In manage culture. its inhabitants and the changes

In a nutshell in the preceeding sections I have laidthe foundation for culture as a social construct , then explained the inevitablechange this construct will face due to globalisation , influx of othercultures, advent of technology etc. Furthermore I outlined the variousstrategies comparing and contrasting its background. Then I moved on to explainhow the role of leadership is essential to manage culture. Its inhabitants andthe changes it faces. Therefore all the ideas of organisation culture, changemanagement strategy and leadership are interlinked . Every organisation iscomposed of these elements whose right proportion will lay the cornerstone of astrong foundation and if the mixture goes wrong then it will fall down like ahouse of cards! Conclusion:                                                   Survey done by Harvard Business in2006, The most prominent obstacles faced in managing change process areEmployee Resistance, communication breakdown, staff turnover and insufficienttime for implementing change, misalignment among different teams. (SeeAppendix-3) To avoid employee resistance, Leaders role is to leveragerelationship with your team and subordinates, address employee concern on apersonal level, regular asking for their feedback and respond to their concernshonestly and openly.

Information needs to be communicated to employees on anongoing and consistent basis, this will avoid communication breakdown. At theend it is important for leaders to coach, mentor and enrich their roles byengaging their team and involving them in the initiatives.  At the same time leaders need to put their priorityon the needs of customer and to align team to one direction, one goal, oneobjective which is customer oriented.  3. 4 Role of Leaders for managing obstacles during change managementprocess            In the era of globalisation, world isa global market, complete understanding of different national, regional, industrial culture is a tedious task for any leaders.  For an effective change management, anadaptive work environment requires the adaptive leaders to control direction, conflict and norms within the organisation systems.

The three elementaryelements of leadership are the ability to influence, a common goal and employeewilling to work toward the vision. However, leaders often had to faceresistance from employees to redirect an organisation, slow response fromsubordinates, misalignment between different teams, lack of accountability, lack of communication between different teams, multi-directional approach ofdifferent team towards company objectives.(See Appendix 2) Davy et al.

(1988,. 20) suggest that “ the only thing about organizational and change is that nothing iscertain”. Furthermore, they estimate that “ employee problems” areresponsible for third and half of all failure3. 4 Leadershipproblems in change managementIn the previoussections I have presented the qualities of a good leader ( in a utopian manner) now I put the role of leadership to test. In the next section I havescrutinised the problems an organisation’s leadership can face.        Leaders must set expectations and helppeople build the skillsets, all employee should be provided with tools, resources and opportunities that allow them to grow and gain confidence in theway they are working. Reinforcing a culture of accountability, leaders holdpeople responsible for things they do.

Making accountability part of culturebegins with clearly defining established measures (increase in sales, customersatisfaction rating) so all the employees are clear what success looks like.  Finally, “ Creatingchange requires a rational and more importantly, an emotional connection. Nomatter how rational an argument you make for the need for change, people willnot buy in until you engage them on an emotional level.”  To implement change effectively leaders, needto be emotionally connected with their team than using rational approach. Fromthe movie “ Wolf of the wall street” Belfort said, the most effective strategyis one that uses “ Persuasion”. It is the gift that will make your vision forthe world known to others. “ once you become good at it, you can actuallymanipulate people; you can get people to do things they shouldn’t do.   Thus, we can be implementing culturalchallenge is not simple, it involves remoulding of behaviour, emotionalconnection with employees, taking a great deal of time and hard work fromeveryone involved.

Leaders, top management, CEO have ahuge influence in organisation culture. In fact, a strong culture starts witheffective leadership, you need to follow what you say and be accountable foractions within an organisation.  Asmentioned in the beginning, Organisational culture change is concerned withbeliefs, tradition, human behaviour with in the organisational structure. It iswell known that As Michela and Burke (2000,. 19) claim, to change culture, wemust first understand it. Leaders need to understand to lead any organisationalculture change and they should display in their behaviour. Leaders need toeffectively communicate change and gives employee message what is expected ofthem, they need to clear with what their role is and how it impacts theorganisation.

Communicate with each employee how the organizations purposeconnects to the specific job they are performing daily.            3. 3Leadership role in organisation culture change        With the need for an adaptive leaderexpressed, in the next section I highlight the role of leadership in anorganisation. Leadership is not a “ one size fitsall” but it’s more like how you adapt to your approach to fit the differentsituation. For different organisation culture, leaders need to adapt differentrole. Such as for an organisation having a clan culture leader should play arole of a facilitator, mentor and team builder, adhocracy culture leadersshould act as an innovator, visionary and entrepreneur.

In market culture, leader’s role will be more like a competitor, producer and goal oriented whereas in hierarchy culture leaders act as coordinator, monitor and organiser.             3. 2 Leadersrole in different organisational cultures             Therefore in my opinion if leadershipand organizational culture  worktogether, then leadership can play a major role and be an effective factor inchanging organization’s culture when needed, and it can affect the decisionmaking in carrying out change in organisation.          Also, some researchers supposed thatleadership is a simple component of organizational culture, they assumed thatby shaping the organizational values, norms, regulations or the wayorganisation should work and constructing the social reality by leader anorganization naturally became a strong organizational culture. Where in someorganization, leaders create their tools to either evolve the current cultureor to change the existing standard. stated that the leadership patterns differbased on how the subordinates observe their organizational culture.

Bass andAvolio (1993,. 18)Now let usbuild a link between leadership and organisational culture. Leadership should betransformational if it is aimed to serve the organisation, becauseorganisational culture change starts from beginning, needs much time, energyand commitment to achieve outcomes.

Theories of transformational leadershipshows that this style of leadership where a leader works with subordinates toidentify needed change, creating a vision through inspiration and serves toenhance the motivation, morale and job performance of followers.  3. 1 Leadership and organisation culture    Leadership is a practical skill, ability to lead or guide otherindividual, teams, or entire organisation. Leadership and organisationalculture is widely linked to the change management process.

For Example, Bass(1985,. 15) leaders must possess a clear understanding of strategic objectivesfor their organisation, they must identify the actions needed to attain thoseobjectives and conduct an analysis of organisation existing ideologies. According toKouzes and Posner (2003,. 16), there are five practices of exemplary leaders: they challenge the process, spur a shared vision, model the way, encourage theheart, and enable others to act. Also, Burns (1978,. 17) defined leadership asleaders inducing followers to act for certain goals; that represent the motivesand the values of both leaders and followers. Burns (1978,.

17) distinguishedbetween the transformational leadership that lay on true trust and honesty andthe transactional leadership that requires an evaluation of quality.               3. Leadership    At this juncture I have established the typesof change. A planned change involves the organisation as a whole and calls forcollective participation. The individuals feel they are a part of the change. Hencethe role of the leadership team will have more impact and organic evolution ofideas will be seen.

Emergent change is more authoritative with a basis of justfollowing orders. This could lead to resistance towards the leadership which Ihave illustrated more under the subheading ‘ Leadership problems in changemanagement.’Comparison and my views :  Thus, it is possible for an organisation tolearn to change because “ deep down we all are learners”. Peter Senge’s visionof a learning organisation as a group of people continue to expand theircapacity, skillsets continuously. The five steps “ system thinking “, “ mentalmodels”, “ personal mastery”, “ teams”, “ vision” which aims to create high levelof innovation to remain competitive, improve efficiency, improve quality ofoutput at all levels, having the knowledge to better link with customer needsand finally increase the pace of change within the organisation. Hence, therefore It is very important for an organisation to break existing patternand strive for continuous improvement. Learning organisation developbecause of the growing competition among modern organisations and enables themto be competitive in the modern business environment.

The learning organisation model was advancedby (Senge, P. 1990,. 11,) , “ Change is teaming and learning is change”, it can beonly possible if we are adaptive to new learning.  According to me the best strategy is to beable to learn, unlearn and relearn.         2. 3. 3. The learning Organization  Next we move onto a model of emergent change.

Comparing boththe models , in my opinion  the Kotterssteps of change emphasises on small changes adding up to a significant change. This allows more time for adaptation to the change an essential requirement fora successful workplace.                 Kotter 8 step process for leading change is a greatstarting point for developing organisational change strategy. The step one” Creating a sense of urgency” in order for people to have the level ofmotivation needed for that change to succeed, they must feel a sense ofurgency. They need to know change is essential.

Step two “ forming a powerfulguiding coalition” focus targets on creating small group of team leaders thatrepresent entire organisation and they should have expertise and influence tobring out the change. Step three “ Creating a vision” the vision and strategy ofchange should be well focussed, realistic, attainable and easily communicatedto others. The fourth step “ Communicate the vision” aims to encourage adialogue that is clear and simple to be understood by everyone in theorganisation and it should be clear. Step five “ Empowering others to act on thevision”. This step aims to determine all the hurdles (organisational structure, skillsets, cultural barrier and individual resistance) and work towards removingall barriers in advance.  “ Planning forand creating short-term wins” is the next step which aims to overcome shortterm change on the way to overcome resistance and build momentum for the longerrun. Step seven “ Consolidating improvements and producing still more change” isa step that resists change to re-emerge later in the process. The intention isto continue to move the change forward by keeping the urgency high This isachieved by encouraging employee, greater focus on the strategic vision byleadership.

The final step “ institutionalising new approaches”. This means makethe changes last and make it as a norm in the organisation. New employeesshould see change as part of the culture.

Heling, W. J.(2017,. 12) and Selwyn. S.

(2011,. 13)      2. 3. 2 Kotter: 8 steps of change                Lewin’s 3 step model for organisationalchange, the first step in this model is the icebreaker, a need to “ unfreeze” people. The aim is to make individual understand why things needs to be done onother way. The goal is to make everyone understand why the current process, level of acceptability, is hindering growth of organisation some way. This stepis more culture sensitive, it is necessary to understand old behaviours, way ofthinking, structure, people and process to create an awareness among them. Effective communication is important during the unfreeze stage so that everyonewill be informed about the need of change, how they are getting affected bychange process and the most important is to align everyone on the same page.

The second step in the model is “ changing”. Now the people is aware or unfrozenthey can begin to move in a different way, need to develop new insights, attitude and skills. This is the time when an organisation moves into new stateof being, It is a transition stage, in other way it’s an implementation stage.

This is when change becomes real, it is marked with uncertainty and fear andit’s the hardest step to overcome. During the changing step people begin to learn the new behaviours, processes, and the way of thinking. It is the critical time for all employeesas they are getting familiar with the new process. In my opinion this ispivotal stage for any change strategy. Finally, the third step is “ freezing”. Atthis level all new skills acquired needs to develop in a routine.

All changesmade to organisation process, goals, structure are accepted as new norms orvalues. This step is especially important in the way that people should notrevert to old behaviour, process. Efforts must be made to guarantee the changeby effective monitoring, by acknowledging individual efforts, rewarding themand keeping a watch on change for some time. Heling, W. J.

(2017,. 12) and (three step model , mind tools.)