You are in charge of implementing a large change initiative for your mid-size company. A major customer, accounting for 20% of your sales, is pushing you to lower prices by 15% within six months and threatening to buy elsewhere if you don't comply. The president, who supports the initiative, has asked you to develop and implement the plan to satisfy the customer. You are facing significant pressure to resist the change from many members of the workforce, including several production managers, who don't believe it's possible. The VP of marketing feels that no single customer should represent 20% of company sales.
Using and identifying the materials that you have read, develop a comprehensive change management plan including contingencies to deal with resistance. Include time frames for each step so that you can give the president an estimate on how long the process will take, what types of resistance you will face, how you will deal with it, and the degree of success that can be expected.
What organizational factors are working against you? What organizational factors will make your change process easier?
Consider the Challenger disaster. Prepare a timeline and discuss the specific actions or inactions of Roger Boisjoly regarding the Challenger disaster within the context of (referencing) specific sections of the PMI's Code of Ethics and Professional Responsibility. To what extent did the organizational cultures of both his company and NASA limit his ability to act ethically? What would you have done?
Include in your discussion a statement of whether or not he should have expressed his concerns to the media or directly to higher level NASA officials. How is this complicated by the fact that the seal failure was only a risk and not a certainty?
Finally, draw upon some of the other readings to discuss how upper management should influence the organization's culture to support ethical behavior on the part of the change manager.