Please provide an apa discussion response citing the below references in the text of your response.

Reviewing the Barriers to Empowering Others and the empowerment barriers that Kotter (2012) shared, I have encountered three of the barriers personally when working through change initiatives. The first barrier I have experienced is with structures and processes in place that make it difficult to act (Kotter, 2012). Although employees at all levels may desire to change, and see the value in changing, process and approval structures in place block action.Ihave witnessed immense frustration in leaders who spent days in off-site meetings discussing change, only to come back to the office and find that gaining approval to act takes significant time and effort. The change often fails because the leaders get back to their day-to-day jobs and lose the momentum to fight for change.

The second barrierdiscussed byKotter (2012) that prevents empowerment in change initiatives is when employeesdo not havethe necessary skills to make change happen.This is a crucial point, as sometimes these are soft skills, like empathy.At other times,it isthe employee's technical skillsthatneed to be improved to enhance a product.There are times when it is both. For a change to be successful, skills training is not just beneficial; it is necessary. Kotter (2012) shares that training skills and attitude are equally important. Additionally, when change initiatives get started, management may not think about what skills and behaviors are needed for the change or the money required for the training (Kotter, 2012).Ihave also seen this, and the change initiative falls flat because the organization is unwilling to spend what is needed to enhance employees' skills.

Finally, information systems can hinder empowerment during change (Kotter, 2012). Employees may perform better when OKRs or KPIs are updated to identify what is required in the change effort. Having the proper performance measurements drives the right behaviors. Additionally, when there is a pay-for-performance philosophy in the company, employees know that they must perform against the goals they have in place to receive the reward. The goal and performance system empowers the employee to change or prevent the employee from changing. Inmyorganization, we had a significant change in early January. However, westill need toupdate our goals to align with the change. Employees may not be motivated to participate in change efforts if the goals are not updated by the year's end because their behaviors will not influence their pay.

To prevent these barriers to empowerment, I recommend that my organization use the DICE factors (Sirkin et al., 2005). As the authors share, there is "consistent correlation between the outcomes (success or failure) of change programs and four hard factors: project duration, particularly the time between project reviews; performance integrity, or the capabilities of project teams; the commitment of both senior executives and the staff whom the change will affect the most; and the additional effort that employees must make to cope with the change" (Sirkin et al., 2005, p. 110). Many of the obstacles we face with change initiatives mightbe eliminatedusing the DICE factors.

References

Kotter, J. P. (2012).Leading change. Harvard Business Review Press.

Sirkin, H. L., Keenan, P., & Jackson, A. (2005). The hard side of change management.Harvard Business Review, 83(10), 108-118.