Reflection on “At the Ready by Alderton, May 2014”

The article “The Elements of Change: At the Ready” discussed many interesting points; change management and how to successfully implement it within the organization, taking into consideration the human element in the process. In order to have a successful strategic initiative within an organization, you must be supported by a change-ready culture, which is basically a culture that embraces change. Change management aims to close the gap between what is intended and what is realized; however, many project managers don’t believe change is their job, and that is why to solve that issue, the influence has to be coming from strategic level, and also reporting to top management.

A change management program is in fact a cultural change, not only an implementation, so that is why you need a mature organization that views change as opportunity. In order to develop such a culture, executives have to create a compelling vision for the staff to buy-in and to accept the new ways of doing things. Executives technically own the organizational culture, and it can change largely as a result of their own personal changes in thinking that is why they play a key role in implementing change; they have tremendous influence on employees’ attitudes, so they can make or break any strategic initiative.

According to the article, change readiness assessment includes the following factors; The historical experience in dealing with change, Policies, Processes and decision-making norms, Accountability hierarchy, Change agenda, Resources that are applied to change management, Leadership’s capability of sponsoring change. The article also discussed a new term “Change fatigue” which is basically the number-one-reason change initiatives fail; it happens when employees are asked to follow too many changes at once. Besides that, change Initiatives fail due to the insufficient communication and Lack of leadership.

Some of the lessons learned from this article are that project managers need to keep in mind that it is crucial to understand what behaviors your current culture have and what the behaviors you need the new culture to have, and is important to have the change readiness embed within your vision and strategy. Additionally, project managers have to make the benefits of change clear to the people, because people resist change that they don’t understand, and that can be achieved through frequent and transparent communication.

The article talked in one part about an aspect of the human element, the employee empowerment, and that reminded me of an article that I read once “The Benefits of Employee Empowerment, By Anthony L. Emerson), after reading that article it became clear to me that Employee Empowerment is more than moving the decision making downward in the organization, it is more about providing the employee with the flexibility and the space that he/she needs to think and make decisions and discover points of strength and weakness and work very hard on improving this weaknesses as well as improving strengths, and all of that is being driven from the inner belief of the employee that the success of the organization is depending on his/her success.

I also believe that the communication between the employee and the top management plays a crucial rule in the success of the Employee Empowerment process. The communication should be clear, honest, effective and continuous. Appling the Employee Empowerment process in any organization not only improves the satisfaction of the employees, but also it increases the satisfaction of the customers; when the employee is given the ability to respond independently to the needs of the demands of the customer, that can be greatly reflected on the speed of the servers and so the satisfaction of the customer. The main benefit of the Employee Empowerment process is to have more confident and creative employees that work in the same direction of the organization strategy and positively affecting the overall organizational performance.