Generally speaking, organisational development and change implementation refers to some particular insights offered into the process of modifying the operations of the organisation and the conduct of the people too.
Outstanding performance clearly depends upon the organisation’s multiple element interaction with each other. Through embracing teamwork, commitment, coordination and creativity will be enhanced thus realizing outstanding organisational performance (Watson, 2000).
This theory and practice of organisational change can be traced back to a famous psychologist, Kurt Lewin who highlighted the decisive role that is played by context in shaping behaviours of individuals.
He further reasoned that creating dissatisfaction with the status quo is the only way of motivating an individual. In summary, he implemented a three-stage change implementation: unfreezing then moving and finally refreezing (Watson, 2000).
It is therefore necessary for business leaders and government sectors as well to understand organisational development elements so as to link the desired novel behaviours to the key performing task requirements of the organisation and focus on the implemented organisation development efforts in order to improve performance.
What design challenges should leaders take into account so as to address change processes in their respective organisations?
Needless to say that every organisation is unique in their terms of operation, they nevertheless face some mutual design challenges in which organisational leaders ought to know before embarking on an effort of change implementation.
They are; the challenges of creativity and control, of differentiation and integration and of decision making rights allocation (Watson, 2000).
At what organisation’s level are decisions made on what activities to engage in, how to apportion resources or how to apportion work schedule so as to meet immediate demands? All these decisions ought to be made at one point in the organisation’s line.
However, since they represent different decision making levels, they are probable to take place at different organisation levels (Denison, 1990).
What are the organisation’s requirements in building teamwork and coordination? Ordinarily, effective teamwork deduces from four factors of design namely; shared intention, shared responsibility, team empowerment and team enablement, of which the absence of any will not bear out real teamwork within an organisational context (Watson, 2000).
How do employees perform the assigned jobs? This can be done in many ways, say frequent communication pertaining work goals progress, combining employees into a team with common responsibility for the end product or still allowing groups or individuals to schedule and assign particular tasks consistent with the achievement of performance goal.
What is the multidivisional organisation challenge? Multidivisional organisations find it hard to allocate a high autonomy level into distinct divisions since it is a way through which marketplace responsiveness is achieved while at the same time making decisions of corporate level which allows the exploitation of synergism throughout the divisions (Watson, 2000).
It is important for organisational leaders to motivate and value potential employees so as to create favourable conditions for behavioural change. Also, they should value employee participation as this will not only ameliorate the calibre of making decisions but will as well enhance commitment and employee self-supervision.
Furthermore, diversity should also be valued so as to create room for creativity among the organisation’s varied perspectives and background employees. Lastly, leaders should embrace learning within the organisation as this will propel the organisation miles forward.
Innovation is necessary for an organisation’s success and one such organisational culture that inspires it is value for diversity within an organisation. Taking on that diversity of insights and opinions is mandatory for outstanding performance and innovation makes an employee feel valued whilst urging learning, experiment and adaptation (Denison, 1990).
The important lessons learned from this content are that communication channels are important in supporting new behaviour, teamwork enhances creativity and effective performance of a desired task, employee participation builds up support for change, there are three design challenges that are common to all organisations and there are different decision making levels within an organisation.
Broadly speaking, organisational leaders are responsible for shaping the behaviour of their employees thus change implementation.
“Strong, internally consistent cultures may resist; adaptive cultures will embrace, encourage, and enable change implementation.” This ideally means that the organisation’s culture has been reinforced and shaped by past successes and as such they have developed a robust culture which may tend to resist new ideas and approaches as they attempt to preserve their old practices.
Another theory in practice is “Individuals and organizations learn by receiving and analysing valid information, then altering thinking and acting as appropriate.”
This implies that individual and organizational learning is fundamental to effectual change as it enhances employee creativity, acquisition and knowledge transfer. Knowledge gets transformative when it begins to encourage an individual to modify their behaviours as an outcome thus effecting change implementation.
This content is somehow similar to my personal experience at a small thriving consultant firm in Chicago where the employees’ always embraced teamwork and as a result fruitful, satisfactory outcomes was realised.
This effort is owed to a team of professional employees and leaders, and more especially Mr Smith who was the organization’s manager. He had a mutual engagement with various employees at various organisational levels. This content has motivated my thinking into some useful future strategies to use as an aspiring organisation leader.
First, it is important that my employees will be committed to their tasks and this will be achieved through forging a bond between the employees and the organisation. Then, mobilizing adaptive behaviours and finally heighten and encourage upward communication so as to get the insights of even the lower organisation level employees. With this, my aim is to become a leading change.
References
Denison, D. R. (1990). Corporate Culture and Organizational Effectiveness. New York: Wiley.
Watson, T. J. (2000). Organisational Change. Academy of Management.