1. (TCO A) The organization is planning to make a substantial change to the compensation and benefits program for the next fiscal year. This change will impact all branches of the organization throughout the U.S. Eight thousand employees will be required to move from the very popular existing total rewards program to the new system. A compensation study determined that most employees will need updated position titles and salary bands. A. Compile the change management imperatives that will go into making this a successful change project. B. Construct a set of strategies that managers can use to help employees cope with complex change. C. Persuade the managers involved in this change that the imperatives that you identified and the strategies to help employees cope with change will help them manage the complex realities of this change project. (Points: 30) 2. (TCO B) You are the Director of Change Management, and it is expected that you can read the corporate change “tea leafs” and have a model for change and an approach to plan change when the need arises. A. Construct a model of change that reflects the reality of change in modern organizations and reflects your beliefs about change. B. Think of an organizational change that you believe should be implemented in an organization where you work now, or one you worked for in the past. Create a plan to implement change by integrating your change model. C. Plan a system to measure how your model will impact the organization. (Points: 30) 3. (TCO C) Put this scenario into the context of an organization where you work now or did in the past. Your organization has recently (past two months) hired a new VP of Marketing and she is trying to understand the various types of changes that might impact the organization in the future. This is important to know, as it is hard to develop a strategic vision for the Marketing Department without first considering how things might look in the future. A. Evaluate the various types of change pressure that might impact the organization in terms of: (a) staffing levels, and (b) corporate branding. B. You are further asked to compile a list that compares each potential force for change to the stability of the organization. C. Speculate as to why some of these potential pressures on organizations to change do not impact all organizations in the same way. (Points: 30) 4. (TCO D) As the change expert for the State Department of Natural Resources in a large state with thousands of acres of forests, lakes, and wildlife, you learn that the legislature voted to privatize the entire department in order to save money and help reduce state and local taxes. It is entirely possible that some current government agency employees could be hired to work as “civilian” employees of the private company. A. Appraise the cultural impact of this change on the employees who will move from government to private sector employment. B. Speculate on the changes that will come to the strategic behaviours of the new privatized organization compared to the government organization. C. Propose a plan that will help bring alignment between former government employees and the new strategy that they will have to work within. (Points: 30) 5. (TCO E) The organization is going through sweeping changes that will lead to layoffs and a situation where several “managers” will now be reporting to their former “direct reports.” A. Compose a likely set of reasons why people will resist this change. B. Appraise the most effective and least effective strategies for overcoming the resistance to the change identified in the scenario. C. Devise a plan to implement the most effective approaches to reducing change resistance.(Points: 30) 6. (TCO F) There are many approaches to diagnosing change in an organization. In the end, the change agent must use the best practices of various models of diagnosis and apply them to the organization. A. Appraise two approaches to diagnosing organizational change, pointing out what works and what does not work in effective organizational diagnosis. B. Construct your own version of an effective diagnostic model using the best elements of other models. Be specific about the components of the model you create. C. Create a strategy that will measure the effectiveness of your diagnostic model. (Points: 30) 7. (TCO G) It’s no secret that having a vision for change and being able to communicate the change project are critical to success. However, that all requires a communication plan. Assume that you are working on a change project and need to design a solid communication plan. A. Help yourself by generating a checklist of key attributes of a good change communication plan. B. Then, compose an example change communication using an appropriate scenario. C. Finally, formulate a methodology to measure the success of your communication plan. (Points: 30) Multiple Answer Choice 1.(TCO G) Choose from the list of statements below the items that are considered to be part of a strong change communication strategy. (Points: 30) Focus on letting people know the “why” of the change. Rely on verbal communication, as that is the way that most people can pick up and understand messages. Avoid using humor, as it indicates that the message is not focused and not serious. Physical presence in delivering the communication is media rich and helps the audience understand the message better. It is good to have “toxic handlers,” as they take the heat related to the change in the organization. “Toxic Handlers” tend to incite more frustration and confusion during the change. These people need to be neutralized if the change is to be successful. While talking to a group about the change, show polite interest, but inside, be preparing your rebuttal. Try to keep involvement and communication low in the organization, as to not scare people or cause employees to become overly concerned about the change. Engage in intentional, interpersonal interactions with employees to minimize their perceptions that changes are likely to lead them to harm for them. Spray and Pay gets a lot of specific and focused information out of the employees about the change. Withhold and uphold works well because communication is more efficientand people only get what they need to know and aren’t distracted from work by too much communication. Be sure to communicate relevant organizational changes to external stakeholders who need to know. In the commanding style, leaders, when communicating change, deploy strategic actions as a result of discovering the range of alternatives. In the supportive style, the leader, when communicating change, is concerned with creating consensus. Flyers, bulletins, and generalized computer reports are effective ways to communicate change, as they are in the hands of the people who are the targets of change. Page 2 2. (TCO F) Choose from the list of statements below those items that are considered to be part of an effective strategy to diagnose organizational change. (Points: 20) Be careful and not too open about the potential problems in the organization, as there is no way to know with certainty that these are the real issues that might drive change. While it sounds good, brainstorming is too vague an approach to determine the environmental factors impacting the organization. Identify the potential symptoms of change by listing the phenomena that suggest that there might be a problem. Gap Analysis answers the following questions: Where are we now? When do we want to get there? How do we get there? Don’t worry too much about customers when it comes to trying to determine the need for change, as change really only impacts inside the organization. Making use of the various organizational models is helpful in diagnosing change because most of them are designed to demonstrate the interconnection between the elements that signal the potential for change. Making use of Force Field Analysis in diagnosing change is good because the driving forces push against the need for change – drive them back – and the restraining forces open the door to new ideas. Diagnosing the readiness for change can provide an indication of the likely outcome of a change project. Gap Analysis answers the following questions: Where are we now? When do we get there? How do we prevent returning? The SWOT analysis is very effective and should be used as it gets at believed strengths and believed weaknesses that relate to perception. The SWOT analysis is not very effective because it tends to get at believed strengths and believed weaknesses and these need to be challenged. Scenario analysis is good to use in diagnosing change, as you are not tied down to a specific methodology and are more free to examine all of the possible reasons for potential change.
