The importance of managing paradoxes increases with the complexity of organizational environments. To successfully manage paradoxes organizational leaders must learn to deal with contradictions and embrace incompatible forces, rather than choose between them (Belasen). Three management paradoxes that Bjorn Gustavsson faces as Engineered Woods are the paradox of change and stability, the paradox of individuals and teams, and the paradox of direction and empowerment. This essay will discuss these three paradoxes faced by Gustavsson at Engineered woods. Engineered Woods is seeking flexibility so they can adapt to a changing market and transition to a specialty commodity. Gustavsson has to manage his pursuit of change in how the organization is managed, how it is organized and whom is carrying it out. At the same time individuals are promoting resistance and the need for stability in the work environment. Individuals wish to reduce uncertainty, and maintain a stable self-concept propelled by consistency in their actions (Leana & Barry 2000). Individuals give their best when they work in teams yet teams succeed when each individual pulls their own weight. In order for Gustavsson to succeed in his change management strategy, he needs to shift the organization from a vertical structure to a horizontal structure. He can breed more success and production if he can create more self-managed teams. The paradox of direction that Gustavsson faces is that he wants to empower his
Art Kleimer (1996) claims that to foster a corporate culture that embraces change, you have to hire the right people; heretics, heroes, outlaws, and visionaries. The conservative bureaucrat that made such a good middle manager in yesterday 's hierarchical organizations is of little use today. A decade earlier Peters and Austin (1985) had stressed the importance of nurturing champions and heroes. They said we have a tendency to dismiss new ideas, so to overcome this, we should support those few people in the organization that have the courage to put their career and reputation on the line for an unproven idea.
Failure to change the current issues will result in keeping the “elephants in the room” and continued friction by not “sharing responsibility for the organization,” which directly contribute to the two identified adaptive challenges. Heifetz et al. (2009) suggest that every immediate encountered problem is an opportunity to not only fix them, but to institutionalize new norms. Therefore the top leadership needs to acknowledge the challenges and take action by creating urgency. Kotter and Cohen (2002) states that “without enough urgency, large-scale change can become an exercise in pushing a gigantic boulder up a very tall mountain” (p. 15). Indeed, change cannot happen without identifying the issues or creating
John Kotter, a leading advocate and educator in change initiatives, expresses two essential characteristics that must be present in any change initiative. First, any change that is considered to be useful and necessary must go through a multi-step process that will transcend obstacles in its way. Second, it is essential that any change initiative must be lead by effective leadership (Kotter, 1996). However, any leader in a change initiate must reconcile the reality that a major component to mankind’s instinctive nature is that people have an inherent need for predictability and order (Hogan, 2007). Leaders must, therefore, consider that initiatives may be experienced in ways that contradict this basic need leading to employee resistance (Bernerth, 2011). Considering such a potential obstacle, Kotter developed an eight-stage change process to guide organizations through initiatives in ways that may retain employee stability and enable employees to maintain a sense of identity and understanding (Huy, 1999).
The most effective model for change is get every worker best contribution. According to Vickberg (2015), great leadership is about establishing surroundings that both empower and encourage people to give there very best. It is understanding what every work needs to be successful. Business chemistry is key in the success of the organization. Guardians need time to talk and to reflect. The leader make sure everyone has input without talkative worker drowning
In most change efforts, those percentages are reversed. We continue to produce great managers; we need to develop great leaders” (p. 46).
Kevin’s experience is a microcosm of the experiences many people and organizations go through and must adapt to. Over the past several hundred years, humanity has lived in a changing world. And the rate of change itself is accelerating. In the sphere of human knowledge alone, there has been an exponential growth in technology. Overlay on to that the major social and legislative changes and it is no wonder that change is occurring at dizzying rates (McConnell, 2014). Given this reality, who is best able to adapt, innovate and manage change? Leaders
His style of leadership creates a vision to guide change through inspiration. He executes the change with the commitment of the members of the group (Scully 2008). This form of leadership is concerned with improving the performance of followers individually to their fullest potential. Branson augments the motivation, morale, and performance of followers through a variety of mechanisms including connecting the follower's sense of identity and self to the project and the collective identity of the organisation.
Our Iceberg Is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions is a fable written by John Kotter and Holger Rathgeber. Dr. John Kotter was a professor at Harvard but is now retired. Known as the “world’s foremost leadership and change guru” (Kotter and Rathgeber, 2005, p. 147), Kotter is involved in many organizations that help others drive change and leadership. Kotter has written multiple successful books about utilizing change and leadership for self-growth. Holger Rathgeber is a “vice president of human resources, Western Europe, For Becton Dickinson, one of the world’s leading medical technology companies” (Kotter and Rathgeber, 2005, p. 147). Both authors gained experience leading organizations, as well as, introducing change within others. “Our goal in writing Our Iceberg Is Melting was to draw on the incredible power of good stories to influence behavior over time – making individuals and their groups more competent in handling change and producing better results.” (Kotter and Rathgeber, 2005, p. 142). Kotter and Rathgeber, collaborated in writing the tale to illustrate to readers an eight step process to follow in order to successfully utilize change with great results.
It is generally noted that Albert Einstein once said, “the measure of intelligence is the ability to change”. John Kotter embedded this mindset that continually adapting and evolving can lead to success within the novel Our Iceberg is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Condition. Kotter’s and Rathgeber structural organization allows change management to be introduced through a relatable fable highlighting the needed steps to properly manage a group dealing with change. Tone, approach, and mood management are amongst the areas defined as crucial in managing change and making it acceptable. Kotter also introduces what he defines as The Eight Step Process of Successful Change that are surrounded by the themes of Setting the stage, Deciding what to do, Making it happen, and Making it stick. This novel is the example of how to effectively manage change within an organization as well as individually.
Ivancevich, et al, although discuss’ teams in several other chapters, their perspectives on the use of teams in the change process are not completely aligned with Kotter and Cohen. From this point forth regarding organizational change efforts Ivancevich, et al, emphasizes structural approaches, task and technological approaches, people approaches, multifaceted approaches and appreciative inquiry as there steps to change. The concepts, however, could be
(Alper, Tjosvold, & Law, 1998, p. 34) of work design, and with the expressed aim to promote the possibilities of the employees to develop their skills and influence their work situation. According to market surveys, my company has had a better economic performance than other comparable companies. At the same time, the employees of the company had a comparatively resign rate. This level of autonomy is a hallmark of self-managed teams (Morgeson, 2005), and allows them to rapidly modify their task strategies to accommodate a changing environment or to remedy performance deficiencies. The assumption behind this advocacy of self-managed teams is that because they are ??close to the action,?? self-managed teams can correctly diagnose the cause of their performance deficiencies and carry out appropriate remedies. In other words, self-managed teams should have more information about the cause of the problems they are facing, and thus will make fitting, functional changes that will solve those problems. But some scholars have questioned this assumption, suggesting that self-managed teams sometimes are not sufficiently aware of changes in their environments (Gersick & Hackman, 1990) or make dysfunctional changes in themselves (e.g., Langfred, 2007; Manz & Sims, 1982; Polley, Van Dyne, Beyerlein, & Johnson,
Change is difficult for all organizations and individuals but not necessarily bad as seen from the following case. If managed in a cautious and smart way, change can actually be constructive for the organization and for its retained employees. The Stanley Works case serves as an illustration.
Certain functions harbored reservations to the change, namely creative and O&M Direct. Such resistance to change may result from individual sources such as habit and security and organizational sources such as structural inertia and limited focus of change (Robbins p647-648). To overcome resistance and achieve group conformity, Beers needs to manage both driving forces and restraining forces tactically. Instead of relying on a few missionaries (p13), a larger team should be delegated with the task because sustained transformation is not attainable when whole burden of change rested on a handful of people (Pascale).
The greatest challenge that leaders face when managing change is the employees' reaction and resistance ADDIN EN.CITE Bevan2011179(Bevan, 2011)17917917Bevan, R.Keeping Change on TrackThe Journal for Quality and ParticipationThe Journal for Quality and Participation3412011( HYPERLINK l "_ENREF_2" o "Bevan, 2011 #179" Bevan, 2011). In any organization, there are three kinds of employees, the sheep, resistors, and change champions. The most difficult people to manage are the resistors. These employees worry so much about how the change will impact them negatively. They see the change will expose them to the top management and will be seen as not been valuable within the organization. As a leader, the best way to deal with resistors is to let them know that change will happen progressively, and all employees will be involved ADDIN EN.CITE Luecke2003180(Luecke, 2003)1801806Luecke, R.Managing Change and Transition2003Boston, MA 02163Harvard Business School
There are many theories on the best strategies of implementing organisational change, but reducing resistors of change is potentially more important. Worley and Vick express their view, that often employees are not ‘given the chance to understand the reason for the change’, (Worley& Vick 2013). A vast majority of organisational change is planned and organised by the upper management team, with little involvement of their employees who are responsible for running the current system and may have useful ideas about a new system.