help a company to transition from the traditional to a learning organization. The first stage of the model is planning for the future where the corporation should set goals of what they want in the future and work towards those aims. The second step consists of activities such as a pilot study where the company undertakes a particular project. For instance, the company can select one department such as human resources and let decisions flow from bottom-up. The third step is to analyze and observe what happens to the decision-making process. Is it more sufficient and efficient? The step leads to the fourth level of reflection where the company decides whether or not to implement the approach not only in that department but the whole business. The action research model is helpful since it will help the organization to avoid unnecessary problems.

Innovation Strategies: Group Sessions and Technology Intervention

The two innovation strategies that the management can use in transitioning the company from a traditional to a learning organization are group sessions and technology intervention.

The group sessions will comprise the voluntary employees who meet weekly and discuss a particular activity. For instance, the group members can meet talk about a new inventory system. In such a group, all employees have a chance to contribute what they like or don’t like about that system as well as suggest changes that can be made on them. Additionally, they can discuss the training programs and recommend better ways they can be provided. On the other hand, technology intervention involves social networking such as forming a Facebook group where the members discuss any interesting observation about their organizational culture and structure. In short, the innovative strategies are just designed to facilitate change.

Kotter’s 8-Step Model for Change: Creating a Learning Organization

The Four steps of Kotter’s 8-step model applicable in the change model are the creation of a sense of urgency; development of a coalition guidance; creating a change vision; and communication of the change vision. In the first step of importance, the company must make its employees understand that the firm’s processes and leadership must change if they want the company to move forward and even become successful. The firm can do the open dialogue with the stakeholders to convince them why the company must change. By creating the consequences of not taking action such as loss of competitive advantage, the employees will understand why they need to replace the company structure and structure. Just like any other activity in an organization, changing into a learning organization is a project and therefore, the company must have a pioneer team that wants the changes to be implemented. As a result, in step 2 the company will select employees in different positions and jobs into a group that will facilitate the implementation of changes within the organization.

Another most important step is to have a shared vision where each member of the team is aware of what is required and at what time so that they can all support. Changes made under a shared vision are concrete and easily linked to the other strategies. For instance, when incorporating a switch to a learning organization, the company should involve the employees in the creation of the end goal. Finally, the company should communicate the vision to change the company into a learning organization so that the employees can accept it and as well support it. Communication also involves allowing the employees to present their anxieties and concerns about the matter. In short, communication will enable the company’s organization with the agreement of the way forward.

The Five Pillars of Sustainable Change

The five pillars of sustainable change can be used in the following manner to sustain the learning environment.

Leadership:

Since the successful transition starts with able leaders who can guide and motivate others towards formulating the company’s vision. Therefore, the company should assess whether or not the leaders can create a clear and understandable vision as well as guide people towards achieving it.

Strategy:

The strategy will show how the company is going to transition from a traditional to a learning organization. For instance, developing the procedure of training and developing employees is a strategy that employees will stick with until further changes.

Culture:

The organization culture shows the combination of its employee’s beliefs, environments, and society. Culture determines whether or not the vision and strategy will be accepted in the company. For instance, if the culture does not allow risks then it will be difficult to allow any changes within the organization.

Structure:

Structure such as the management approach determines the success of reform initiatives. For instance, the company must replace the management plan so that the other change initiatives can be successful. The bottom-up control will allow employees to contribute to the necessary solutions and upgrades.

Systems:

Systems are the organization subparts such as different departments and how they can work towards enabling the success of the changes. For instance, the Human resource department should facilitate the training and development of employees to ensure that it is successful.