Effective Change Leaders Have Dreams

Every organizational structures and practice has the role of the change agent and it plays a significant part in organization. A case like ‘The Young Change Agents’ focuses on the change leader and the bottom of the ladder. Following by that in this case study James Shaw who joined AIESEC- world largest student-run international student exchange and development organization and his main responsibilities were recruiting, training, motivating, utilizing and retaining the organization’s members. Therefore as a self directed and self motivated person, Shaw kept himself engaged with the organization, and spent time on networking within the firm and making suggestions where he felt

In 1999, Charlie Eitel became CEO of Simmons, a leading mattress manufacturer with a long tradition of success. However, Simmons was experiencing a decline in sales, low morale issues and increased costs (Casciaro & Edmonson, 2007), and Eitel would need to institute organizational change throughout the company in order to revive the slumping sales and employee satisfaction. Eitel believed “no organization can survive over an extended period of time without the proper focus on people as its most important resource” (p. 1), so in order to redirect the company’s focus on its personnel, Eitel discovered the Great Game of Life, a program designed to foster personal growth through choosing growth over fear (Casciaro & Edmonson, 2007). The Great Game of Life resurrected Simmons by acclimating employees to a culture of change, motivating employees to overcome a stagnant organizational culture and utilizing the organizations most valued resource, human capital, in order to bring about change (Abrahamson, 2004).

I have a couple ongoing clients that I met from the health fair in San Diego. Not only did I get to experience the culture of Southwest, but also I took notice in how happy their employees seemed to be. This health fair was very elaborate and you could tell it cost sufficient amount of money. After meeting my clients that work for Southwest, they continually express how they enjoy working for the company. My clients never spoke the name of Herbert Kelleher but I knew from their stories, which the company values and takes good care of their employees. In my research, I found that Herbert Kelleher exemplifies a transformational leadership in many ways. Herbert Kelleher took over the company and transformed it into a template for ethical business practices. Herbert is known for putting value into the employees rather than focusing on money or profits. Herbert has developed one of the best organizations that value its people than the profits or money that it makes. Herbert built the airline by placing a lot of emphasis on the following values: hard work, customer service, equality, dedication, cost consciousness, fun, and family. The organization holds these values as the core spirit of their business. These values drive the conduct and decisions of the organization on a day-to-day basis. By practicing these ethical values, the employees of Southwest Airlines can identify what is important when faced

A change in leadership allowed Advia Credit Union to create a strategic plan to position itself to remain a viable financial institution for the future. The analysis revealed that this level of change was not easy on the organization, especially in terms of the impact it had on the employees. During the research for this paper, I had the opportunity to ask the CEO, Cheryl DeBoer, her thoughts on what makes a leader effective. It was rewarding to hear, that her primary thought was on the people. Ms. DeBoer felt like her most important responsibility was to be accountable to the membership, develop new leaders to support the credit union vision, and to position Advia Credit Union for future sustainability (C. DeBoer, personal communication, October 17, 2016). Ms. DeBoer’s focus has always been on the

“The sense of urgency refers to the “pressing importance” of action needed to address critical issues—those that are essential to a group’s success, survival, or failure” (Weiss, 2016). This means before focusing on the vision or what is wanting to be met, realizing the need for change is critical for change to be successful. With leadership knowing statistics are often maligned and exaggerated, it is on them to realize the change needs to be made for it to filter down to the unit level. Also, noted by Dr. Kotter, he “found that more than 50% of companies fail during this first phase because executives (a) either underestimate the difficulty of moving people out of their comfort zones or overestimate their own ability to create a sense of urgency; (b) lack patience—or as some say, “Enough with the preliminaries, let’s get on with it or (c) become paralyzed by the possible drawbacks, which can include defensiveness among employees, lack of morale among senior employees, or an overarching fear that things will spin out of control” (Weiss, 2016). With Army executives at the forefront for all changes, they themselves must realize the way business is being handled is affecting everyone from the senior levels to the lowest

Originally set up as a top down environment, the Kimberly-Clark Andean Region struggled with getting everyone within the organization focused on achieving the same mission. Wanting to expand their reach and market share, Sergio Nacach realized that he needed to find a way to connect the employees to the company. Prior to his arrival, the company philosophy was that, “ the solution was always to come from better products and better advertising… Decisions were top-down and the senior positions had all the power” (Clark, 3). Having management hold all the power, allowed the employees to believe there impact didn’t matter. As Nacach became more involved within the organization, the company began to move their focus away from a strictly top-down model into one where individuals were more involved in the decisions that they often times knew more about than the top level management. Instead of only having the leaders of the organization be the big individuals in the company, KC “established that any person in charge of even or or three people was a leader…. developed a plan to motivate those who were moving the wheels of the organization” (Clark, 10). While not at the level of being completely focused on People’s Proposition, the steps that Kimberly Clark is taking is pushing the company in that direction. Kimberly-Clark recognized that what is best for their company success is giving their employees an opportunity to become more invested in the work that they are doing by

The GGOL was the brain-child of Larry Wilson, founder of the Wilson Learning Corporation (Casciaro and Edmondson, 2007). The premise of the program is that a profitable organization will show growth as a result of satisfied customers, an engaged workforce and a leadership team that fosters a culture of empowerment. The program attacks employee engagement at the individual level. Each person that participates in GGOL is challenged to drive organizational change by first driving their own individual change. It encourages a team approach to complete physical tasks, some of which are extremely challenging to the

Leadership and the Art of Change, gives an insightful look at how to lead change within an organization and most importantly do so with success. The author, Lee Roy Beach begins with a look at Wayne a young executive filled with desire to lead an organization on his own after several years of working closely with CEO’s. Wayne’s struggles are detailed by Beach as examples of how not to lead change in a struggling organization. In the end Wayne leaves the company for other opportunities knowing he had failed but not understanding how to correct his mistakes. This leads the reading into what Beach describes as leaders prime responsibilities in championing change.

1. What objectives did BHI seek to accomplish through the introduction of SDWTs? Were these objectives accomplished?

Organizational change can be intimidating for business leaders. The internet hosts several sites for small consulting firms that specialize in helping corporate leaders initiative positive change in their organizational culture. One such firm, Change Management Solutions, Inc., (CMS) uses a five-step change model, which encompasses contemporary collective and collaborative theories and models of change and change leadership. The firm considers culture, organizational leadership, and change planning as essential tools to prevent “becoming one of the 75% of businesses who fail at change.” (Puelo, n.d.)

Western National Insurance was a company in serious financial trouble, until they brought in a new Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in an attempt to turn around the failing company. The new CEO engaged the organizations stakeholders to understand their concerns and issues of the company, before making any decisions or changes. He was also self-aware and he understood the needs and motivations of his team, which helped him grow the employees, and the overall effect was an enhanced organizational capacity. By insuring stakeholder inclusion and being a transformational leader, the new CEO of Western National Insurance was able to motivate staff and turn the company around to be a profitable and excellent insurance company.

If you’ve ever tried to change anything, you know how hard it is. How do you go about getting your message across to truly change people’s behavior? While most companies believe change happens by making people think differently, that isn’t the case. Instead, according to John Kotter and Dan Cohen, change happens when you make people feel differently. You have to appeal more to the heart than the mind. In

Perpetual change is a constant challenge for leaders of today’s organizations. These changes are a combination of societal dynamics, market fluctuations, new technologies, and a variance in the availability of resources. How leaders and their organizations cope with the challenge of perpetual change is critical to success and, in some cases, to the future of the organization itself. Hughes, Ginnett and Curphy (2015) suggest that, “the best leaders are those who recognize the situational and follower factors inhibiting or facilitating change, paint a compelling vision of the future, and formulate and execute a plan that moves their vision from a dream to reality” (p. 560).

When a person has been a part of a large corporation long enough, they are sure to see programs of the moment come and go. They well intentioned and are aimed at meeting the immediate needs facing the organization. However, much like the history of humanity, the programs are slight modifications of those that came before. As a new leader in a company, their role is to make an impact and improve the current state of the business. What is not obvious to these newcomers is the rich and sometimes flawed history that preceded their arrival. These new leaders are unable to reach directly into the historical archives of the organization and realize that the path chosen to fix the current obstacle was attempted previously, perhaps with great success or dramatic challenges. Organizations have a long memory with a tendency of holding onto the negative experiences the strongest. How do these well-intentioned leaders overcome the challenges of a culture where people are tired of repeating the past? According to Kotter “the methods used in successful transformations are all based on one fundamental insight: that major change will not happen easily for a long list of reasons” (Kotter, 1996, p. 20). There must be a clear path that the leader needs to follow in order to shake up the culture, opening people up for the changes. Enabling them not to just stick when they are being watched, but creating value where, if they went missing, the company would desire to have them back. This is where

Organization development grew out of the human relations traditions of the 1940s and 1950s, and it has had enormous influence on management practices and thinking about how organizational effectiveness can be achieved. Critical manpower and resource shortages faced by all organizations, public and private, during World War II and in the immediate post-war years stimulated a search by social scientist and managers, separately and in cooperation with one another, for effective means to maximize the utilization of existing individual and organizational resources. (Ritcher, I 2007). Organization Development was by tradition about planned change efforts, instituted to enhance organization effectiveness within the context of the traditional, hierarchical, management-as-experts, top-down era. The legacy of leaders and organizations developed in this context remain. Organizational Development is about how organizations and people function and how to get them to function better. Organization transformation signals the need to transform mindsets, engage people and make the deep shift to the ongoing mutual learning environment needed for the long-lasting change characteristic of our world today.