301 : UNDERSTANDING INNOVATION AND CHANGE IN AN ORGANISATION

Leadership and Management

• A leader should think about the meaning of “change” with different perspectives: What is change? Why do we have to change? When to change? How to change? How to trigger change? The answers may differ from source to source, however, there is one thing that is constant is “change never stops”. Change equates with life, with our own personal, social, mental and physical development and with our ability to learn, to adapt, to play an active role in social and community activities. So, a leader should create his/her own style to adapt himself/herself and his/her organization to continuously changing environment.

Leading the change process means something above the management. A leader has to feel himself/herself as someone responsible from the ones managing the change process. A leader, has to add something on management functions. The process of change begins with organizational leaders developing an organizational strategy, then with the creation of an initiative that is aligned with that strategy. Leadership is related with change. If there is leadership then change is inevitable. Because, challenging status quo is one of main characteristics of leaders.

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Understand innovation and change in an organization

LEARNING OUTCOME 1

1.1 Explain the benefits of innovation and change for the organization

1.2 Identify the barriers to change and innovation in the organization

1.3 Explain practical ways of overcoming these barriers

1.1 Explain the benefits of innovation and change for the organization

• Innovation is a product, service, business model, or strategy that's both novel and useful. Innovations don't have to be major breakthroughs in technology or new business models; they can be as simple as upgrades to a company's customer service or features added to an existing product. For an idea to be innovative, it must also be useful. Creative ideas don't always lead to innovations because they don't necessarily produce viable solutions to problems

• INNOVATION MANAGEMENT is the discipline of managing innovations. It can be used to develop product/service, process or business model innovation starting from creative idea to launch.

• CHANGE MANAGEMENT is an approach to transitioning individuals, teams, and organizations from a current state A to a desired future state B.It involves the process, tools and techniques to manage the people-side of change to achieve a required business outcome.

Innovation in business can be grouped into two categories: sustaining and disruptive.

• Sustaining innovation: Sustaining innovation enhances an organization's processes and technologies to improve its product line for an existing customer base. It's typically pursued by incumbent businesses that want to stay a top their market

• Disruptive innovation: Disruptive innovation occurs when smaller companies challenge larger businesses. It can be classified into groups depending on the markets those businesses compete in. Low-end disruption refers to companies entering and claiming a segment at the bottom of an existing market, while new-market disruption denotes companies creating an additional market segment to serve a customer base the existing market doesn't reach.

THE IMPORTANCE OF INNOVATION

➢It allows adaptability:

The recent COVID-19 pandemic disrupted business on a monumental scale. Routine operations were rendered obsolete over the course of a few months. Many businesses still sustain negative results from this world shift because they’ve stuck to the status quo. Innovation is often necessary for companies to adapt and overcome the challenges of change.

➢It fosters growth

Stagnation can be extremely detrimental to your business. Achieving organizational and economic growth through innovation is key to staying afloat in today’s highly competitive world

➢It separates businesses from their competition

Most industries are populated with multiple competitors offering similar products or services. Innovation can distinguish your business from others.

Organizational change refers to the actions in which a company or business alters a major component of its organization, such as its culture, the underlying technologies or infrastructure it uses to operate, or its internal processes. Organizational change management is the process of guiding organizational change to a successful resolution, and it typically includes three major phases: preparation, implementation, and follow-through.

• Change leadership helps organizations during transitional periods by using the power of vision—translating a mission from paper to daily business operations. Too often, leaders miss opportunities to play specific roles throughout the change process. Understanding where one stands as a change leader, depending on the initiative and circumstances, is critical. There are three distinct roles one can adopt as a change leader that heed positive outcomes:

Agitator

• This role brings individuals’ or groups’ grievances to the forefront of public awareness and often results in preemptive organizational change. The agitator serves as a disrupter, acknowledging challenges and committing to action toward change that leads to solutions.

➢Innovator

• While the agitator reveals grievances, the innovator creates actionable solutions to address them. This role also serves as a planner.

➢Orchestrator

• The orchestrator takes the innovator’s plan and coordinates actions across groups, organizations, and sectors to scale the proposed solution. This is often the most visible function of effective leadership

TYPES OF ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE

• Adaptive changes are small, incremental changes organizations adopt to address needs that evolve over time. Typically, these changes are minor modifications and adjustments that managers fine-tune and implement to execute upon business strategies. Throughout the process, leadership may add, subtract, or refine processes

• Transformational changes have a larger scale and scope than adaptive changes. They can often involve a simultaneous shift in mission and strategy, company or team structure, people and organizational performance, or business processes. Because of their scale, these changes often take a substantial amount of time and energy to enact. Though it's not always the case, transformational changes are often pursued in response to external forces, such as the emergence of a disruptive new competitor or issues impacting a company’s supply chain.

Change process

➢Remaining relevant

• The process of change can help businesses remain relevant in industries that also change frequently. This can also encourage a healthy relationship between an organization and its consumers.

➢Encouraging innovation

• The process of change can encourage innovation by allowing a team the chance to test new ideas. This can lead to new developments in strategies and products.

➢Developing skills

• The process of change can help give employees and the teams on which they work ideas on which skills to develop. These skills can lead to other changes that ensure a company has the ability to evolve

➢Creating new opportunities

• The process of change can encourage the creation of new opportunities. This can include new markets, unique target demographics and collaborations with other companies.

➢Improving staff morale

• The process of change can also lead to the improvement of staff morale. Changes in an organization can lead to higher efficiency and can help staff members avoid burnout from repetition.

The benefits of change and the consequences of not changing

Benefits of change

➢Improved communication and collaboration between employees

• Improved communication and collaboration between employees is one of the major benefits of change management. This can help to ensure that everyone agrees and that they are working towards the same goal. Improved communication can also help to reduce conflict between employees and can improve team morale. Collaboration between employees can also lead to new and innovative ideas. This can help to improve the organization and can help it stay competitive in the market.

➢Increased employee productivity and job satisfaction

• Employees who participate in the change process are more likely to be productive and satisfied with their jobs. They will feel like they are a part of the change, and they will be more likely to support it.Employees who are not actively involved in the change process may feel left out or may resist the change. This can lead to decreased productivity and job satisfaction. Change management helps ensure employees are included in the process and understand what is happening.

➢Reduced stress levels and fewer workplace accidents

• The change management process can help to reduce stress levels and minimize the number of workplace accidents. This is because change management helps to ensure that changes are made in a safe and controlled way. Employees are more likely to be anxious if they believe their employers are forcing them to alter their work without providing any input or control. Change management allows employees to have a say in the change process and gives them a sense of ownership. This can help to reduce stress levels and prevent workplace accidents.

➢Better decision making due to streamlined processes

• One of the major benefits of change management is that it helps to ensure that changes are made in a safe and controlled way. This can help to improve decision-making in organizations. It can lead to confusion if changes are made in an unsystematicmanner. This can make it difficult to make decisions and can cause problems for the organization. Change management helps to ensure that changes are made in a coordinated way. This can help to improve communication between employees and can lead to better decision-making.

• Resistance to change does has effects on organizational change management. Resistanceemerges in different and unexcepted forms. It can be individual or at organizational level; it may be organized or unorganized. It can be overt or covert. Regardless of its type and extent, there are some negative effects of resistance to change and there may be some positive side of resistance to change.

➢Reduced performance

• The obvious negative effect of resistance to change is on productivity of employees. Their performance drops when they’re not motivated about their work and not willing to embrace change. Subsequently, it adversely affects organizational performance. This situation calls for a vigilant effort from leaders and change agents. Besides keeping an eye on performance and productivity of employees they should also focus on listening to genuine concerns of employees.

➢Employees turnover

• Most often than not employees resist change because they view it as a threat to status quo. This feeling of uncertainty causes stress and employees are soon burn-out. And it is natural that when employees feel burn-out they start thinking of quitting their job. Therefore, change leaders should be very careful about employees’ turn over during implementing change.

➢Conflicts

• Employees tend to be aggressive when they resist change. This causes conflict and disruptive conditions such as strikes at workplace. Conflicts usually happen due to worsened relationship between management and employees. When change leaders forcefully throw change on their employee who in return respond in negative arguments and quarrels. There are conflicts within employees due to difference of opinion about change.

➢Delayed Execution of change

• During the planning phase, change leaders usually don’t anticipate resistance and how it will affect change. But when they actually face it and try to manage it then it is the timeline which suffer most. Unrealistic timelines should be avoided and there should be flexibility in revisiting schedules and plans when organization is facing resistance from employees.

➢Additional financial cost

• There is always a financial cost of resistance to change. Organizations suffer losses when its productivity is reduced due to resistance by unmotivated employees. Time and other resources are wasted when experienced employees leave organization and entire change initiative is delayed. Same is true for conflicts such as strikes which cost any organization heavy financial losses and reputation as well.

The role of change in the survival and prosperity of organizations

Organizational survival and growth are implicit organizational goals requiring the investment of energy and resources (Jones & Bartlet, 2008). Organization that does not have survival as a primary objective or goal should have re-think (Gross, 1968). The goal of organizational survival underpins all other goals (Gross, 1968). Paying attention to this goal contributes to the satisfaction and execution of other organizational goals. Gross (1968) argued that the concept of survival is an unwritten law of every organization. This suggests that every organization should see survival as an absolute prerequisite for its serving any interestwhatsoever.

• Technological innovations have multiplied, products and knowhow are fast becoming obsolete.

• Basic resources have progressively become more expensive.

• Competition has sharply increased.

• Environmental and consumer interest groups have become highly influential.

• The drive for social equity has gained momentum

• The economic inter-dependence among countries has become more apparent

• Each organization desires to advance, grow and develop. Hence the organization should achieve flexibility to meet the growth and development needs. Leaders/managers constantly work for making the organization dynamic and flexible to achieve growth and development. So whenever experiences or foresees inflexibility, organizational changes are to be carried out. Changes under such circumstances benefit the organization as a whole. Because of above causes, organizational changes can take place in all, some or any of the following internal changes:

• 1.Employee goal changes

• 2. Work/job technology changes

• 3. Organizational structure changes

• 4. Organizational climate changes

• 5. Organizational goal changes.

Concepts of creativity and innovation and their significance for organisational success and change management

• According to West (2002), creativity is distinct from innovation as it encompasses the processes leading to the generation of new ideas to create value for individuals, organisations . The term innovation is used to describe the use of these new ideas, products or methods where they have not been used before (Eurostat Community Innovation Survey (CIS) 2015). Innovation intentionally introduces ideas, processes, products or procedures which are new to that job, work team or organisation, and which are designed to benefit the job, the work team or the organisation.

• Creativity and innovation within a well-run organization have always been a sure pathway to business success.

• Stimulating creativity and exploring new ideas and digital business strategies increase the organization’s productivity

• Creativity and innovation improve an organization’s problemsolving ability

• Creative problem solving that competitive edge that any business seeks to achieve

• Creativity and innovation are only possible when change occurs. Encourage employees to cultivate and implement new ideas. Allow team members to develop initiatives that align with their interests. Someone passionate about a particular idea or concept can spread the excitement to other.

• When leaders are creative, they promote creative way of thinking throughout the entire organization. An innovation culture inspires creativity. Team members feel comfortable sharing ideas because they know their voices are heard.

1.2 Identify the barriers to change and innovation in the organization/ Barriers to change and innovation – how to identify them and other difficulties in implementing change

The barriers to change and innovation in the organization are

• limited understandingof the change and its impact

• negativeemployee attitudes

• failure to involveemployees in the change process

• poor or inefficient communication

• inadequateresources or budget

• inadequateorganisational infrastructure.

• resistance to organisational culture shift

• lack of management support for the change

• lack of commitment to change

• past experience of failed change initiatives

• lack of skills

• lack of staff

• difficulties in establishing service

• absence of equipment required for the change

Difficulties in Implementing change

➢Lack of Proper Planning

• Without step-by-step planning, change in an organization is likely to fall apart or cause more problems than benefits. One need to understand exactly what changes will take place and how those changes will occur. The timeline for the change is also a key component. One need to plan for downtime or difficulties in completing regular work tasks while the change occurs.

➢Low Employee Morale

• Low morale becomes a barrier to the organizational change because the staff is likely to resist the changes. That resistance will make it difficult for a leader to facilitate a smooth transition and may impact productivity and efficiency as well.

When employees are unhappy with leaders decisions, they are far less likely to implement those decisions in a manner that helps the company achieve success.

• The decision to implement changes should come from the top level of the organization. All management level staff needs to be on board and able to deal with the changes or you may face dissent within the staff. Showing managers how the changes will affect the company and the steps for implementing the changes can help get them on board if they initially have reservations.

➢Adopting New Technology

• One challenge is integrating new technology with the existing platforms in a way that doesn’t cause huge logistical issues. Another challenge is getting the staff up to date on how to use the new technology. employees are the “end user” when it comes to implementing a new system at the workplace. Communicating the specific ways in which the technology will streamline work processes is an effective way of overcoming this barrier.

• Employees want to know what's going on, whether it is positive or negative news. The feeling of uncertainty when management doesn't communicate disrupts work and makes employees feel as if they aren't a part of the decision. Keep employees updated regularly about the plans and progress toward the change implementation. Involve all employees as much as possible through meetings or brainstorming sessions to help during the planning phase.

1.3Explain practical ways of overcoming these barriers/ Means of overcoming barriers and difficulties including unfreezing and freezing techniques

• Unfreeze, Change, Refreeze or Kurt Lewin's change management model is a model to understand and manage organizational change. It aims to understand why change occurs, implement the necessary changes and normalize them in the organization's day-to-day operations. The ultimate goal is to change the status quo with minimal effect on processes or employees, while ensuring maximum Return on Investment

• First, a team or organization must unfreeze their current process and perceptions when preparing for upcoming changes. This helps the team approach the task or challenge with a clean slate without bias or bad habits. Past behaviors, ways of thinking, processes, people, and organizational structures must be thoroughly examined to demonstrate the necessity for change to establish or uphold a competitive edge in an evolving marketplace.

Change

• Once the team or organization is no longer frozen, it’s time to implement change. Lewin recognized this was a time marked with uncertainty and fear—making it the most arduous step to complete. During this step, employees begin to learn new behavior, processes, and ways of thinking. For this reason, clear and constant communication across all are critical for employees as they become familiar with the change both during and after deployment.

• Finally, it’s time to refreeze. Assuming that the changes made to behaviors, processes, and ways of thinking are accepted, the refreeze step locks the new norm or status quo into place. Lewin found this step to be particularly crucial to ensure that teams and organizations would not revert back to their old way and past habits before the change was implemented.

Means of overcoming barriers and difficulties to change are

➢Communication and Education-

• Employees need to be informed properly and educated about the need for change in the organisation.Deliberate efforts must be made by leaders and change agents to inform and educate employees at all levels about the importance of change.

Active participation

• It is important for representation of the different levels of employees in the design and implementation of the change program. Change shouldn’t be forced on people hence there should be consultations at different stages of the cycle. Collaboration between stakeholders and change leaders will lead to less resistance and a higher likelihood of success

Allocate enough resources

• It takes more than commitment to implement change programs successfully. Assessing the resources necessary to make change happen helps managers ensure their teams have what they need before and during implementation. This ensures changes are carried out in a timely fashion and prevents employee frustrations.

Provide training

• Training is essential when implementing major changes, especially if new skills are involved. Training ensures employees know what is expected of them and how to do their jobs after changes have been implemented. Implementing change without training can lead to failure and frustration among employees who aren't yet up to speed.

Support

• change involves new ways of working and carrying out task in most cases.

Employees experience anxiety because there is a shift from long established habits and routines. Leaders and change agents should be ready to provide support by coaching mentoring and guiding employees through new routines and tasks and being patient while they master the new skill

➢Negotiation and agreement-

• Organization can engage employees to discuss the effects of changes with a view to allaying their fears. Incentives can be negotiated and agreed upon to further strengthen the acceptance of the change across the organization

Coercion

• Coercion may be the only option available when the organization requires speed in implementation change. This happens when organization face a race against time to implement change or faced extinction. At such critical times employees are coerced to fall in line and accept change

• People become connected to the way that things have always been done. There are often strong emotional connections to processes and procedures that employees may have been at least partly responsible for developing. To bond with the old may require a Herculean effort. One strategy is to co-opt those who may be most resistant to change into central roles in the implementation of change initiatives. This can gain the support of would-be resistors relatively cheaply, though it does come with a caveat placing people who are deemed to be resistant to change in such positions could give them a position from which to influence greater resistance across a wider audience.

Remain positive and supportive

• People find change unsettling, even though change is a constant in personal lives as well as professional environments. They will need the support of a positive leader who inspires free thought, honest communication and creativity, as personal and team development is encouraged. Employees expect leaders to manage change. Inspirational leaders create a culture where change becomes the remit of all.

Suggestive Readings

• https://online.hbs.edu/

• https://smallbusiness.chron.com/change-important-organization728.html

• Gebretsadik, G. (2013) The Determinants of Resistance to Change Management Process.

• https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327475524_THE_EFFECT_ OF_CHANGE_MANAGEMENT_ON_ORGANISATIONAL_SURVIVAL

• https://www.economicsdiscussion.net/management/importance-ofmanagement/importance-of-management/32365

• https://www.nibusinessinfo.co.uk/

• https://www.researchgate.net/publication/248497237_Creativity_and_Innovation_in_orga nizations_Two_models_and_managerial_implications

• https://smallbusiness.chron.com/

• https://journals.sagepub.com/

• Smith ,C.(2015).5 Barriers to change management and how to easily overcome them.

• https://change.walkme.com/organizational-change-definition-by-authors/

LEARNING OUTCOME 2

• Understand how to plan, monitor and review the implementation and communication of innovation and change in an organisation

2.1 Describe which planning, monitoring and review techniques could be used to manage innovation and change

2.2Explain why communication is important in successful implementation of innovation and change

2.1Describe which planning, monitoring and review techniques could be used to manage innovation and change

• There are a number of tools available to aid planning, monitoring and reviewing changes .some of them are

• Kotter's 8 step change model

• PDSA-Plan ,Do,Study,Act

• GANTT charts-planning Activities

• SMART –

Specific,Measurable,Attainable,Rele vant ,Time bound

• RACI-Roles and responsibilities

Kotter's 8-StepChange Model

➢Creating an Urgency-This can be done in the following ways:

• Identifying and highlighting the potential threats and the repercussions which might crop up in the future.

• Examining the opportunities which can be tapped through effective interventions.

• Initiate honest dialogues and discussions to make people think over the prevalent issues and give convincing reasons to them.

• Request the involvement and support of the industry people, key stakeholders and customers on the issue of change.

➢Forming Powerful Guiding Coalitions

• This can be achieved in the following ways:

• Identifying the effective change leaders in your organizations and also the key stakeholders

• requesting their involvement and commitmenttowards the entire process.

➢Form a powerful change coalition who would be working as a team.

• Identify the weak areas in the coalition teams and ensure that the team involves many influential

• people from various cross functional departments and working in different levels in the company.

➢Developing a Vision and a Strategy-This can be achieved by

• Determining the core values, defining the ultimate vision and the strategies for realizing a change in an organization.

• Ensure that the change leaders can describe the vision effectively and in a manner that people can easily understand and follow.

➢Communicating the Vision

• Communicate the change in the vision very often powerfully and convincingly. Connect the vision with all the crucial aspects like performance reviews, training, etc.

• Handle the concerns and issues of people honestly and with involvement.

➢Removing Obstacles

• Ensure that the organizational processes and structure are in place and aligned with the overall organizational vision.

• Continuously check for barriers or people who are resisting change. Implement proactive actions to remove the obstacles involved in the process of change.

• Reward people for endorsing change and supporting in the process.

➢Creating Short-Term Wins

• By creating short term wins early in the change process, you can give a feel of victory in the early stages of change.

• Create many short term targets instead of one long-term goal, which are achievable and less expensive and have lesser possibilities of failure.

• Reward the contributions of people who are involved in meeting the targets.

➢ Consolidating Gains

• Achieve continuous improvement by analyzing the success stories individually and improving from those individual experiences.

Anchoring Change in the Corporate Culture

• Discuss the successfulstories related to change initiatives on every given opportunity.

• Ensure that the change becomes an integral part in your organizational culture and is visible in every organizational aspect.

• Ensure that the support of the existing company leaders as well as the new leaders continue to extend their support towards the change.

• PDSA

• The four stages of the PDSA cycle are:

• Plan – the change to be tested or implemented

• Do – carry out the test or change

• Study – based on the measurable outcomes agreed before starting out, collect data

• before and after the change and reflect on the impact of the change and what was learned

• Act – plan the next change cycle or full implementation.

GANTT charts-planning Activities

• A Gantt chart is a project planning tool that can be used to represent the timing of the tasks required to complete a project. Because they are simple to understand and easy to construct they are used by most managers for all but the the most complex projects.

Construction of Gantt chart

• Each task takes up one row

• Dates run along the top in increments of days ,weeks or months

• The expected time for each task is represented by a horizontal bar whose left end marks the expected beginning of the task and the right end marks the expected completion date.

• Task may run sequentially in parallel or overlapping

The Main Benefits of Gantt Charts

➢It Provides a High-Level Overview

• A Gantt chart provides an overall perspective of a project and its timeline for both those who are deeply involved and those with less participation, such as executives and other stakeholders.

➢A Gantt chart is visually appealing and easy to understand.

• It provides critical information about tasks at a glance, including the order in which they begin and their duration.

• It Improves Efficiency and Helps Manage Resources

• A Gantt chart can help ensure that leaders and workers manage their time and resources effectively. Project leaders can use it to set realistic schedules and allocate resources based on those schedules, including assigning the right people to the right tasks. It can also help project members come up with workarounds for potential problems before a project starts.

It Allows for Better Tracking:

A Gantt chart enables project leaders and members to closely track tasks, benchmarks, and overall workflow. The chart can reveal possible constraints or issues and allow project leaders and members to adjust accordingly.

It Illustrates Overlaps and Dependencies

• A Gantt chart clearly communicates how tasks in a project might overlap. It also shows how the beginning of one task can be dependent on the completion of another task. That kind of information allows project leaders to schedule work and provide resources in a way that doesn’t impede the progress of a project.

It Boosts Productivity:

A Gantt chart allows for collaboration among workers to boost their productivity. The highlevel visibility of a Gantt chart helps people stay focused on the tasks they must complete. That visibility also ensures the accountability of all team members regarding their tasks.

➢It Allows You to Balance Multiple Projects:

• A Gantt chart allows managers to easily track multiple projects. It then enables those managers to balance the work on each project because the chart indicates how to provide the right resources at the right time.

➢It Makes Complex Information Manageable:

• The visual clarity that a Gantt chart provides can help simplify a complex set of tasks. The chart displays tasks clearly and simply for the people who must do the work. Such transparency enables team members to stay focused and avoid becoming overwhelmed by a large number of tasks.

It Motivates Team Members:

Gantt chart enables team members to visualize their tasks, thereby motivating them to do their work on the project. Team members can view the project moving forward and watch other members completing their tasks. The chart also shows how certain tasks can’t begin until another task is completed. All that visibility enables people to complete their tasks well and on time.

Network plan

Following are the main steps in efficient network plan

➢Orient the project.

• Organize the project and ensures that it is well defined, clearly understood, and realistically scheduled. The project team members begin by identifying the project's objectives and scope. They then try to understand all of the issues connected with the problem to be solved and identify the elements to be modeled. Finally, they document and rate the significance of the planning issues, and then create a schedule for the network analysis, complete with deadlines.

➢Define the Variables

• Involves defining relevant constraints, documenting assumptions, and writing any formulas or algebraic expressions that will be used to model the network. Constraints are physical limitations or policies that restrict the capacities and capabilities of locations and lanes and their resources. Assumptions are descriptions of typical or anticipated conditions that are used to clarify the model's scope, simplify the model, and/or describe the manner in which some variables will be treated.

➢Analyze the Sensitivities

• The ultimate purpose of this step is to validate the model. Validation compares the model's results to the actual performance of the current network for the modeled period. This exercise builds credibility. The smaller the variance, the more accurate the model— and the greater the acceptance of the model's results. Notes and explanations on the worksheet explain any changes that were made to the model and the reasons for the variances between its results and the network's actual performance.

➢Create Scenario

• The planners develop scenarios that represent alternative network plans. Each scenario makes one or more of the following changes to the baseline model

• adding or deleting products or locations

• adding or deleting resources

• adding or deleting transportation lanes

• changing which locations serve which customer demand

• changing network flows and sources of supply

• adding or relaxing constraints

➢ Evaluate the Alternatives

• In this step the planners evaluate the alternative network plans that were developed in Step 4, and those involved in decision making compare and select the most preferred plan evaluation using the Alternatives Analysis Worksheet, typically takes two forms:

• Cost analysis—comparing relevant costs among the scenarios and their network plans.

• Intangible analysis—considering factors that cannot be easily modeled or measured in economic terms.

➢Detail and Do

• The network plan must, of course, be implemented by professionals in the field. But the network planners should be involved first, so they can better understand what is required to implement change, and second, so they can confirm the effectiveness of their recommendations. During implementation, it is a good idea to periodically measure performance against the schedule and take action, if needed, to keep the project moving.

2.2Explain why communication

successful implementation of innovation and change

• It is noted that within much of the change management literature, communication is important to the success of change programs According to Lewis (2000) communication and organizational change are inextricably linked processes. In fact, communication is a crucial lever for change management. It is a key component to the developing change initiatives and implementing them. Communication is more than just telling someone something; it aims to answer employees’ questions and reduce their anxiety in order to keep them motivated

is important in

Effective communication is important to the success of change management. The correlation between change management and communication can help organizations and individuals to cope with change and its effects. In fact, communication plays a crucial role in developing and implementing change initiatives. Effective communication via multiple ways including speaking, writing, video, training and bulletin boards is a tool for informing, motivating, and coordinating as well as improving employees’ change skills, making them ready for change and making sure they’re engaged in change process

The importance of communication during change is not only informing, motivating and coordinating but also managing employee expectations. Managers should notice that communication during change management is not one-way and directive. They should give employees enough time to ask questions, explain their concerns and opinions about change, and share their ideas. The change leaders or managers must clearly communicate the vision, the mission, and the objectives of the change

The importance of communicationin change management is ➢Information Sharing

Communication is used to announce organizational changes and to provide stakeholders with information about the nature, timing, and significance of the change . It is critical to communicating information (e.g., mission statements and goal achievement status) during change. Failure to share information or to inform people adequately of why changes are necessary, viewed as having a highly negative impact

Participation

• Communication can break down when employees are not involved in the change process. Indeed, involving employees from start to finish in any program has always been considered as a good management practice Change will be more effective when organizations bring employees into planning and organizing the process. Moreover, employees who have helped plan and implement the change will embrace it rather that resist it.

Vision and Motivation

• The employees’ understanding of the reasons for change is dependent on their relationship with the organization, the level of trust they have in management and the beliefs hold by their coworkers . Communication can be utilized to convey the vision, set the goals, and high- light the important drivers for changing existing organizational attitudes, beliefs, and practices

➢Compliance:

• Change efforts can produce high-levels of anxiety, and communication is needed to determine employee responses to change, reduce potential fears, and encourage the establishment of social support systems among employees. Resistance to change can be reduced by discussing and negotiating the more sensitive aspects of change. Managers job is to recognize employees’ anxiety, fear, and stress and help them channel these negative feelings toward a positive end.

Feedback

• Change efforts require the structuring of communication processes that provide employees feedback about their performance during change initiatives and provide feedback to management regarding strengths and weaknesses of the change initiative . With detailed feedback that includes such factors as quality, quantity, and timeliness, people can become self-corrective and can more easily understand the big picture.

Ensuring that the Leaders of the Organization actively communicate in the entire process of change

• The leaders of the organization must convey how important the change is and must reflect their personal and visible commitment towards the entire process of change, as this will be sending a powerful messageto the key stakeholders about how seriously an organization is committed towards the implementation of change.

➢Using various channels or mediums for communicatingthe message of change

• Care should be taken in understanding how people learn about change from different mediums of communication.For visual learners, documented materials may best appeal and help them in understanding the change vision and for effective listeners, importance should be given to the presentation style and selection of words for impressing such category of stakeholders

➢Providing Opportunities for Exchange of Dialogue or Conversation

• Providing opportunities for discussion and facilitating a two-way communication with the stakeholders creates a sense of ownership and fosters a sense of responsibility among the stakeholders.

Repeating the Messages of Change Periodically

• Regular communication of the change message facilitates a greater understanding of the objective of the change and there will be a much greater probability that people will act in accordance with the requirements of the changing situation and extend their cooperation accordingly.

Suggestive reading

• https://www.managementstudyguide.com/kotters-8-step-model-of-change.htm

• https://www.bath.ac.uk/publications/change-management-toolkit/attachments/changemanagement-toolkit-project-management-quick-guide.pdf

• https://www.researchgate.net/publication/260220013_Communication_as_a_Crucial_Le ver_in_Change_Management

• https://www.england.nhs.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/qsir-pdsa-cycles-model-forimprovement.pdf.

LEARNING OUTCOME 3

• Understand the effects of innovation and change on people and teams in an organization

• 3.1Explain possible human effects of innovation and change upon people and teams in an organization

3.1Explain possible human effects of innovation and change upon people and teams in an organisation

• Change and how it is handled can strengthen, weaken or stabilize a team. People react to change in many different ways and for very individual reasons. It is important for managers to be aware of how each of member of a team deals with change. How do you handle change? How does your reaction directly impact the dynamic and efficiency of your team? There are typically four distinct behavioural reactions to change:

• Leaders are accountable to assemble teams and lead them to optimal performance outcomes. An effective leader recognizes the importance of embracing differences in people and knows how to connect the dots amongst those differences to get the best outcomes from the team. This is what cultivates a workplace environment of continuous improvements, innovation and initiative. Leaders must foster a commitment from the team to embrace an innovation mindset where each employee learns to apply the differences that exist in one another for their own success and that of the organization.

➢Trust Yourself Enough to Trust Other

• Innovation requires breaking down the old rules of thought and creating new ones. This means each member of the team must become more transparent than ever before. As such, each member of the team must trust themselves enough to trust each other. This can be accomplished when one becomes more patient, a better listener and over time more grateful for the new experiences and relationships that are being formed.

➢Collaborate and Discover

• Collaboration is not just about working closely together, but also about taking leaps of faith together to discover new ways of thinking and create greater outcomes. one never know which idea will take shape into the new innovation that creates impact and influence in the marketplace – whether a new process, product, packaging, piece of knowledge, etc

➢Communicate to Learn

Without strong communication, teams can’t find their rhythm and they certainly won’t find the things they are looking for to build trust and collaborate. The manner in which you communicate sets the tone and propels thinking in a variety of directions that leads to new innovations.A team should view themselves as an innovation lab –constantly challenging each other to learn from each other’s ideas and ideals and to plant the seeds for future innovations.

➢Be a Courageous Change Agent

• Every leader must become a change agent or face extinction. As such, their teams must equally be charged to do the same. Accepting the role of a change agent means taking on an entrepreneurial attitude, embracing risk as the new normal, and beginning to see opportunity in everything. As you do, innovation becomes second nature.

➢

Course Correct to Perfect

• Course correction also keeps people on their toes and teaches them to adapt to new environments, where they can showcase their abilities and skill-sets to new people and personalities in different situations and circumstances. While the business world is in constant search of the next big thing, leaders must remember that they don’t so much need to be inventive as they do innovative

➢People who thrive on change

• With their direct, results-oriented approach they embrace quick decisions and changes, new products and procedures. They are usually the ones that initiate the change activity within a team and challenge the status quo.

➢People who are not bothered by change

• They are the optimists, their enthusiasm and creative solutions to handling change keeps everyone motivated during flux situations.

➢People who resist change and need time to prepare

• They are steady decision makers and do not like to be rushed. They will put-up with change and it may not be easy to tell how deeply they are impacted by the changes around them until much later.

➢People who are concerned with the effects of change

• Cautious and careful they are the objective thinkers on the team and seek to maintain the high standards regardless of the changes going on around them.

When communicating change to a team, a leader should:

• Host regular team meetings to communicate upcoming changes

• Discuss positive and negative implications

• Provide a reason to adopt the change and create a shared understanding with the team

• Allow employees opportunities to question, challenge and propose alternatives in the change process

• Assess potential barriers and resistance

Change fatigue and its adverse effects

• Change fatigue is a phenomenon that represents the overwhelming feeling of stress, exhaustion and burnout associated with rapid and continuous change in the workplace (McMillan & Perron, 2013). The concepts of "change fatigue" and "excessive change"

appear within the literature pertaining to a variety of industries and identify the adverse effects of repeated or poorly managed change initiatives, or where changes are implemented without opportunity for a period of recovery or stabilization

There are mainly 6 signs of change fatigue

• Outsider increasingly questioning the value ?objective of change effort

• Change effort leaders? Coordinators are stressed out and or leaving

• Reluctance to share or comment on data about the effort

• Budget and resources are diverted to other strategic initiatives

• Customer impatience with duration of change effort

• Key leaders not attending progress reviews

Strategies to Overcome Change Fatigue

➢Build Change Resilience

• One way to protect employees against the fear of business change is to grow their confidence and trust. A negative response is only natural, but can be counteredwith a strong positive mindset. Building trust enhances employee wellbeing and reduces the propensity for staff to exaggerate negative aspects of the change.

Implement communication plan

• Communication is the biggest influence on transformation success. At companies where management communicate openly about the transformation’s progress, employees are 8 times more likely to report a successful outcome. Be transparent throughout each change initiative. Employees need context about what’s driving the change and what the process will be.

➢ Visualize the Future State

• Encourage employees to visualize the outcome. Incorporate visual representations, particularly if the change is a less tangible one (such as to core computer systems). Doing this will increase positive perspectives and reduce the uncertainty that undermines employees’ willingness to accept change.

Improve Employee Engagement

• Workplaces afflicted with low morale are at greater risk of employee change fatigue. Disengaged staff often feel disconnected with the company. Their lack of involvement can breed an isolation which is harder to redress. Improving employee engagement also increases the potential for encouraging change advocates whose positivity can influence colleagues and lift overall employee sentiment.

Reframe the Change

• Change the focus and tone of messaging from one of change to continual evolution. This distinction removes the ‘spikes’ in reactions, smoothing these out over time without diminishing the overall impact.

Changes are seen in the context of wider company evolution, rather than as a series of major events which cause uncertainty and raise red flags for staff. This strategy also helps equip the organization to sustain improvements over time.

Consider Emotional Resonance

• As humans, we’re all emotional creatures. Changes in any part of our lives will affect us emotionally – both positively and negatively.

Overcoming change fatigue involves understanding how employees’ emotional response (that is, the well-known four stages of shock, denial, anger and acceptance) affects their professional response.

➢Fix What Matters

• Think about how you can delve deeper to find out what actually concerns or frustrates them. There are a range of tools available to achieve this, depending on how visible or covert you wish the observations to be. Analysis of sentiments expressed over intranet social channels, multi-format employee surveys and anonymous staff interviews can all provide valuable insights.

Ways to organize and co-ordinate resources and activities to achieve planned innovation and change

• When planning and organizing projects in the workplace, it’s important to be able to figure out what resources are required and coordinate, or organize them in the best way. The size of the project will determine what type and how many resources will be required. Usually the larger the project, the more resources you will have to coordinate. Unless you have a process in place, coordinating many different types of resources can be stressful.

➢Understand which resources are in short supply and focus on them

• Focus on these constrained resources, and plan around their availability, to help avoid bottlenecks and unnecessary delays. employ the 80/20 rule, where basically 80% of the effects (or resource constraints) come from 20% of the resources. These are the people in high demand to do the work.

Agree on a common approach to prioritizing work across shared resources

• Create an agreed-upon scoring/evaluation process in advance to help facilitate objective decision making. Monitor unplanned work that can steal from the capacity and create hidden delays. Keep in mind that overcommitting people can lead to quality problems and a reduction in overall throughput.

➢Embrace different ways of working across the organization and resources

• Different types of work, and even different groups within the organization, may benefit from a specific methodology. As such, ensure that the tools and selected approaches align and create efficiencies. At higher levels, a more standardized roll up can provide the metrics needed for a comprehensive view of the organization. This will enable the organization to plan, manage, and deliver work utilizing a range of methodologies such as traditional or milestone-driven, iterative, agile, and even collaborative work

• Recognize that conflicts will occur because unexpected events and changes are inevitable (and more frequently than we would like!).Work together to resolve resource conflicts based on the immediate and downstream priorities

➢Realize resource management is an ongoing process

Manage work and resources uses a blend of granularities

• Planning work, managing assignments, and reporting time doesn’t all have to utilize the same granularity. Find the balance that works for each situation. Planning work is often the most granular, while time reporting may be elevated to simplify the reporting process of those tracking time, which leads to a greater level of accuracy.

When assigning resources to work, long-term assignments often work best at the high-levels while near-term assignments tend to be well understood allowing for more detailed planning

➢Plan work

• Consider traditional tasks with start/finish dates and durations for formally defined work and less formal lists to handle lightweight assignments

• Align projects and other work to the strategic outcomes they are meant to support

• Utilize automated processes where possible to reduce administration

➢Report time

• Remember that different groups may be more reluctant to time reporting, so keep things simple and easy (especially in the beginning)

• Further ease adoption by tracking time in the execution tool of the resources’ choice

• Utilize actuals to assess performance and understand trends to improve future planning

Apply assignment types that align to the business needs

Utilize unnamed role-based resources for longterm planning, or when the specific resource isn’t known in advance

Soft-booking of named resources can benefit medium-term planning and prioritization processes

Hard-book named resources for the short-term when detailed information is known

➢Account for non-project time

• Ensure that administrative time, paid time off, etc. are accounted for when planning in both the long and short terms

• unexpected project activities should be considered, be sure to provide a mechanism to capture this time –otherwise the leader will lose visibility to this reduction of capacity

• Realize there will be a natural time loss from common, everyday items, such as administrative tasks (e.g., email, general meetings, etc.)

➢Avoid or limit multi-tasking

• Multi-tasking sounds efficient, but often results in lower overall productivity

• Try to limit the number of parallel tasks and the resources will perform better

• Last but certainly not least, take care of the resources because turnover causes a tremendous loss in productivity/capacity

• Offer training programs and don’t over-utilize to reduce burnout

➢Keeping most valuable assets and resources productive and happy

Direct and indirect aspects of innovation and change – human and financial effects upon other people, departments and organizations

➢Firm-level resources: financial resources

• Financial resources can be a source of competitive advantage even though they are not themselves unique or difficult to imitate. This is mostly because firms that have financial resources can take advantage of new opportunities and are better equipped to respond to threats from their environments. Firms with financial resources are therefore have the “means

"to put into activities that can increase firm innovation

Contd

Studies show that firms that are better off financially can invest more in processes that will enable them to create new products. Studies on firm innovation also indicate that organizations with greater financial resources invest more in innovative activities, because they can afford to take more risk and can absorb the cost of failure more easily. Financial resources stimulate more innovation because more financial resources mean more flexibility to experiment with new ideas, bringing in more and better qualified people to generate ideas, supporting more customer surveys, and more prototype testing which are all potentially draining financial resources

➢Firm-level resources: slack resources

• Organizational slack is the resource difference between those under a firm’s control and the minimum amount required for its survival .Slack can be regarded as a sort of resource endowment because slack, or its absence, is the cumulative legacy of past performance and reflects the resource stock that a firm has accumulated over time .

Organizational slack has been broadly conceptualized along at least two dimensions- absorbed slack and unabsorbed slack

➢Human slack

• Human slack, which is the investment in capabilities and skills in human resources above the level required for task completion is not easily redeployable. Human slack is context dependent and is more tied to the nature of organizational routines than cash slack . In other words, it is not easy to deploy one employee for the other or benefit from him/her for a different type of work without a certain adjustment period. Overall, human expertise and knowledge is more difficult to transfer across situations than more generic slack resources.

➢Network-level resources: network size

• Inter-firm-level relationships enable firms to access critical resources and create competitive advantages. Therefore, firm’s inter-firm relationships constitute its “network resources "because they extend the opportunity set of the firm. firms operating in industries where know-how is critical must develop skills necessary for both in-house research and cooperative research with external partners. In certain industry, particularly with close relationships in co authorships, research collaboration networks facilitate the flow of knowledge among organization. These networks also offer the firm the benefit of extended know-how.

Contd

For a network resource to produce valuable out comes such as innovation, cooperation, proximity, repeated exchanges are necessary to effectively transfer tacit knowledge among network members .Such repetitive exchanges require human capital beyond the requirement for the ongoing activities of the firm. The larger network the firm has, the more the need for human slack is. Having a large network and coordinating human resources with the sustainability of the network-based relationships will give the firm an opportunity to use its firm-level human slack in an efficient manner

Contd

Innovation and change requires some level of change. Change requires learning, however humans and organizations tend to learn as a rection to events. Business incentives provide additional motivation to exploit existing knowledge. The change triggers that will motivate the investment in new learning come from both internal and external sources and includes

Contd

External triggers

• Customer needs ,desire or expectation

• Competitive offers New technology

• Changing demographics

• Economic cycles

• Geo political events

• Environmental change

• Societal change

• Industry structural changes

• Regulation change

Internal triggers

• Decision

• Problems in operation

• Company growth or decline

• Leadership and personnel changes

Suggestive Reading

• https://hbr.org/2005/10/the-hard-side-of-changemanagement

• https://iveybusinessjournal.com/

• https://www.researchgate.net/publication/254074193_Leadi ng_for_Innovation_Direct_and_Indirect_Influences

• https://www.researchgate.net/publication/325048056_The_i mpact_of_firm_resources_on_innovation