1. Read the article titled "Sustaining Change in Manufacturing Companies". Next,
Review the list of eleven (11) factors which impact the sustainability of change.
Reflect on a change that you implemented or was implemented at an organization with which you are familiar that was not sustainable.
Comment on the factors of sustaining change that were not included in the change process.
How would you address the key factors which the organization missed and ultimately lead to the change being reversed?
2. Please respond to this post. (DQ)
Read the article titled "Sustaining Change in Manufacturing Companies". Next, review the list of eleven (11) factors which impact the sustainability of change.
Reflect on a change that you implemented or was implemented at an organization with which you are familiar that was not sustainable. Comment on the factors of sustaining change that were not included in the change process. How would you address the key factors which the organization missed and ultimately lead to the change being reversed?
The company that I am employed with now is in the process of implementing a change where they are going to change the whole organizational chart for our division so that we can match the other divisions.
This means that we have to add new positions and re-class some of the positions that we currently have. The problem is that they are forgetting to account for who are external customers are. I work in Annapolis and our customers include legislators, senators, delegates, the Governor and Lt. Governor and their staff whereas our other divisions don't have such high maintenance customers so the way the other divisions are doing things won't necessarily work for us.
The other divisions don't move furniture or hang pictures or even have housekeepers or grounds keepers those duties are all contracted out. So if we were to change to the new way we would no longer be able to offer those services to our customers and they would not be happy about that at all.
The factors of sustaining change that were not included in the change process are as follows:
Leadership - They have a vision but they did not factor everything in with the vision. They didn't think about the differences in the clientele of the divisions and when the managers had questions they couldn't thoroughly answer the questions.
Managerial - Due to the leaders not being able to answer questions the managers are not on board with the changes which makes it difficult to enforce the changes. We also have a one Superintendent that is used to doing things the same way and change isn't easy for him. He has the mindset of "this is how we always did it".
Financial - They also didn't consider the costs of adding contractors to do the housekeeping and the grounds work. It costs more to contract out than it does to have the employees here doing it.
Political - With the type of customers that we deal with they are used to things a certain way and they always like to throw around who they work for
Processual - They did not do a good job of explaining to the employees of what is going on and what is expected of them and what is changing and what will not be changing so some people really don't know what they are supposed to be doing.
The way that I would address the key factors is first of all with the leadership aspect they should have had meetings with the managers to let them know what they wanted to do and to get feedback from them.
Once they got the managers on board and they had a solid plan it would have been easier to present the changes to the employees. This way the employees would not be confused as to what they should be doing.
As for the financial aspect they should of did a cost analysis to see if would be feasible to keep the housekeepers and grounds crew that they have now or to contract the jobs out. They could probably contract out some of the buildings and keep the employees that are already doing the job.
When it comes to the political aspect since we have such high profile customers they could have tried to prepare them to let them know that the changes were coming tell them what changes they were going to implement and let them know when the changes would start taking place. I think that by following these steps it would be easier to get everyone on board with the changes.