LIT2T Leadership Guide

60 TO: TABLE OF CONTENTS Stages and Dimensions of Organizational Change The key players in organizational change need to prepare for change, manage the change process, and know how to sustain change. Twelve dimensions of organizational change have been described 1. External environment 2. Mission and strategy 3. Leadership 4. Organizational culture 5. Structure (especially responsibility, authority, control, decision-making and communication structure between individuals need to be investigated.) 6. Systems 7. Management practices 8. Work unit climate (How do employees think and feel about each other, and what do they expect?) 9. Tasks and skills 10. Individual values and needs 11. Motivation level 12. Individual and overall performance: “Performance needs to be assessed along the dimensions of customer satisfaction, quality, productivity, cost-effectiveness, and so o(Farmer, p. 16) Nadler lists five stages of discontinuous change: 1. DIAGNOSIS. Evaluate the external environment and its impact on the organization. 2. PREPARATION. Identify internal adjustments that need to be made to take advantage of external changes and minimize possible threats. Communicate a shared vision for the entire organization, and plan for continuous communication. 3. IMPLEMENTATION OF CHANGE. Unify subdivisions, which may require restructuring, aligning strategy and culture, and matching people with tasks. 4. CONSOLIDATION. Monitor and assess progress to change, and make adjustments as needed. 5. SUSTAINING CHANGE. Stabilize the changed organization through coherent, reinforced policies and reward systems based on the new norm” (p. 17) “In educational institutions, leaders need to start the change process by pulling parts together to agree on overarching missions and goals, with the intent of each part identifying its potential changing role and impact. These parts need to feel they have ‘agency’ (that is, authority) to make changes, and upper level administrators have to accept that the exercise of such agency might result in changes that were not predicted. Those departures from ‘plan A’ are usually tolerable if done in a thoughtful and informed way” (PRIESTLEY, 2011(P. 18) The Idealized Change Process “The elements of the idealized change model are: (1) a seminal breakthrough idea that begins from the perspective of a societal context, (2) the principle of participation in which the process is more important than the plan itself, (3) the principle of continuity in which planning and implementation occur in parallel and inform each other, and (4) the principle of holism in which all units at the same level should work interdependently. The process goes from ideal to concrete. Ackoff (1979) identified a five-step process for implementing such idealized design:” (P. 18) Here are Farmer’s suggested stages of change: