Change_and_Communication_Plan

Section 1: Change Management Plan Power is everywhere in the world from schools, government, small, and large corporations. Power is simply defined as “the capacity that A has to influence the behavior of B in accordance with A’s wishes” (Robbins & Judge, 2011). Power can be broken down into two categories, formal and personal or informal. Formal power is based on a person’s position within an organization and it is subdivided into coercive power, reward power, and legitimate power. Informal power or personal power comes from a person’s unique traits and are expert power and referent power. At Riordan manufacturing, all forms of power may exist on all levels. In order for the new system change to occur, expert power will be used to learn from the individuals that know a lot about the former information system. The employees who are launching the new information system will need to teach and train the other employees how to use the new system. Legitimate power will be used in delegating appropriate tasks to employees to complete the change. It will take many hours to transfer customer data from the old system to the new system. Riordan managers may use reward power during the conversion to get employees to execute the change more quickly and they may use reward power after its launch to reward employees on their level of knowledge and usage of the new system. Change agents will be established to design organization, develop trust, and maintain connection to authority. Seven tactics will aid in overcoming resistance to change: training and communication, employee contributions on the affective and defective aspects, new-skills training for job security, consistency for accurate results, cooptation through leaders, internal work motivation, and coercive action for negative reaction. The structure of change will form three phases, unfreezing, movement, and refreezing. High interaction will be established by organizing teams while increasing trust and openness. This first phase will aid in coordination and help build interpersonal relations. Then rewards will motivate teams and create competition, adding urgency to reach multiple goals. Making the second phase transition into action with established mini-goals will drive the change at a quick pace. Finally demonstrating organizational success for customer relations with the new technology will diminish any negative effects. The culture of Riordan Manufacturing is one that embraces team orientation and outcome orientation. Riordan has separate teams handling different functions within the organization. For instance there is a marketing manager team and four directors of sales teams by products. Information needed to consolidate the customer information has been stored in separate databases in each of the five teams. A production plan that maintains records of the number of units produced shows the outcome orientation side of Riordan where the focus is on results and outcomes rather than techniques. The cultural can sap employee satisfaction as shown in the employee survey. Also focusing on the outcomes can hinder intellectual breakthroughs for Riordan. When a person understands that there is going to be a resistance to the change that occurs will help a person be successful in the change that happens. With the resistance you anticipate it to happen, you identify the sources of the changes and the reasons for the changes, and then you modify the efforts to manage the issues from the changes (Lee). It makes someone check their assumptions and forces them to clarify what they have done. There are 8 different ways to reduce the resistance to change: Involve interested parties in the planning of change by asking them for suggestions and incorporating their ideas. Clearly define the need for the change by communicating the strategic decision personally and in written form. Address the “people needs” of those involved. Disrupt only what needs to be changed. Design flexibility into change phasing it in wherever possible. Be open and honest. Do not leave openings for people to return to the status quo. Focus continually on the positive aspects of the change. Be specific where you can. Deliver training programs that develop basic skills as opposed to processes such as: conduct in meetings, communication, teambuilding, self-esteem, and coaching (Lee). The management group at Riordan Manufacturing developed a strategy that will be followed to implement the necessary changes over the next twelve months. Management expects to experience resistance to the proposed change so the first step is to detail the importance of the change to the employees and stress the urgency of the change. Next, an enthusiastic and committed group of employees shall be chosen to oversee the implementation process including at least one manager and/or employee from each department. This group will work with Riordan Manufacturing’s management to create a clear and precise vision of the change and what the organization expects as the desired outcome. Throughout the time frame the change is implemented, management should maintain constant contact with the employees to inform them of the status and what to expect in the future. Employees that do not feel they are educated about the changes or feel left out are more likely to increase their resistance. Communication is a key step to the success of the implementation process at Riordan Manufacturing. The employees shall be empowered to make decisions without management approval as long as the decisions are in line with the organizational goals and the changes that are being implemented. Management should anticipate complications and be ready to adjust the implementation strategy whenever necessary. Riordan Manufacturing should acknowledge successes throughout the implementation of these changes. As with all plans, several variables can hinder or ensure the success of the plan or change. The Managers must identify and overcome any obstacles presented before them. We need to ensure that there is adequate commitment from all individuals included in this plan. There is a need to overcome the fear of failure in one of the top priorities to divide and conquer. We must make sure that the employees are provided with the most up-to-date information and directional procedures to ensure clear direction. For this plan to succeed, we also need to focus on the present and future and not dwell on the relevance of why we are changing in the first place. Lastly, as long as the staff continues to focus on variables that they can control and not dwell on the uncontrollable ones. If we arm the employees with the correct tools to outfit their toolbox, we can ensure the greatest degree of success in achieving this plan. Section 2: Communication Plan There are multiple channels that could be used to communicate change in the business. Some of the types of channels are formal reports like bulletins, memos and letters, prerecorded speeches, e-mail, online discussions, voicemail, live speeches, telephone conversations, video conferences, and face-to-face conversations (Robbins & Judge, 2011). Depending on how often the message is sent is main factor on which channel to use. If you send it routinely you would want to send through a low in richness channel compared to if they aren’t sent routinely is when you would want to send it through a high in richness channel. The most used channels in a business that would be able to put out change would be memos, emails, and face-to-face conversations. If they change doesn’t affect an employee’s job the best way to convey a change would be through email or memo because those are more of a low in richness channel. If the change affects the job of the employee the best way to do that would be to uses a face-to-face conversation which is a high in richness channel; that way the employer can convey with emotion and show their employee how the really feel and it wouldn’t be misinterpreted. Barriers to communication can severely alter the true meaning of communication. These barriers include those caused by both the sender and receiver of the message. Filtering occurs when the sender manipulates the message intentionally to the receiver will be more favorable to the message. Selective perception is the receiver of the message selectively choosing to hear and see what they want to. This is can be altered ‘based on their needs, motivations, experience, background or other personal characteristics” (Robbins & Judge, 2011, p. 359). Information overload is too much information for the company’s processing capability. Emotions can be a barrier if they are extreme emotions such as depression or complete excitement. People’s perception of a message can be altered because of these extreme emotions. Language is a barrier as some words are the same but have different meanings. The silence barrier involves sitting silent or ignoring any form of communication. Communication apprehension is also referred to as social anxiety. People with social anxiety can experience tension, nervousness, and anxiety during oral or written communication. To overcome these communication barriers, it is very important for the managers at Riordan understand the demographics such as age, gender, and cultural background of the employees. They need to have had some personal experience with them to understand if any other barriers such as social anxiety, emotions, or selective perception exists is any of them. This will allow them to convey the message about the proposed change effectively by understanding potential barriers. The message and the way the message is conveyed to the employees will determine how well the employees receive it and understand it. The managers need to be aware that people may respond to the news of the change negatively and they need to be open to any comments, suggestions, and criticism. This will let employees think that their ideas and thoughts are valuable and heard. Changes to the way Riordan tracks customer information are under way by the Sales & Marketing Department. The Customer Management System Team was asked to consolidate customer information from sales custom plastics, sales plastic beverage containers, sales fans, sales international, and marketing within the Sales & Marketing Department in a new system. The new system will store information for customers to include price paid, cost, margin, discount given, unit and dollar volume of each product, dates of order, dates of delivery, and dates of payment. The change will help Riordan better serve customers efficiently. As Martin Luther King once said, “change does not roll in on the wheels of inevitability, but rather comes through continuous struggle.” We cannot continue to rely on certain individuals and hope that they are managing all our customer information effectively. We simply cannot afford potential human record keeping errors when we are dealing with the people who write out paychecks. Fortunately, we have a solution that will remove the burden of self-managing those important records. Riordan Manufacturing will implement a maintenance-free data entry system that will store formally and allow updates to our customer information records. This will allow the employees formerly responsible for that to focus and dedicate more of their time to their required tasks, ensuring more efficient results. Staying connected with our customers will improve our service and strengthen our relationship through better information stored in our database. Accuracy of the information is imperative to the knowledge we have for each customer and improves our customer relations. Individual record systems have become insufficient for quality assurance and information organization. Improving our technology will provide access and easily connect all employees to customer’s information. Learning the new system induces challenges that create stress; support will be provided by establishing value that continues the vision of urgency for these organizational improvements. References Robbins, S. P., & Judge, T. A. (2011). Organizational Behavior (14th ed). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson/Prentice Hall. Lee, S. (n.d.). Managing Resistance to Change. Retrieved from Business Improvement Architects: www.bia.ca/articles/chng-managing resistance.htm