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Leadership And Change

Date : 17/09/2015

Author Information

Umer

Uploaded by : Umer
Uploaded on : 17/09/2015
Subject : Humanities

"Change is nothing new and a simple fact of life. Some people actively thrive on new challenges and constant change, while others prefer the comfort of the status quo and strongly resist any change. It is all down to the personality of the individual and there is little management can do about resistance to change" (Mullins 2010: 753).

Change is important in the organizations where it is required. Kodak, Nokia, Blackberry were some of the top leading companies few years ago but where they are gone now? The reason behind this is that they couldn't adopt change. Companies like Iphone and Samsung had realized the changing circumstances in the technology and being successful to identify the customer's needs and wants. According to the point of view (Mullins 2010: 753), that change is a simple fact of life, but the important issue which needs to be highlighted is that why people want change? What is the reason for the change? And how people will adopt it?. The change is highly dependent on the managers instead of employees and I am agree with the fact that some people could easily adopt change while others have to face various issues and challenges to adopt it.

According to the Nudge Theory (Richard H Thaler, 2008), the managers need to understand how people react, think and behave in order to manage the change? Don't simply sell the change to the people but get them involve in decision making process, get feedback and suggestion before implementing it. In my point of my view, a leader is one who assists and facilitates the change in an organization. First there is a need to identify the reason for change and secondly a manager needs to understand how he could be able to manage it within the organization?

Maslow`s Hierarchy of Need Maslow's Hierarchy of Need There are different theories and models which assist change. Maslow's hierarchy of need is also a useful tool to identify the employee satisfaction on the job and how to motivate them. To apply the change, managers need to understand; the physical needs such as salary and money, the safety and social needs such as the safe and friendly environment on the job, the esteem needs such as the position or status of the employee and finally self actualization which involves the employee's personal growth such as personality development (Porter & Lawler, Adams and Locke,1964).

Kolb's Learning styles (Learning Style Model, 1984) and cultural dimensions (Geert Hosfstede, 1965) help to identify the learning behaviors of individuals and role of culture within the organization. I would like to recommend the managers, first to identify the reasons for change and have excess knowledge about the learning styles of the people. The managers also need to understand the cultural dimensions within the organizations such as "power of distance" how the people are connected with you? Individualism involves the job satisfaction. How much conflicts are expected in the job? How people manage risk and how to set goals and objectives to achieve results?

The training and development of the front line managers are also one of the useful tactics to manage the change. In the organizations the frontline staff usually deals directly with customers. According to McKinsey & Company the front-line staff could be motivated by involving them in decision making and giving them some part of ownership (Josep Isern, Mary C. Meaney, and Sarah Wilson, April 2009).

I would like to support my answer with an example of a Punjabi restaurant in London. The change in a Punjabi restaurant could be applied by offering new dishes which are most likely by the people living in London. In London mostly people like to have less spicy food having good quality ingredients such as beef roast with vegetables, potatoes, fish and chips etc. In the high street where people mostly come for shopping usually have short time to eat food. That is why; the fast food restaurants such as McDonald's, KFC and Pret A Manager are more successful in that area because of their quick service and good environment. More than 5000 high street food outlets have been monitored by the UK Government (Department of Health, 2011) and enforced them to implement calories labeling of food in the menus which might be the challenging for many food outlets for example; how they will adopt this change? And how will they come up with an appropriate strategy in order to train their employees especially to chefs to reduce the number of calories in the food.

In my opinion, the managers need to communicate the advantages for adopting the change, training and educate the front-line employees by observing the learning styles and organizational culture. About 70% of organizational success especially in food industry is dependent on front-line staff. Motivating the employees by implementing motivation theories such as Maslow's need theory and Expectancy theory would be the effective tools to train employees, maintain the required standards for the job and to ensure product quality with good customer service. The managers need to understand how to facilitate "Change" within the organization and identify, which theory is most appropriate and relevant for the job.

This resource was uploaded by: Umer