Executive Summary
Within the framework of this report, several important organizational and leadership challenges are addressed. The case of the restaurant called The Cut is evaluated and several relevant changes are proposed based on the existing information. The author of this report validates the proposed change process using an extensive array of literature on organizational development, management, and leadership.
The ideas that are developed throughout the report revolve around the idea that there is a critical need to transform the approach to leadership and change the way of how the members of the team interact with each other. The author of the report judgmentally considered the weaknesses of the current setup and used Lewin’s change model to support change at The Cut. Several obstacles and the ways of overcoming them were also discussed within the framework of this report. In the end, a readiness to change and communication were identified as the core contributors to the successful implementation of transformative change.
Introduction
Organizational Development Theory
Nowadays, the economy and organizations are becoming more complex. To increase competitiveness as an organizational perspective or improve the workers’ quality of work-life, there is a need to be able to attract and motivate them from their employee perspective (Sullivan, Rothwell, & Balasi, 2013). An organization would need to have organizational development. It is a professional field of social action, and scientific inquiry intended to impact the entire system, which can enhance the effectiveness of the organization by implementing behavioral science knowledge within the framework of developing strategies. It also requires transferring the knowledge and skills which are necessary for monitoring change and reaching the target.
Moreover, the role of organization development officers has become increasingly important lately. In any given organization, their role is to determine themselves to keep track of whether the company is operating towards its core objective. At the same time, managers and workers also have the roles that are designed to help them to improve their values and thoughts that dictate their behaviors. Hence, they can implement change to improve the effectiveness of the organization (Roland, William, & Mary, 2013).
Organizational change is always planned theoretically by the OD practitioner and members of the team. There are three main theories of planned change. One of the theories will be Lewin’s change model. It is a change from the result of driving forces and restraining forces. Driving forces are members who force and take the initiative to change. While a restraining force is represented by the members who stay in the current state and refuse to change. In this situation, the organization is trying to reduce the restraining force to process the change. The first step is unfreezing, which is meant to decrease restraining forces.
During this step, The Cut employees will have to ensure that all crew members are willing to change (Waddell, Creed, Cummings, & Worley, 2016). The second step would be a movement. Here, numerous ideas and thoughts are created for organizational change. The last step would be refreezing because it is evident that team members need to sustain and maintain the change of the organization.
Aim of the Report
This report aims to analyze the challenges and problems that occurred in The Cut and comprehensively investigate a year’s development plan that can improve The Cut’s organizational effectiveness. Internally, workers will be motivated and willing to work for the best of the company. While externally, the number of customers can be increased. Moreover, the vision which is service excellence, continuous knowledge growth, and service leadership should be upheld. The author of this report is willing to address leadership challenges that currently exist at the restaurant and improve the state of affairs using a multifaceted approach.
Scope of the Report
First, there will be some understanding of changes and the role of the organizational development practitioner (OD practitioner). Followed by the main body of the proposed change process, the report will also include several recommendations regarding the implementation of transformational leadership within the restaurant’s environment and additional ways of motivating employees and managers. Second, there is a necessity to ensure that the future of The Cut will be impacted by several positive outcomes that will be depending on the applied leadership practices and organizational methods. The key scope of the report is to equalize the working environment and help the team to learn how to collaborate more efficiently and respect organizational values that are critical for the process of fostering organizational growth and success.
Understanding the Change
The Current State
Currently, numerous issues are characteristic of the restaurant. First of all, there are critical misunderstandings between the employees of The Cut that are caused by an incorrectly chosen leadership style. Also, there is a problem that relates to the lack of motivation among both new and old employees. There is currently no strategy proposed to deal with this, so the author of this report will concentrate on leadership and motivation in the upcoming subsections of the entry. The major problem that impacts the current state of affairs at the restaurant is the inability to resolve inner team conflicts and come up with a better scheme for running the existing processes and operations.
The Desired Future State
The future state that is desired by The Cut is a situation where a friendly atmosphere is supported, and managers can run the facility effectively. This includes the presence of proper leadership and the possibility to motivate employees. This kind of approach is expected to help both the managers and employees to get out of the slump and apply new practices to implement innovative practices and understand essential processes more thoroughly. The desired future state also includes the proper treatment of the employees that are either new to The Cut or are willing to learn more in terms of their profession.
The Proposed Change Process
The Keystones of Organizational Change at The Cut
Certain elements have to be perceived by the organizational development practitioner before implementing change. For these changes to become successful, the team will have to
- reach an agreement regarding the future direction,
- develop an effective leadership configuration,
- promote the culture of rewarding positive change (Kuipers et al., 2014).
Therefore, the author of this report addressed these topics and came to several conclusions that allowed them to evaluate the situation at The Cut and develop a change plan that is expected to improve the state of affairs at the restaurant.
First of all, the author of this report decided to validate the importance of supporting the concept of a shared vision. They realized that there was a need to create a strategic direction for future practice at the restaurant to be able to enunciate a rational vision for the employees (Goetsch & Davis, 2014). This led to the idea that all the decision-makers in the company should take part in the development of the change strategy.
This allowed the administration of The Cut to come to an agreement in terms of the future of the restaurant and consider each of the perspectives. The author of the report stated that the follow-on vision statement should be conveyed to each employee and reinforced continually. The rationale for that was the fact that organizational culture at The Cut always was one of the cornerstones of the restaurant’s success and the team’s readiness for change.
At the same time, the author of the report concluded that the vision statement mentioned above could not be achieved without effective leadership strategies. The existing evidence on the subject of organizational change revealed that the majority of organizations were able to apply change successfully due to their healthy leadership strategies (Benn, Dunphy, & Griffiths, 2014). The author of the report realized that the leader at The Cut should be able to strive for greatness and acknowledge the significance of the leader’s role. Knowing that employees at The Cut forgot how to communicate effectively and come to mutually beneficial agreements, this statement seemed rational.
Nonetheless, it was also found that the majority of critical decisions should be made solely by the leader. All the members of the team were expected to follow the leader and not to see themselves as the weakest link in the chain (Pieterse, Caniels, & Homan, 2012). The author of the report established that the situation at The Cut where almost each of the employees believed they could be the leader would not end well. The Cut needed their employees to become true team players to take responsibility for their activities and foster a leadership practice that would allow the team to become aware of the leader’s authority and levelheadedness.
After that, the author of the report was aiming at viewing the organizational culture at The Cut as one of the key aspects of the restaurant that had to be changed. The issues that were identified include disrupting procedures, fear of change, and dispiritedness (Shin, Taylor, & Seo, 2012). Self-righteousness and laziness were acknowledged as the two factors contributing to the ill organizational culture at The Cut the most.
The author of the report was certain of the fact that employees at The Cut had to understand that will to change is the key to their success. At the same time, it was found that complacency was rather typical of The Cut employees and the latter was not willing to become committed and follow the new leader. The last idea was taken into account, and several new ways to foster the appropriate organizational culture and create a willingness to change were discovered.
First of all, it was claimed that the status quo at the restaurant had to be destabilized to allow the creation of a situation where no one would be satisfied with the existing state of affairs at The Cut. Accordingly, the author of the report acknowledged that all the changes should be of the top-to-bottom nature. The employee team was found to be the key variable in this equation (Hayes, 2014). In a certain sense, kitchen workers set the tone for the whole organization, and it would be unfair not to mention that change would not start without them being ready to change. Second, it was hypothesized that sharing information with the team would also become a profitable practice because the team would get out of the disinterest slump.
That is why the author of the report was certain of the fact that the team would benefit from measuring all kinds of indicators and collecting data on practically every aspect of the organizational life of the restaurant team. It was found that the majority of changes should be needed at each of the organizational levels, not staff only (Bolman & Deal, 2017). The decision to collect feedback from the team operating at The Cut was seen as a way to cultivate readiness for transformational change.
This had to be done to eliminate the premises of employees blaming each other for the restaurant’s failures. All the perspectives had to be checked, and several private discussions had to be completed after the author of the report found out the results. The concept of communication turned out to be the most important issue that was present at The Cut. The need to change was approved by the team, and they decided to provide even more information regarding their practice at The Cut. The author of the report identified several indicators that had to be addressed as soon as possible if The Cut wanted to succeed in terms of encouraging a readiness for transformation and implementing organizational change.
Dealing with the Change Process at The Cut
The very first idea that has to be discussed here is the ability of The Cut to deal with resisters. There are three groups of employees at The Cut that may critically affect the change process in the long run – the supporters, the pessimists, and the counterfeit supporters (that will claim that they support organizational change but will demoralize others instead) (Battilana & Casciaro, 2012). To complete organizational change successfully, the administration will have to approach these three groups straight away.
Nonetheless, the author of this report is certain of the fact that resistance to change is a common event and should not be fought too aggressively. Instead, it should be acknowledged that the majority of employees at The Cut are merely afraid of the challenge and there are three main reasons why – they are afraid of
- the changes in their environment,
- the changes that their relationships with colleagues will undergo,
- the changes that will impact their practice at The Cut (Carter, Armenakis, Feild, & Mossholder, 2013).
Furthermore, these fears can be called the potential cause of resistance at The Cut. This is why the author of the report proposes to implement change carefully and be increasingly sensitive to the outcomes of the restaurant’s organizational change. The future change has to be in line with the team’s expectations because otherwise, they will become afraid again. They will resist new changes merely because they will not be able to react to them properly (Fugate, Prussia, & Kinicki, 2012).
It is advised to listen actively and check on the employees’ body language. It may be reasonable to talk with the potential resisters in private to minimize the devastating impact of team members that undermine organizational change.
It is also advised to communicate with the team recurrently to be able to connect with the team on several levels – operative, strategic, and personal (Jacobs, Witteloostuijn, & Christe-Zeyse, 2013). A lot of things will be going on during the process of change so, the administration of The Cut should plan all the activities before deploying the change. All the suggestions have to be conveyed in a specific manner to have more chances to convince the team that change is necessary.
The author of this report is certain of the fact that appropriate communication should be one of the strategic goals of the administration of the restaurant. Members of the team have to be aware of the events they will be involved in and how they are going to impact them in the long run (Kool & Dierendonck, 2012). If there is not enough relevant information, the amount of inaccurate information will exceed all the confrontational expectations. The author of the report proposes to conduct team meetings that will increase team morale and minimize the chances of resistance.
Another thing that is expected to contribute to positive change outcomes is champion support (Blackmore & Sachs, 2012). The presence of team members that can lead others is vital to The Cut. In other words, the restaurant will do better if its staff will include several employees that capable of convincing colleagues of the benefits of change. Therefore, a change team that will manage transformation processes and direct peer efforts can be organized (Sharif & Scandura, 2014). At The Cut, empowerment may become the cornerstone of organizational change because it will provide the team with numerous instruments and resources helping them to get the job done.
To conclude, the administration of The Cut will have to implement a process of evaluation and institutionalization of change. This can be done using positive reinforcement and employee feedback (Morgan, 2013). This proposition is reasonable because each of the members of the team will be willing to find out if they were effective and valuable. Therefore, there is a possibility to use the data that was collected throughout the stage of fostering readiness for change and document the progress of each employee. The ability to reinforce certain behaviors will be as important as The Cut employees’ keenness to accept change and adjust their values to the new system (Seo et al., 2012).
To do this, the administration will have to call for weekly (or monthly) reports that will reflect the existing state of affairs and display either the need or uselessness of deployed changes. This kind of data will facilitate the process of obtaining credible feedback that can be used to employ changes that are in line with the workers’ beliefs and wishes (Banker, 2012). By doing this, the author of the report expects to sustain change and learn all the necessary things about change that are shared by team members.
At The Cut, the change can be institutionalized using encouraging everyone to do well. At the same time, there is a need to acknowledge the team’s efforts and be thankful for each particular contribution. Milestone celebration and the ability to sustain change should be seen as the main contributors to the consistency of implemented changes (Dunford et al., 2013). Overall, the process of change at The Cut should be perceived as a team effort where every member of the crew contributed to the improvement of the situation in the restaurant.
Conclusion
This report provides an extensive outlook on the issues concerning organizational development and leadership. The restaurant that is thoroughly reviewed in this report is exposed to several leadership- and organization-related issues that have to be dealt with as soon as possible. Notwithstanding the complexity of the case, the author of the report was able to implement Lewin’s change model and come up with several relevant propositions intended to improve the existing state of affairs at The Cut.
It is safe to say that the administration of The Cut has all the chances to implement the changes successfully. They will have to take into account the requirements of their employees and carefully adjust communication practices that seem to be the most devastating contributors to the restaurant’s working environment. Overall, the organizational development practitioner has to deal with the situation as soon as possible to mitigate the adverse effects of interpersonal relationships at The Cut.
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