Assignment

The organization is made up of many people. Most of them will have different opinions about change implementation; for example, the investors may feel that the change is very important to the organization as it will help increase profits. On the other hand, the employees may feel that the change will make them overwork. The suppliers will feel that they are not ready to decide on the change since they don't know whether the change will help them in any way. One of the best things to do when implementing change is communicating to the employees, which will help them be mentally prepared for the change.

Explaining what actions you and your team will take to empower people to take action

One of the most important things to empower the employees is getting them a clear vision that will show them exactly what the change is about. In most cases, people will talk more about change, but they can barely picture how it will help them in a year or even two. However, if the people leading the change can show exactly how the change will impact them positively in the future, the employees are likely to accept change more. For instance, in adopting technology, if people are shown that by adopting technology, they can be able to work from home in the future days, they are likely to accept change more than they would when they do not understand how the change will help them in future (Rosenberg, 2011)

Another strategy that will be greatly helpful in empowering change is aligning the organization's structures and systems with the vision created. In this case, the main reason why the change is being implemented is to ensure that the organization's services are as efficient as possible. This means that the structure and the system of the organization should internally start to implement efficiency. An example may be before in the organization, one had to go through two people in a higher rank to get their paper for leave permission to be signed. However, the organization can reduce this to one person and this will have improved efficiency by one step.

The organization can also align the structures by ensuring that it is more efficient than before. This can be done by ensuring that the number of services is reduced or even the time of handling these services has been reduced, which will help make the delivery of services in the organizations effective. The organization can also demonstrate its effectiveness to several other stakeholders, such as the suppliers. They can make sure that the suppliers' invoice is processed quickly, which will win them a vote for f the suppliers.

Another problem that makes change unsuccessful is that of mental barriers, especially of the employees. This means that the employees have already declared that the change is impossible, and no matter what, they are told the change cannot benefit them. In such a case, the best thing to id is to make the change employee-oriented. For instance, the change meant to make service delivery more efficient should be customized so that the employees will feel it is helping them more than anyone else. An example, the change should be brought to reduce the process and load of work an employee has to complete. The employees will feel that the change is there to benefit them.

Another way to remove the mind barrier from the employees is by giving them something that can motivate them. For instance, in this case, the organization can ensure that the integrated change will bring new incentives that can help motivate the employees more. If the organization only provided medical insurance to employees, they could begin to provide paid vacations. The employees will feel that the change is helping them, and they will become more open-minded and ready to welcome the change.

During change, the boss barrier is another problem that proves to be huge. Boss barrier means that most people in the top places will try and stop the change since they feel that it will negatively affect them. One of the problems that come along with adopting technology is that it ends up replacing several people in the organization. Bosses will feel that the change will take away their mandate and might get demoted when change takes place. However, this can easily be changed by ensuring that they get promotions after the change. This will make the bosses support the change and crave change as soon as possible. Removing the boss barrier is also very important as it helps the top leaders lead the change by example (Lozano,2006).

In most organizations, there is a system of how things are done. A good example, in most cases, if a customer has a complaint about a product and they would like to return it for a refund, a lot of people in the organization have to be consulted. Up to 4 people may end up being consulted and this service delivery does not become effective. However, the reason behind this can be that the organization has a system of doing things which is very true. The organization should be ready to put away the system ad make service delivery more effective if they need to embrace change. As stated earlier, by doing so, the organizations top leaders will be leading the change by example, which makes it easier for all the other employees to follow.

Information during the change process is extremely important. For this reason, one of the things that need to be changed is the information barrier. When there is an information barrier, it means that information is not flowing up or down the management as it is supposed to be. Some of the information that employees are supposed to have access to might not be exposed to them. Breaking the information barrier can only be done by reducing the levels through which information has to go. The employees should be given direct access to a lot of information they would like as long as it is relevant to them.

To reduce all these kinds of barriers defined, it is very important to ensure that enough training is provided for the employees. This is because little knowledge is always dangerous. The employees might not be very knowledgeable about the change. However, with training, they will understand how the change works and even get to experience the change. A good example is that if the change is about the finance department using computers to keep their records, they will be given training on using spreadsheets. After doing several practicals, they may feel that it is way much easier than using the file system (Kotter,2012).

References

Kotter, J. (2012). Barriers to change: The real reason behind the Kodak downfall. Forbes, May, 2.

Lozano, R. (2006). Incorporation and institutionalization of SD into universities: breaking through barriers to change. Journal of cleaner production, 14(9-11), 787-796.

Rosenberg, S., & Mosca, J. (2011). Breaking down the barriers to organizational change. International Journal of Management & Information Systems (IJMIS), 15(3), 139-146.