Managing Change

Cummings and Worley (2014) state that change is a form of movement from the current to a desired state. Therefore, change is meant to transform anything from an existing state into a new one. People around the world continuously experience change in different areas of their lives. The change can be internally or externally motivated, and can turn out to be major or minor. In addition, change can be expected or it may happen unexpectedly. Leadership is a broad term that can refer to different things, people, and various scenarios. Leadership may happen at the community level, religious level, or organisational level. In the contemporary business world, leaders are concerned with changes, and ways to handle it within their organisations. It is also important to understand the positive and negative impacts of change on organisations.

The business world is becoming highly competitive and organisations have realised that in order for them to remain relevant, they have to embrace change whenever it is necessary. One common issue that relates to change is resistance. An introduction of change offsets the status quo. Most people resist it, as uncertainty often comes with change. Modern organisations are looking to reshape their activities in order to suit the demands of customers, and it is the role of leaders to make it happen. Clarke (2013) realised that change management is one of the biggest problems that managers and leaders face within organisations. In most cases, the change will face resistance, as the employees may not understand it, or to see its purpose. Therefore, the management has to introduce the change in an intelligent manner in order to prevent resistance.

There are diverse change management models. Kurt Lewin has developed one of the popular models, and it consists of three significant change stages that include unfreeze, transition and refreeze phase (Palmer, Dunford, & Akin 2009). During the unfreezing stage, most people get scared and become resistant to change. In order to handle the situation, the leaders should provide the thawing process by motivating the subordinates. During the transition stage, the change has already been introduced, and the organisation has to move from the earlier state into the intended state (Palmer, Dunford, & Akin 2009). Therefore, it is usually the period when the actual change occurs. Once the transition period ends, the refreezing phase occurs. It should happen once the change has been accepted. At this stage, the organisation focuses on attaining the state of stability once more, and to have the staff crystallised in it, so that the processes run smoothly (Palmer, Dunford, & Akin 2009).
Different organisations have succeeded to implement change, and it has had positive impact on their effectiveness. One of such companies is Toyota, a global automobile manufacturer. The company has implemented change to facilitate effectiveness in their operations and to monitor the quality of the cars that are manufactured (Jayaram, Das & Nicolae 2010). The company introduced the just-in-time (JIT) manufacturing model within its operations, introduced the Toyota production system, and the Total Quality Management strategies at the management and staff level (Jayaram, Das & Nicolae 2010). When implementing the change, the company used the Lewin model to ensure that personnel accepted the transformation (Jayaram, Das & Nicolae 2010). It incorporated different learning and training programs regarding the change in order to motivate its employees to embrace the change. The change process in Toyota was success, as it was able to maintain its operations and develop a strong image among the clients (Jayaram, Das & Nicolae 2010).

Although change is difficult to manage and it faces resistance, it is one of the instruments that help organisations to stay competitive. It is the responsibility of the leaders to make sure that the people understand what the change entails, and how it will affect them. In addition, they should also ensure that it is accepted, by dealing with the resistance. It is also evident that modern businesses need to embrace change to remain relevant and profitable.

 

 

Reference List

Clark, D 2013, ‘How the best leaders embrace change’, Forbes, viewed 28 March 2016 <http://www.forbes.com/sites/dorieclark/2013/11/05/how-the-best-leaders-embrace-change/#7e4618ea483c&gt;

Cummings, T & Worley, C 2014, Organization development and change, Cengage Learning, Boston.

Jayaram, J, Das, A & Nicolae, M 2010, ‘Looking beyond the obvious: unraveling the Toyota production system’, International Journal of Production Economics, vol. 128, no. 1, pp.280–291.