Part 1: Topic Selection
Pick out your two companies and their change. In 1 double spaced page, please submit your company selections, with a brief write-up on the changes you will be comparing in the two companies. Pick two companies which have undergone some type of fairly substantial change in the recent past. Find the company and the change information online, using EBSCO, or using a company's case described somewhere in our textbook. (See page 388 of the textbook index for page numbers and names of each of the cases described in the textbook.) Other ways to find information: utilize Google or Yahoo Finance, or Reuters, and look up Annual Reports of companies which interest you. Often reading the first sections of these reports (i.e. letters from CEO's) will give you ideas about changes they have gone through in the past year(s).
Be sure that:
-Your companies are publicly traded so that their information will be easy to research and find
-Your change in the two companies are comparable (i.e. don't compare a new CEO to a change in HRIS - DO compare two changes in CIO) and
-The changes happened in the recent past so that you will find plenty of online information about how they were handled, but not so recent that the information about the change "results" is still up in the air.
Part 2: The Change Analysis - Images of Change
Here's what to do:
-Working with the information that you provided in your topic proposal, and any feedback you have received from your Professor, flesh out the facts and information from your original proposal.
-Review the changes in each company and describe them thoroughly in a word document. Explain how the change impacted the companies, and who it impacted. Compare some of the similarities and differences between the change in the two companies.
-Look at your grid and pick three images of change from your grid. Fill out the empty blocks on the grid for those three images using outlines, bullet points, and rough ideas for both company's change.
-Now, in a Word document, analyze, compare and contrast the three images and explain how the behaviors of those images would be different or the same during your companies' changes, and how those differences could (or did) impact the success (or failure) of the change, comparing and contrasting the results at both companies.
-Explain which image (or combination of images) you feel would have best facilitated the described change and why.
-Based on the information you actually read about the results of this change, state which image you think the leader of the change actually resembled the most. You may speculate here on which image you feel best represents the "change agent" at either or both of the companies. This will depend on how much information you found about the internal workings of the company during the change.
Part 3: Diagnosing the Change
Select a Diagnostic Model that you utilize to review aspects of change activities and actions that have been taken by the companies chosen. Here we are looking at the "parts" of the companies as well as their strategies, as surmised by your research in Part 1. It is acknowledged that this information will not be complete, as you are looking at these companies as an outsider; but a thoroughly researched paper will give enough data to allow some (well-defended) assumptions on your part.
Here's what to do:
-Choose one Diagnostic Model (i.e. 6-box, 7S, congruence, or etc.) to apply to the two chosen companies. Choose the model which you feel best identifies and measures the relevant aspects of the organization's performance and therefore the diagnostic choices made will affect your findings.
-Apply the data obtained in your research through an analysis of the appropriate chosen model. This will allow you to create a diagnosis of where each company is today (as per the criteria of the model).
-Create a SWOT Analysis for each of the two chosen companies change plans/programs, utilizing information obtained in the diagnosis. (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats.)
-Compare the two company analyses to each other and offer your perspective (value judgment) of the effectiveness of the changes made to date in each case.
-Identify potential areas of resistance that may occur and at least one strategy to respond to each. (This will most likely come from your Weaknesses/Threats section of your SWOT. If not, take another look at your SWOT.)
-Write your paper including each of the above sections, and analyses
Part 4: Communicating the Change
An important part of any change project is how the change is communicated to the organization, to the change agents, to the line workers, to the customers, and to the public. Along with media relations issues, communicating change (especially in a publicly traded company) can involve multiple legal and regulatory aspects, as well as personnel and management concerns. Perhaps the single most difficult piece of handling Kotter's "establish a sense of urgency" is that too many inexperienced or immature change agents read this to mean "panic the troops." Never do this.
This project piece will have 3 parts:
-The main part of your project this week will ask you to pick ONE of the company's change plan, and develop a communication plan for the company. This plan should be submitted by using an excel spreadsheet, setting out the Stakeholders, the timeline of the communication plan, the method of communication, the rationale for why you chose this method of communication, the purpose of the communication and identifying "who" will do the communicating. The grid for this project can be found in doc-sharing, entitled "Grid for Communication Plan."
-Pick ONE of the communication pieces which you would have used which is listed in your communication plan, and write the communication in a Word document (either the text or the script, if the communication would have been oral.) Be sure to review the Week 6 lecture and the examples of communication plans and types there for more assistance on this piece of the project. If you use any form of communication from templates you find online or in a textbook, be sure to cite your source. Your instructor will grade this based on how well it relates to the audience/stakeholder group to which it is intended.
-The "real world" aspect of this project is that you will write a 1-2 page analysis of one of the media pieces about one of the company's changes written (or provided via oral media) by the company. For this section of the project, please analyze any media, news, or other communications which explained the change going on in the organization. Explain in your paper how the company handled communicating the change to its stakeholders.