student 3 week 5 response

Week 5_Alexander Pownall

1. Understanding the Need for Innovation.

With the changes that are coming down the pipeline for Smithfield’s it is important that employees understand why these changes are important. Understanding innovation is just as important for managers as it is for employees. Ensuring that employees understand that as the company moves forward, employee engagement is strongly encouraged. Actively engaged employees often increase their productivity (Principles of Management.: Organizational Culture and Innovation, Para 1)

2. Significant "Noise" factors

With the launch of the new product line, there are a few ways to communication could get lost when traveling from management to employees. One of these communication interruptions is filtering, which happens as information is passed from one level to another. During this passing of communication, individuals may remove or leave out information that they feel is not important or is irrelevant to that person of section. This could hinder the timeline of new product timelines as information may be altered as it is passed through the proper channels (Principles of Management.: Module 14 Communication, Filtering Para. 1).

Another barrier to communication is information overload. Information overload occurs when large amounts of information in given at a single time or short period of time. This could cause issues for the merger that is about to happen as new policies and procedures are put into place for the new warehouses to follow (Principles of Management.: Module 14 Communication, Information Overload, Para. 1).

The final barrier of communication that could cause issues with the new merger could be denotation and connotation. Denotation and connotation can typically arise when there are language barriers in the workplace. With the introduction of plants that are now located in China, the risk of a language barrier between plants and locations increases. This can cause major delays or the complete breakdown of communication (Principles of Management.: Module 14 Communication Denotation and Connotation, Para 1),

3. Obstacles to the Acceptance of Change

As change begins to take effect through the company, there may be instances where this change is resisted. One of the biggest obstacles is likely to be status-quo bias, this is the belief that avoiding change is good as long as the status quo is maintained. This type of thinking can pigeonhole the company’s potential. With the increase in manufacturing capabilities, options should be explored to utilize these capabilities to the best of their ability (Principles of Management. Module 5: Decision Making, Status-Quo Bias, Para. 1).

Another obstacle to be wary of is the pro-innovation bias, which is the thinking that things need to be changed just to be changed. This line of thinking can lead to interruption in services provided to customers and loss of profits (Principles of Management. Module 5: Decision Making, Pro-Innovation Bias, Para. 1).

The final obstacle when introducing change is confirmation bias. Which is the belief that change will only work if someone believes in that change themselves. This line of thinking can hinder productivity and slow overall change within the company (Principles of Management. Module 5: Decision Making, Confirmation Bias, Para. 1)

4. An Effective Change Management Technique

With the pending merger and acquisition, there are likely to be some things that are going to need to be updated or changed to better fit the overall vision of the company. One way to manage these changes is through incremental change. This model for change management introduces change slowly over time for a company. The ability for employees to feel comfortable with a few changes at a time can help improve the overall efficiency of the company (Principles of Management.: Organizational Culture and Innovation, Incremental Change, Para 1).

5. Possible Decision-making Oversight

With the introduction of new manufacturing plants and employees, comes many decisions that may affect everyone. To help oversee these decisions it may be smart to approach them with a heuristic view. Approach these issues with a heuristic mindset of using analytics and tools to aid in making tough decisions. This enables the ability to observe situations that have worked in the past and can lead to success (Principles of Management. Module 5: Decision Making, Heuristics, Para. 1)

Resources:

Lumen Learning. (n.d.). Principles of Management. Module 5: Decision Making

. Available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Lumen Learning. (n.d.). Principles of Management.: Organizational Culture and Innovation

. Available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Lumen Learning. (n.d.). Principles of Management.: Module 14 Communication

. Available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.