The Chosen Role, Mission, and Vision
The role of the Product Innovation Director was chosen as this employee is the key player in the process of innovation. I believe the Product Innovation Director is also a change agent in a company. Finally, it can be challenging to implement change in this position as the CEO often has the power necessary to encourage or inspire people to (or simply make them) embrace a new framework and complete the needed tasks.
The vision of the chosen approach was moving from the bottom to the top. In simple terms, it was expected that face-to-face conversations could develop the necessary atmosphere for facilitating employees’ awareness and interest. The mission was to gain support from employees of different levels and departments to involve as many departments as possible. Executive Assistant, Foreman, General Counsel, R&D VP, Sales & Marketing VP, Sales & Marketing Director, and Customer Relations Manager were interviewed to achieve this goal.
SWOT Analysis
Strengths
One of the strengths of the chosen activity is the opportunity to identify a resister and supporter. Face-to-face interviews can be an initial stage of the process of the development of a coalition (Cameron & Green, 2015). People of different departments were interviewed, which could result in a wider discussion. The more people know about the change, the more people can adopt it. Interviews enable the change agent to provide insightful data and understand the perspective of the interviewed employees.
Weaknesses
However, this strategy is also associated with a number of downsides. For example, such an important department as financial was not involved in the discussion process. Nevertheless, this department plays one of the central roles in the development of new products or such projects as the focus on sustainability (Doppelt, 2017). Interviews have another shortcoming as they do not ensure the dissemination of information. For example, the news concerning the innovative approach will reach quite a limited circle of people.
Opportunities
One of the opportunities associated with this activity is the opportunity to reuse it within a week. It is possible to have conversations with the same people and involve others in the discussion as well. Personal links will contribute to the spread of news, but this can be insufficient. The spread of the information depends on numerous factors, including the existence of personal ties across departments and organizational levels, time available for talking with colleagues, value employees place on different topics, people’s mood and workload, and so forth.
Threats
The interviewed people, as well as the rest of the employees, can pay little attention to or fail to understand the urgency of the innovative approach to be introduced. Although Innovative Product Director has a certain reputation, it can be insufficient to encourage people to embrace the change. Only six people were interviewed, which means that the discussion involved only a very limited circle of people. The interviewed people could forget about the conversation or change their attitude (interest) soon after the interview.
The Vision and Mission that Should Have Been Chosen
Instead of focusing on the involvement of particular employees, it could have been more effective to start with the creation of urgency. It could have been possible to send emails to employees that had to include data on the benefits of the innovative approach, opportunities for the company, experiences of competitors, the overall situation in the industry, and the like. The next step would have been getting the CEO’s public support that would place more value on the approach.
References
Cameron, E., & Green, M. (2015). Making sense of change management: A complete guide to the models, tools and techniques of organizational change (4th ed.). Philadelphia, PA: Kogan Page Publishers.
Doppelt, B. (2017). Leading change toward sustainability: A change-management guide for business, government and civil society (2nd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.