Implementing Change Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3500 words

Implementing Change - Assignment ExampleIn 1999 with major tacks taking place at the national level of government in the form of devolution, local councils were scrambling to keep their heads above water. During this time period, it was evident that each department was focused crisis after crisis within their have got department and there was no vision for propelling the city into a cohesively run organisation (Leeds city, 2006, privacy 1). Seeing the need for organisational change the leadership of Leeds City Council set about creating a culture of unified strategic direction and bring together all employees to focus on meeting the strategic require of the city.In order to achieve this, the Chief Executive and his staff focused on development of the Councils Core Values as a first amount in the process of organisational change. at a time the core value had been identified councils next step was to begin to create the atmosphere conducive to change. In the following paragraphs we will examine how Leeds City Council was able to successful launch a sweeping organisational change and a shift to continuous process improvement.Upon arriving at the council core values the Chief Executive understood that without the support of employees the core values established would be nothing more that words on paper. The next step the administrator undertook was to educate and gain acceptance for this move towards organisational change. ... l the Vision for Leeds into the culture of the council and ensure management understood the councils objectives and the cultural change needed to bring them about (Leeds City, 2006, screen 1). The Road to ChangeBefore an organisation can effectively make a change they have to understand what change is and what it is not. The creation of healthy change is about living comfortably with conditions of constant change, and finding ways to create, within those conditions, pathways for accomplishing desired objectives through continuous adap tation. (Discussion, 2005) Understanding and redefining the complexity of this requires a three-fold approach. First, change does not mean we throw away the old, rather we build upon where we are secondly, change is not finite, we can not view change as something we are eventually doing or somewhere we will be - Change is constant and thirdly, with change there is no return to normalcy. The continual process of evolving, of change, if you will, becomes the constant with the organisation. How we once did things as an organisation is in the past. Kotter and Cohen point out the biggest hurdle an organisation faces when initiating change is not dealing with processes or systems, but rather, changing the behaviour of the members of the organisation itself. Once that is accomplished the rest falls neatly into place. (2002)This requires a new way of thinking within the organization, a shifting from old preconceived ideas and notions and a driving towards envisioning and creating the mean s for this change to occur. The organization transforms itself based on the shifting thought processes brought on by the change. An organization is not the outward faade of the building and internally the hierarchy of management. An