Change As We Will See in the Essay

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Change

As we will see in the case studies, leadership is a decisive factor in the process of diagnosing and in the implementation of changes in the operation of a corporate organisation. IT, HR and corporate work ethics may be excellent. However, without secure and decisive leadership, the best organisational makeovers can fail miserably.

In this part of the essay, this author will illustrate three models and techniques in the change management professional literature for diagnosing organisations. With regard to this, we will compare and contrast three different diagnostic models/techniques, including the main strengths and weaknesses of each. In this discussion, we will also examine the relationship between each diagnostic model/technique and the organisational development and political approaches to organisational change.

In the first we will consider, a great person and a great organisational management team leads change and the charge, focusing in on areas that needs to be changed. Starbucks corporation provides an interesting example of this and a unique one as well. In 2008, Howard Schultz announced to Starbucks that he was returning to duty as CEO after an eight-year period out of the leadership position. At the time he left, the company was in excellent shape. His return and leadership brought Starbucks stock back to $40 per share (Flamholtz, 2011, 3-4).

During his absence, the company began to have significant troubles. For example, intense competition emerged from Dunkin' Donuts and also other fast-food chains that were entering the market with new coffee products. Additionally, a leadership that had nothing to do with Schultz's exodus or reentry later was that Starbucks had grown very fast. Those very growing pains were now finally taking their toll. The infrastructure of the company represented in the management team/employees were not prepared and trained well enough to execute the Starbucks business plans.

Upon his return to CEO, how did Schultz fix his company's problems? Within two-years of his return to the CEO role, Schultz and his management team reviewed, broke down and repaired what was wrong with the company. Starbucks assessed the "key tangible assets" and after this assessment made the subsequent business changes in the hopes of raising the stock price again and in recapturing their market share. In the opinion of this author, one of the most critical qualities that had eroded was brand name loyalty. The capturing of (as well as the loss of this quality) is complex and comprises a number of not always tangible factors. Suffice it to say, business analysts try to capture this "holy grail" of marketing. They generally do not know how it works (human psychology is extremely complex). However, when it is in motion, one recognizes it working. When it is in play, the customers will follow, much like the children in the Pied Piper of Hamlin. They will follow the company almost anywhere because of this amazing trust in the product or service. It translates into market share which is built upon the purchasing power of customers (ibid, 3-6).

Certainly, this fight to regain customer loyalty was a fight to regain the company mystique and brand character. For example, a major problem was that the critical customer traffic had hit an all-time low in the stores. To combat this, Starbucks combined customer connectivity and innovation and efficiency to attract the customers to the stores and spends their money. They again reached out to their customers by getting them to grind their own coffee beans as they did to begin with. The company had stopped the grinding to save money and time. They realized that a bottomline financial metric messed up the brand loyalty. They developed new products, tried out new concepts and new technology (ibid.).

In the opinion of this author, the upside of the leadership model is unity of purpose and execution. However, when there is a lack of such "great men, " such unity of purpose and strength is lost. This can be seen in the Starbuck's case especially because the same man, Howard Schultz, who had founded and built the company had to return to the helm to lead it to glory.

During his absence, the company began to have significant troubles. For example, intense competition emerged from Dunkin' Donuts and also other fast-food chains that were entering the market with new coffee products. Additionally, a leadership that had nothing to do with Schultz's exodus or reentry later was that Starbucks had grown very fast. Those very growing pains were now finally taking their toll. The infrastructure of the company represented in the management team/employees were not prepared and trained well enough to execute the Starbucks business plans.

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Upon his return to CEO, how did Schultz fix his company's problems? Within two-years of his return to the CEO role, Schultz and his management team reviewed, broke down and repaired what was wrong with the company. Dave Ulrich and Ulrich Smallwood spelled out the critical skills to pull off such a refit that called in a Harvard Business Review article, Capitalizing on Capabilities, "key tangible assets." These included talent, speed, accountability, shared mind-set and also coherent brand identity, collaboration, leadership, learning, strategic unity, customer connectivity, innovation and efficiency (Ulrich, and Smallwood, 1-2).

However, are there other factors? Can corporate culture motivate workers to engage in the task of change management and support the leadership team in the project management of the organisational change? Hulya Julie Yazici

in her article in the Project Management Journal, organizational culture contributes handsomely toward such change enterprises and sharing, collaboration, and empowerment of this culture is a must.

The organization's cultural orientation in her research is a contributing factor and perceived organizational performance isCrazily

further defined as project effectiveness and efficiency in order to result in the desired organisational change to bring about enhanced competitiveness and shake down and organisation to improve business performance (Yazici, 2009, 14).

In her survey of firms in the research for the article, Yazici

found that firms with more flexible, change-oriented cultures were associated with higher levels of technology. In addition, such organizational culture s supported the communication and cooperation between company teams team-leader effectiveness was directly associated with team-member satisfaction during the changeover. Yazici found a significant relationship between a positive work environment that supported the strong leadership during the change (ibid, 15).

The advantage of such an approach is significant. Organizational culture can provide significant support to the leadership team in the changeover. However, on the downside, people that are steeped in certain ways may prove to be inflexible in their support of the company leadership if the organizational culture is not as technologically advanced. Such an approach is therefore dependent upon technology to effect the communication that is necessary.

In a journal article by Florence Martin, her analysis of process performance management provides a detailed understanding of the design of a process that is used in the changeover. This article highlights a process performance model aligned with the DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control) steps of a Six Sigma model and the additional substeps that guide process improvement. The article goes on further to identify this process improvement as one of the best tools in the performance technology toolkit. She further provides recommendations for methods, practices, and tools to execute the Six Sigma model effectively during the organisational changeover

(Martin, 2008, 30-31).

Martin further finds that people and technology cannot do the job alone. A proper process management must also be utilized to bring about the changeover successfully. The culture and the leadership alone are not enough. In this model, the technologists become critical to the success of the changeover. Essentially, they join the list of critical stakeholders who need to be well trained and integrated in the process management (ibid., 31). For this reason the Six Sigma model dictates the integration of these technologists into the process management process (ibid., 32).

Question 2:

Case Study- Office Tigers

In the case study with Office Tigers, the most critical moment in the documentary according to this author is the moment when Joseph Sigelman is encouraging the Chennai office with a peptalk on how the clients are telling them that not only are the Office Tigers services less expensive, but better in quality as well. A key concept here is that the Office Tigers case study overturns is that pay and benefits keep an employee motivated. Frederick Winslow Taylor's scientific management emphasized the concept that most people work primarily for money. According to Taylor, it is more money that will make them work harder. Taylor is the father of what we know of as scientific management (Taylor, 1911, vii).

The scene where Sigelman is cheering on his troops is a classic case of the "great man" philosophy. While the Indians were hard workers, they were mired in the stereotype of the past which looked first upon Indians as a colonised people. Secondly, in the age of the Internet, they were the butt of jokes about poor quality and people who did not speak English as the their first….....

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