lc_u7.2

Review the case study "Alaska Airlines: Navigating Change" and then complete the following: (a) State what actually occurred in the case regarding Kotter's steps 5 and 6 of empowering employees for broad-based action and generating short-term wins, and (b) address each of the critical elements for Section II parts E and F in your change effort analysis. Make sure to include your recommendations for implementing Kotter's steps 5 and 6.

Review the case study “Alaska Airlines: Navigating Change” and then complete the following:

Note:  Copy below outline and use as headers for each section as written (Do Not Alter Wording).

Discuss critical elements for Section II parts E and F in your change effort analysis. Make sure to include your recommendations for implementing Kotter’s steps 5 and 6. (This is where you discuss how you will conduct changes and what you believe needs to happen at Alaska Airlines). 

Note: Do not recap what happen in the case study.

E. Enable Action by Removing Barriers

1. Identify the forces, barriers, and hindrances to the organizational change effort, and describe each.

2. How can resistance be recognized? How will you eliminate resistance or mitigate its impact on the implementation of the change plan?

3. Describe actions that will enable and empower employees to help drive the change effort.

F. Generate Short-Term Wins

1. Determine how you will generate short-term wins. How will you reward these wins?

2. What can be gained from short-term wins? Support your response.

Note:   Write each question above, then answer in paragraph format (If outline is not included, It will send back for correction)

Submission:

Your paper must be submitted as a 3–6-page Microsoft Word document with double spacing, 12-point Times New Roman font, one inch margins, and at least three sources cited in APA format.

Reading:

Enable Action and Create Short-Term Wins in Organizational Change Efforts

There is often much talk about empowerment, but often that talk does not match up with the contextual needs in the situation or the actions leaders take to provide true empowerment to employees in change efforts. Real empowerment to act requires the leaders to remove obstacles, provide quick and needed support, identify bottlenecks and hindrances to desired performance and eliminate those issues to minimize downtime or wait time, and provide employees the needed authority to act at their level to fix problems that are hindering the change effort.

What does this mean in the day-to-day operations inside an organization embarking on a change effort? It means that as leaders, we want employees to be able to take the initiative to identify problems in new processes and be authorized to act versus treating employees like drones that have to go through the “chain of command” to get a needed change done. In organizational change efforts, the “hassle factor” of having to constantly go through the chain of command is a killer to getting the real problems in processes identified and addressed. Many will ask, should there be limits on this empowerment? The answer is, of course, yes, as the leaders will need to define the parameters of this empowered authority, but a word of caution: It is much better to err on the side of too much empowerment than not enough. It is usually better to have to correct a few well-intended mistakes than to not have problems identified or addressed that drag the effectiveness of the change process down.

Empowering employees to act in change efforts helps drive and sustain the change. There is great value in having engaged employees who can act to improve processes at their level in a change effort versus relegating employees to a minimalist role that frankly is not only not engaging, but stifling in their efforts to improve the change processes. This empowerment of employees is often new and foreign to many leaders, as it requires a change in mindset by leaders and the development of stronger relationship bonds between leaders and employees, but when it occurs, everyone is rewarded with improvements in two-way communication, accurate and honest feedback loops, real empowerment with employee engagement, and dramatic improvements in the implementation and sustainability of the change processes.

Regarding short-term wins, these wins let everyone know that the change effort is under way and moving forward. Short-term wins are visible celebrations of milestones of success, which are part of the fabric of the greater change effort initiative. Short-term wins confirm the success of efforts toward the change goal and let employees know that they are involved in a system-wide process to better the organization. It also lets employees know that no one has “dropped the ball” and the change has not died. Change efforts tend to die from neglect and loss of commitment. Short-term wins bolster this momentum and re-energize the employees, confirming that their hard work is paying off and others in the organization are doing their part toward making the goals of the change effort a reality. Short-term wins are evidence of stepping-stone successes toward the overall goal and let everyone know that they have moved one step closer to their ultimate goal. Finally, the successes of short-term wins act as a springboard and provide renewing momentum toward the next step in the change effort. They are motivational and align organizational energies toward the next steps to be completed in the change effort.

Reference

Kotter, J. P. (2012). Leading change. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.