Organizational Change Management Change and Planned Change

Question: Describe about the Report for Organizational Change Management of Change and Planned Change. Answer: How and why do change agents need to use different skills to reduce the negative impact of political behavior during organizational change? Organizational change is a very sensitive matter that affects the performance of the employees. More or less each organization has done change in its business or in its working culture. However, managing and maintaining the change in the organization is more critical than implementing the same. Presently, in order to manage the organizational change, companies recruit the change agents, so that they can manage the changing environment and motivate the employees towards organizational goals (Senior and Swailes 2010). The main threat that an organizations get during and after implementing the change is the negative political behavior of the employees. However, the change agent of the company can handle the situation by following the Kotters eight step model: The first step of Kotters eight step model is create the urgency. In order to do this, the change agent needs to communicate the need of change clearly to the employees. This can be done by proper communication with the employees, which requires good knowledge. The change agent must be knowledgeable enough to face and answer each query of the employees (Caldwell 2003). The knowledge is also required to understand the negative political mentality of the employees so that the needful steps can be taken beforehand. The second step is form powerful coalition, which requires the leadership capability of the change agent. At the same time, the change agent needs to build strong relationship with the employees so that employees can trust the change agent. The third step is creating a vision for the organizational change. In order to do that, the change agents must have the clear vision regarding the needs of change and ways to achieve the same (Burnes 2004). The fourth step is communicating the vision to the employees. If the agents have clear vision and if they communicate the vision with the employees in a proper way then they can convey the need for the change to the employees. This helps reduce the organizational politics against the change. The fifth step is removing the obstacles. In order to remove the obstacles, the change agent must have high patient level so that right decision can be taken. The behavior of the change agent must be polite and calm. The change agent needs to deal with each employee with same priority. The relationship between the change agent and the employee must be friendly and reliable. At the same time, the change agent must provide rewards to the employees, who have performed well (Thomas and Hardy 2011). This helps to motivate the employees towards the organizational change. Apart from that, the change agent also requires the identify the employees, who are against the change an needs to take proper step to remove their resistance. The sixth step is creating the short-term wins. This can be done by implementing the sure-fire tasks that do not require the critics of organizational change. At the same time, the change agent should not take any expensive project that can be unsuccessful because of the negative political behavior of the people (Caldwell 2003). The seventh step is declaring the change slowly. In many organizations the changing process becomes failure because of the early declare of the victory. Therefore, the change agent needs to analyze the goals and the strategies to improving the change management process. The employees can use the Kaizen techniques for the improvements. The last step is guiding and mixing the change in the corporate culture. At this step, the change agent needs to communicate with the employees about the process of change at every time. At the same time, the values of change and the plan of change also need to be disclosed to the employees (Senior and Swailes 2010). The change agent of a company needs to use the different skills to manage the organizational change and the negative impact of political behavior of the employees because that helps the agent to detect the main source of negative political behavior and handle the situation in better manner (Burnes 2004). For example, if the change agent has very friendly relationship with the employees, then it becomes easier to find out the reason behind their political behavior. At the same time, it also helps the change agent to know the needs of the employees and the way in which they want to accept the change. It helps the change agent to take appropriate strategies to manage the situation. Reference list: Burnes, B. 2004. Emergent change and planned change competitors or allies?: The case of XYZ construction, International Journal of Operations and Production Management, 24(9): 886 902. Caldwell, R. 2003. Models of Change Agency: a Fourfold Classification, British Journal of Management, 14: 131142 Senior, B. and Swailes, S. 2010. Organizational Change. 4th Ed, Harlow: FT Prentice Hall Thomas, R and Hardy, C. 2011. Reframing resistance to organizational change, Scandinavian Journal of Management, 27(3): 322-331.