Leading Organizational Change: Change Plan GuidelinesTo be an effective, a leader must be able to...

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Leading Organizational Change: Change Plan Guidelines

To be an effective, a leader must be able to lead change efforts effectively. At some point, all leaders will be either be tasked with leading an organizational change effort or being part of an upper level team planning and implementing an organizational change effort. Your final assignment in this course is the development of a change plan with Kotter’s implementation plan components for an organization that you are familiar with. Please remember this is a change plan for future implementation,not a “case study” of a change you completed in the pastthat you write up or a change currently in progress that you are involved in. The guidelines for the final project are given below:

Part I: Analysis and Diagnosis (2 – 4 pages): (Recommended to be completed by the team by the end of week #4.)

Historical context of the problem: How did this problem become a problem? What is its history? What is its context and current impact within the organization?

Identify, list, and explain the specific organizational needs driving the change. Identify what “pain” is being experienced by the organization’s members and who is experiencing the pain. Why is this problem needing to be addressed at this point in time? What forces are driving the change effort?

Identify any specific variables, conditions, issues, individuals, etc., that will impact the change effort and should be considered prior to planning the change effort.

Diagnose the presented problem (what you have been told is the problem from the organizational leaders) and ask questions within the organization, if possible about the underlying causes of the problem, because often the presented problem will only address symptoms of the underlying problem. Identify the gap between what the problem current situation is what the hoped for targeted outcome will be. State what needs to occur to build a process to bridge this gap.

Part II: Development of the Change Plan (3 – 6 pages): (Recommended to be completed by the team by the end of week #6).

List the steps required for the change plan. Include stated objectives, intended outcomes, needed interventions, and a phase-by-phase timeline for completion working backward from when the change must be in place.

Part III: Kotter’s 8 Step Model for Implementing Organizational Change (3 – 5 pages): (To be completed by the team by the end of week #8). The team will give its presentation in week #8 and post its written paper by midnight on the last day of class.

Create a sense of urgency: How will you create the sense of urgency? What readiness for change currently exists? What actions will be taken to win the “hearts and minds” of your employees?

Build a guiding coalition: Identify who should be involved in this guiding coalition. Kotter likes 50% leaders and 50% managers with experience, others like the composition to be 33% leaders, 33% managers, and 33% informal leaders, but you can make the guiding coalition as you see fit, but you must give a rationale for your answer.

Form a strategic vision: What is the vision for the organizational change effort? What are your intended targeted outcomes? What must occur for the organizational change effort to be considered a success?

Communicating the change and enlisting a volunteer army: What is required for the change to be communicated effectively within the organization? What actions will you take to issue two-way communication for effective feedback loops during implementation of the change effort? How will you support the direct supervisors in the organization in their efforts to communicate with employees about the change effort? How do you intend to get people to choose to be involved. Who needs to be involved and in what capacity for this change effort to be a success?

Enable action by removing barriers: What are the forces, barriers, and hindrances to the organizational change effort? How will you eliminate these or mitigate their impact on the implementation of the change plan? What actions will be taken to enable and empower employees to help drive the change effort?

Generate short term wins: State how you will generate short term wins. These should coincide with each phase of the change plan and the change plan timeline.

Sustain acceleration: How will you insure that the momentum driving the change effort continues and does not wane?

Institute change: What actions need to occur for this change to become part of the organizational culture? What infrastructure mechanisms need to be in place to maintain and sustain the change into the future?

Typical Components in the Written Change Plan Project

MSL Cover Page

Table of Contents

Presented problem from client

Historical context of the problem: How did this problem become a problem? What is its history?

Identify, list, and explain the specific organizational needs driving the change. Identify what “pain” is being experienced by the organization’s members

Clarification of expectations: Contracting based upon initial presented problem and expectations

Stated change plan objectives

Impact Variables (Consider variables that will impact the success of the change)

Needs Assessment methods used

The redefined the problem(s) comparing what was initially presented to what has “emerged” based upon the findings

State the primary areas of “pain” being experienced? Who is experiencing that pain?

General findings: Write up the findings as themes with a “connecting the dots” understanding of how the pieces fit to develop the whole picture of what is occurring

List the steps and components required for the change plan

State your recommendations for handling resistance

State your recommendations for communication of the change plan

State how the plan would be implemented, monitored, and controlled

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Soumi · Accepted Answer

Running Head: LEADING ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE: CHANGE PLAN	1
LEADING ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE: CHANGE PLAN 				16
STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT
LEADING ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE: CHANGE PLAN
Table of Contents
Introduction	3
Part I	3
History of Customer Grievance as an Issue at Wawa	3
Wawa’s Needs that are Driving Change	4
Impact of Staff Retention on Change Efforts at Wawa	5
Diagnosing the Problem at Wawa	5
Part II	6
Phase-by-Phase Timeline of Change Plan	6
Interventions of the Change Plan for Wawa	7
Intended Outcomes of the Change Plan for Wawa	7
Objectives of the Change Plan for Wawa	8
Part III	9
Use of Kotter’s Eight Step Model for Implementing Change at Wawa	9
Conclusion	12
References	14
Introduction
	With the market trends and their frequent changes, business organizations find themselves in situations where their existing and once effective business actives within the organizational body lose their effectiveness, resulting in undermining performances. Over time, the changes in the market trends give rise to issues that create severe consequences. In order to cope with the changes in the market trends and the transition in the organizational need dynamics, organizational changes are considered important and are executed carefully. As the leadership of organizations has more power in their disposal, they are given the change of brining in changes as per the direction of the upper management or based on the demands of the situation. In the current discussion the planned change implementation to be executed within Wawa has been consider as the focus of discussion. 
Part I
History of Customer Grievance as an Issue at Wawa
	With the scope of setting up new businesses and explore international markets as a part of Globalization, many competitors in each business industry and segment have entered, making the marketplace very competitive and multitude of offer for customers. As supported by Hsiao (2018), as the customers got more options at same price points, and quality standards, the additional aspects such as the behavior of the staffs, the product issues and the response to the customers by the management became deciding factors and the lack of fulfilling of heightened expectation of the customers lead to customer grievance. 
As identified by Locander, White and Newman (2018), as more and more customer complained about their experience with a specific organization and gave negative feedbacks, the modern connectivity made them circulate faster, influencing the mindset of huge customers’ bases, causing lesser flow of customers and declining business. Due to the negative feedbacks and the negative public image developed, Wawa, a convenient retail and gas station chain gradually lost its market share and the sustaining of its existing store across the country has become a major issue (Consumer Affairs, 2018). 
Wawa’s Needs that are Driving Change 
	Wawa has started expanding its chain of retails and gas stations. The increase in the number of retail stores and gas stations has made the needs for quality human resources, evident. As mentioned by Mohr and Batsakis (2018), as an organization expands, it requires additional human resource to provide work force to the expanded parts, in order to reduce the load from the existing taskforce, which under extreme pressure fails to maintain quality. At Wawa, it is seen that the existing staffs are facing tremendous pressure and work fatigue as a result of the fast expansion of the company. It is worth the mention that the additional human resource needed must have satisfactory quality retaining skills, in order to align the organizational quality aspect and reputation intact. 
	Secondly, the need for quality check in the expanded retail stores and gas stations is also evident at Wawa, as a high frequency of negative feedback is piling up on the product sold and the services provided, resulting in lower customer satisfaction rate. As the customers get upset with the products quality or the services, they give negative response to the staffs, the lower inflow of cash created problems for the staffs as well as the management as they did not get bonus or incentives for the below expectation sales. Thirdly, the retail market is getting more competitive as the entry of new business organizations have become daily affair, therefore, retaining the existing retail stores and gas stations are not enough to sustain growth in the market. As identified by Picot-Coupey, Viviani and Amadieu (2018), considering the optimization required for expansion, it could be said that for a proper expansion, change is necessary. 
Impact of Staff Retention on Change Efforts at Wawa
	Prior to the change implantation, the aspect of employee retention at Wawa must be considered as a major aspect to consider. As affirmed by Tian and Wang (2018), in order to properly layout a change plan and execute it from initiation to completion along with retention of the quality of the offered product or services, the retention of the employees are necessary, as they offer training potential, quality management, skill development, faster adaptation of chance and many more major aspects. 
Considering the issues of quality management at expanded retail and gas stations if Wawa, a change in needed and in order to change the internal functions of the organization, retention of exiting employees will be required. As supported by Schirmer and Geithner (2018), in case existing employees leave their organizations and new employees are recruited, the alignment of the organizational visions would be disrupted and it would take considerable about of time to get the alignment, cutting into the effectiveness of the change implementation process. 
Diagnosing the Problem at Wawa
	At Wawa, the quality management at the retail store and the gas stations in the country, in terms of providing quality of the services, products and the staffs’ skill utility, has been presented as the core issue by the management of the company. As argued by Bejinaru and Baesu (2018) the final issue, perceived on the surface as an evident one, is only the outcome of one or more underlying issues, which needs to be identified, otherwise, changes and actions made in order to get the identified problem fixed, would only result in recurrence of the same problem in same or other forms. 
	A closer observation of the quality issues identified by the management revealed that the company has only focused on business expansion, faster than its suppliers have, managers have and staffs can be provided to complement the expansion. Without considering the additional need of material that has to be sold from the stores, Wawa has increased its number of stores, resulting in lackluster quality control and negative customer feedback. 
The staff oriented issues are nothing but outcome of negative customer response, majority of which arose from the quality issues of the products.

Leading Organizational Change: Change Plan Guidelines To be an effective, a leader must be able to lead change efforts effectively. At some point, all leaders will be either be tasked with leading an...

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