Case Scenario:
You are the Director of Order Fulfillment Applications in the Information Technology department of EEST Company. Your staff consists of a Manager of Inventory Systems and a Manager of Order Processing Systems as well as a team of 20 analysts and programmers divided equally between the two managers. You report to the VP of Applications Development, and she reports to the CIO.
Currently, most of your department is midway through a two year project to upgrade an outdated order fulfillment application system that was originally written in-house and no longer meets the company's functional needs. The project consists of major rewrites to the existing system modules which when completed will meet the new requirements of the company's customers and marketplace. Those few staff members not assigned to this effort are engaged in day-to-day support and minor maintenance to the existing system.
It was recently announced by corporate management that EEST is being purchased by a competitor from the same industry, the Ouest Corporation. Ouest is of roughly the same size (in terms of revenue and staff count) as EEST, but has a very different market philosophy and internal culture. As senior managers have begun planning for the acquisition, it has come to light that these differences extend to fundamental IT philosophy as well. For example, Ouest has a corporate policy to use only vendor-written software packages and not to develop software in-house.
Out of the acquisition planning process has come a directive that similar headquarters administrative departments from the two formerly separate companies, such as Finance, HR and IT, will be combined, and "excess" positions will be eliminated. Preliminary expectations are that you and your VP will be retained, but about one half of your existing staff (including one of your managers) will be let go and several Ouest programmers will become part of your new organization. Additionally, the senior corporate management team has stated that the combined IT department must quickly become an effective team that fits the corporate and IT cultures. Obviously, you realize that these changes will have major effects on both your staff members and on your ongoing project.
Your duties would include:
* Analyzing leadership models and understanding your own personal style.
* Know how to identify the organizational culture, its role in your leadership style and how it will affect any implementation of change.
* Analyze change models to successfully implement change at EEST.
Assignment
Deliverable Length: 8-10 PowerPoint Slides
Details:
One of the major concerns you have about the imminent transition within your IT development department is the morale of the remaining EEST staff members. You see them affected by:
* The departure of their former team-mates in the post-acquisition staff reduction
* Their discomfort/unfamiliarity with the Ouest culture
* Their fears about the future of the system upgrade project on which they have been working for nearly a year (given Ouest's stated policy about using only packaged applications software).
You decide to have a meeting with these folks before the new Ouest staff members arrive to allow them to discuss their concerns and feelings and to try to encourage them about the group. As a basis for that discussion, you need to prepare a PowerPoint presentation covering the basic principles of change management that you want to discuss with them. The presentation should cover some of the normal feelings and reactions they should expect to encounter, and descriptions of how you as their manager intend to address them.
Regarding the upgrade project issue, you have been told by your VP that she expects that her new Ouest management will likely allow the project to continue. Even though that will mean an exception to normal Ouest policy for some period of time, the feeling is the newly-merged company cannot afford the cost of converting EEST business units to the Ouest Order Fulfillment package software immediately. However, that move is expected to come sometime in the future.