Explain why and how you see things differently.
Offer and support your opinion with industry best-practices.
Build on something interesting or provocative that your classmate wrote.
Please focus on applying the information covered in this course in your recommendations.
ask thoughtful questions pertaining to the topic, and/or answer a question (in detail) posted by another student or the instructor. Note: The following are not examples of substantive contributions:
Thanking, agreeing with, or complimenting a classmate.
Providing irrelevant commentary.
First response to #1(1/2 page)-
Some of the signs that I would look for as a manager that would indicate a diminishing capacity for change are employee resistance, a decline in productivity, and increased levels of conflict. Based on my experience, these are some of the first signs and can come months before an impact can be felt in employee turnover, so in a way I think they’re some of the most important signs to look out for. If the smaller, less disruptive signs are noticed when they first start to bubble up, there may be a chance for a company to course correct before they start to lose what may be a lot of great people that are just being put in a difficult situation.
Planned change is important because if a company is able to recognize when change may be beneficial and can be proactive about making changes, they would likely also have an easier time getting more buy in from employees. Change as a reaction tends to happen quickly, but if it can be done as an offensive measure there may be more time to look at different options and to ask for and implement employee feedback, which would make it easier to get a team on board with the change rather than having to deal with them fighting against it.
At my current employer we were able to make a planned change when we recognized that our internal ordering system was becoming ineffective and no longer provided the information that we needed to track our projects, as well as being something that was going to be losing software support in the short term. Because we were able to see this coming ahead of time, we were able to review multiple alternatives and choose the best one for our needs, then assemble a team that would participate in the build out. We spent a full year working on it, including scheduling regular check-ins with the larger team to review what we had done, what did and didn’t work, if there was anything that we hadn’t thought of or had forgotten to include, etc. We were also able to spend a full month working through a “soft launch” that allowed our customers to use the system and provide us with feedback on any adjustments that made sense from their perspective. Since we had been so proactive about everything leading up to this change, something that was actually an enormous project was able to transition in a way that went even smoother than we’d hoped, and certainly smoother than it would have gone had we waited to implement the change until we were forced to do so.
Second response (1/2 page-
Good evening all,
One of the hardest things to do as a manager is deal with change. Especially if the change is unexpected or detrimental to the team. When I was in the Navy there was a saying about the nuclear operators (I was one), “Nukes hate two things. Change, and the way things are”. I think that statement actually had a good amount of truth in it for us. We have operated under the same training, assumptions, basic actions, and lifestyle for decades. Any small change to the status quo could add a small amount of uncertainty to our lives and we did not appreciate it.
In the real world, change is much more common but the responses can be similar. When change is introduced to a team that is incapable of accepting the change they might talk about how things have always been done in the past. They could also threaten to file a complaint or quit if the change is not reverted or their demands for the change aren’t met. Another possibility is that the team simply disregards the new change and continues on as they were. All of these responses undermine the point of the change and the manager’s authority.
Today, planned change is part of an Agile mindset. Being able to pivot to another goal or way of doing business based on feedback is important. Without being able to change, your team might not be able to keep up with or meet the new demands being set by the stakeholders, ultimately costing your project time and money. While some change is important, a complete paradigm shift or a 180 during a project might cause the same conditions I spoke about before. If those massive changes are spread out over a longer period, assuming you have the time in your project for that, it can help alleviate some of those problems.
Attached weekly reading to use as reference for response along with my personal response to weekly discussion.
