Answer To: Decide on whether the performance improvement strategy, or a more general change strategy, is the...
Anju Lata answered on Jun 11 2020
Running Head: PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT STRATEGY
PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT STRATEGY
ASSIGNMENT
PERFORMANCE IMPROVEMENT STRATEGY
INTRODUCTION
Improvements in performance of the healthcare organizations include change in many practices like reducing the waiting time in clinics, decreasing the rates of infection like in post operative wounds, compliance to hand-washing practices, improving the record keeping, minimizing the medication errors, and improving the handover of reports.
The essay focuses on leadership and its role in facilitating change or improvement. It elaborates the multiple ways in which the leaders can effectively identify the need for change and support the change process.
BACKGROUND
The Organizational change is a situation where a Company accepts a new strategy to improve its management and strategic operations for a better future. The Organizational leaders are mainly responsible to bring about the changes in the Organizations. For example there can be radical changes within an organization to facilitate structural transformations where the Companies restructure their policies and business. Few other changes like acquisition and merger may completely transform the whole management in an organization. However, the process of change is not always adopted by the employees and other stakeholders in a positive manner. Many employees are generally susceptible to adopt any change in their usual existing routine. The employees, who are habitual to work in old system, often resist the change. For example when a certain department of an Organization is made to shut down its business operations, the employees of that department may resist the change as they feel insecure and frustrated to lose their jobs. In such a situation, the leaders are required to plan the change management effectively to understand the perspective of both the involved groups and to take right decisions not to influence the whole performance of the Company.
According to Lewin’s three stage change model, the driving forces for any change are responsible for shifting the equilibrium towards a potential change or improvement (Jacobs et al,2012) . According to Force Field Model, the driving forces for change can be social or clinical, can be policy dependent, political and environmental, and can also be influenced by cost pressures and consumer demands. However, there are also certain resisting forces in every organization which oppose the change like existing organizational culture, shortage of time, poor leadership, internal politics and poor communication system. Any strategy aimed to improve the performance or quality of an organization is implemented in a pre-existing system and requires effective planning to estimate the impact of change.
THESIS STATEMENT
The essay focuses on leadership and its role in facilitating change or improvement.
NEED FOR CHANGE & SOURCE OF PRESSURE
As per the Lewin’s model there are three factors necessary to bring about a change: Unfreeze, Change and Freeze (Jacobs et al,2012). The stage of unfreezing identifies the importance of change and involves a shift from current comfortable zone of existing system. It includes development of a situation in which the change is needed. The more we feel the importance and urgency of change, the more motivated we are to bring about the change. For example, the closer the deadline for a given work is, the more we get actively engaged into action and starts the work. When there is no deadline, we do not experience the push or pressure to do the work hence the feeling of change is less than the need of change. People are lowly motivated to change. In absence of any motive or the urgency, we do not feel any need to change.
ORGANIZATIONAL PERFORMANCE
As the technology, market and demands of the customers change along with social and demographic characteristics, the organizations need to change their work strategies to stay ahead with the changing time (Connelly, 2016). The organizations need to adopt the change in their strategy and work culture.The employees need adequate training to adopt the new change successfully in their lives. The change also needs to be reinforced and maintained in the future in a permanent way.
To maximize the performance in healthcare sector, the quality promotion strategies must be adopted by the organizations. To introduce high performance in healthcare, often it becomes difficult to develop the resources, workforce and the infrastructure. Due to these issues, an organizational theory is needed to build the capacity in organizations to deliver and evaluate the desired changes effectively. The healthcare practitioners must build organizational change in their capacity building frameworks because without consistent change the organizations won’t be efficient. The effectiveness of healthcare programs is largely dependent on the quality of planning in the projects. The planning is an important part of the change.
The Organizational Culture plays an important role in shaping the preferences, regulating the behavior and framing the decisions. As evident in the study performed by Jacob et al, (2012), on relationship between organizational culture and performance in acute hospitals, the habits of use and the institutions being the main focus of study, form the framework of Organization’s culture. The institutional economic theory states that the core values of an Organization help to shape the preferences of the members and hence influence the decisions and the performance of the company in multiple ways. The culture influences the efficiency through shared values, norms and beliefs of the organization. These attributes help to change the manners in which the different members engage and interact with each other. In bringing about the effective improvements there must be certain cultural values like responding to and learning from errors, effective decision making, creativity and team based efforts.
Depending upon the equity considerations, the culture also affects the priority in the...