Strategic Opportunity Mgmt Week 1 DQQ

Strategic Opp DQR

In your response to two peers, address the following:

Compare your experiences related to organizational change management with those of your peers. Do you share the same experience of what worked well and what didn’t?

Do you think any of the organizational changes in your peers’ examples could have been handled better? How?

 

Tara Faucheux

Hello, my name is Tara, and I am a financial analyst supporting the Marine Corps.  I have almost 10 years of working for the Department of Defense (DoD) as a logistics analyst, which is why I ended up pursuing an MBA in Operations and Supply Chain Management.  This is my final course for my degree.  It has been a long journey to get to this point and I have learned a lot about supply chain and how to make operations run smoothly or what can cause issues. My hopes are that with my MBA and years of experience, I will rise to a more senior role or take my knowledge to the private sector and branch out from the DoD.  I would love to work for a company like Amazon or Target and handle Supply Chain on a much larger scale.

Throughout my MBA degree I have come to appreciate and understand all the risks that come with supply chain and have gained a better understanding on how to assess these risks and how to mitigate or create contingency plans for the delays that may happen.

Working for the DoD, organizations are always changing and adapting to different needs and situations that may arise.  There are many stakeholders when it comes to acquisitions in the DoD, so it is important to stay flexible and come up with solutions as problems arise.  I have had to learn the importance of what might have worked in one situation may not be helpful in the next.  When working in an organization that is in constant chance and fluctuation with changing in personnel or mission it has been critical to learn how to be a critical thinker.  Being able to lean into situations and help to provide many courses of action for my supervisors has helped me and my organization stay successful and mitigate significate delays in programs.

I am looking forward to what I can learn from this course and how I can apply it to my real-life work situations.

Response –

John Furst

Hello everyone,

My name is John Furst, and I live in Jacksonville, Florida. My professional background aligns with owning my e-commerce home-based business, starting and running a fly-tying Facebook Group, working for a Fortune 5 health insurance organization, and working part-time in the hospitality industry. I aim to become more well-versed in the business sector with my MBA. My SNHU journey started at the beginning of this year when I decided to take a chance on myself to continue my education beyond my Bachelor’s degree in Liberal Studies concentration in Business Administration from ASU. My goal is to obtain substantial knowledge in my last two courses here at SNHU to support me in expanding my e-commerce home-based business. Outside of school and work, I enjoy biking and doing yoga and am an avid worldwide traveler.

Throughout the previous courses in the MBA degree here at SNHU, I have come to value the business sector much more than I originally thought. Moreover, the MBA program is highly sought after and easily transferable with the skill sets I have come to develop; thus, I sought this degree for these reasons.

Many of the courses, however, have given me unique skill sets that apply to several fields throughout the business world. Most recently, the last two courses I took, Leading Organizational Change and Optimizing Brands, provided insight into how an organization can market its products and services to consumers and how organizations can deal with organizational change. Moreover, while I knew that marketing could be tailored to distinct campaigns, after taking the course, I discovered the amount of consumer research that must be accomplished to ensure that marketing campaigns are successful. Likewise, regarding the Fourth Industrial Revolution and the necessary skills needed to manage individuals in this upcoming age, I have become well-equipped to navigate people management. There are several skills individuals must be adept at to promote employee retention within the workplace, e.g., emotional intelligence and change management. As I continue to further my educational pursuits, I plan to concentrate on skills needed in an organization’s strategic growth. For instance, in past roles, I have been a manager; thus, these are skills I will continue to master and refine throughout my professional career. Moreover, I must focus on growing the business rather than growing myself or the team to continue my career advancement. Therefore, this course should aid in developing and crafting strategic management skills.

I work for a health insurance organization that has an excellent growth culture. What’s more, the organization does not shy away from adapting to new technologies and preparing for the future of healthcare. Over the past few years, dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic, I have witnessed the organization refuse to be stagnant and embrace constant shifts instead. These shifts can be quite volatile as it takes time for many organizations to adapt to incoming technology. For example, the organization I work for has recently undergone a powerful customer relationship management (CRM) update; this transition, in particular, was one of the most volatile I have witnessed throughout my career.

Major challenges stemmed from this shift, i.e., needing adequate training on the new CRM system and better communication about relevant updates. Moreover, these are critical areas that needed to be addressed; in contrast, one of the best aspects of implementing this change was communicating the benefits. To foster the “buy-in” for this change, the organization emailed all employees the “what’s in it for me” (WIIFM). Although some critical areas were non-existent, little resistance to the change was seen as all employees were aware of the benefits this newly implemented CRM update would provide.

What’s more, the organization was able to secure the time needed to resolve any system issues and ensure the rollout of the new CRM system was on track regarding the original expected timeline. During volatile times, I hope organizations work through the change management model, regardless of the implemented change. Usually, I refer to the Lippitt-Knoster Model for Managing Complex Change when viewing how said changes should be managed. Appertaining to the Lippitt-Knoster Model, six components are necessary for the said change to be effective; if one is missing, the change effort will not be fully successful; thus, this results in the said change experiencing a negative outcome. Errida and Lotfi (2021) explain that the six components include the following: action plan, consensus, incentives, resources, skills, and vision. Speaking about the example mentioned above about the recent change my organization went through, a considerably lacking component of this model during said change was “skills.” As such, many employees felt they needed adequate training to prepare for said change.

For this reason, after speaking with my team, many had undergone anxiety; this anxiety echoed throughout the organization. That said, organizations can utilize the Lippitt-Knoster Model for Managing Complex Change to guarantee that their employees are supported during the change management process. Lastly, this is vital for strategic growth and development to ensure that change adoption moves quickly and the organization can move to the next areas needing development.

 

Best,

John

References

Errida A, Lotfi B. The determinants of organizational change management success: Literature review and case study. International Journal of Engineering Business Management. 2021;13. DOI: 10.1177/18479790211016273

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