`Assignment Tasks

Step 1: Read the Following Scenario:

Three years ago, you had a vision. You wanted to make a small business supplying a specialized IT consulting service to established businesses in your area. Your idea was to be a one-person operation based on your expertise and provide a high standard of client excellence and integrity of service to a small, select group of clients. The plan worked very well for a year or so, but business was growing so much that you had to expand your organization quickly. 18 months into your company and you had 20 employees and now 3 years since start up you have 50 employees with expansion plans for another 20 employees within the next 6 months.

This has not been an easy transition for you for several reasons. As the organization continues to grow, you are finding that you are having to move away from the direct provision of service to clients i.e., the reason why you started the business in the first place, and become more of a manger, which is not a role that you particularly like. The organization's structure is currently not working well, in that it is very flat. You are finding that you are still making every decision and your days and nights are spent in dealing with administrative tasks like hiring as well as continuing to cultivate new clients. The interesting fact is that the organization is financially sound and quite profitable despite its rapid growth and less than stellar planning.

One of your growing frustrations is that some of your employees do not seem to have the same drive and passion like you about the organization. Your values system and vision of high standards of client service excellence and integrity do not seem to be shared by many of your employees. It feels like your employees only care about their needs, desires and wants with little regard for the success of their peers, the values and culture of the company or the successful progression of the firm in support of sustainability.

You are frustrated because you do not know how to turn the work force around to be more supportive of the organization. You are finding that there are some informal teams and groups growing within the organization and they are not supportive of the larger objectives and goals of the organization. You know that there is a lot of rumors and informal communication among the staff and that they are also feeling frustrated at the lack of direction.

As President of the organization, you want to move forward on a planning process to change the attitudes, norms and organizational behaviour of the company from its current state to one that embodies a culture of productivity, safety, support for one another and personal growth. You know that this will not be an easy task. Your plan must be succinct, well defined, and actionable as well as timely, because you fear burn-out of the few positive people left in the organization (including yourself).

Your goal is to have employees buy-in to your plan and to be part of the future of the organization.

Step 2: Complete the Following Task(s)

Your task is to design a start-to-finish change management strategy for the organization which should include key topics such as: how the plan will build and maintain organizational culture, how you will structure the plan and organization to achieve results, how the plan will motivate employees and measure success and how you will steward the plan as the senior staff member in charge of its design and implementation. Include a timeline with goals and outcomes for each stage of the plan. You must design the change management strategy from the scenario provided and you must demonstrate the use of change management models e.g., the Lewin and Kotter models, learned on the course. If there is information that you require that is not noted in the scenario just make your own assumptions but ensure to note them in your assignment.

As this is a cumulative assignment you will also be evaluated on your ability to apply concepts and models learned throughout the course. As an example, the scenario presents some communication and team issues and so you should explain those factors by applying communication and team concepts and models that you have learned in previous modules. This recycling process should apply as well to any other issues you see in the scenario that do not pertain directly to the change process.