Effective Communication - Free Paper Sample

Introduction

It is essential to bring people together for effective planning and execution of a change. The change leader needs to bring together experienced people with different skills in the change process. Successful leaders do not allow unhealthy competition and motivate employees to work beyond the set limit. Also, they engage staffs in decision making and support their commitment to change.

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Successful leaders are persistent and resilient on the implementation of the change. They devote more personal time to the change execution and focusing on the big goal. Also, they easily adapt to the challenges, express positivity, and patient with lack of outcomes.

Encouragement is vital throughout the change process. Initial strength diminishes to prolonged deadlines and lack of evident results. A successful change leader continuously reminds employees of the initial goal and motivate them to continue working towards the vision.

Five Challenges

Most individuals do not like change because they are more comfortable with the status quo. Therefore, regardless of how the change seems promising and logical, the resistance is practically unavoidable. Humans are very sensitive to specific things that are considered a threat to the environment such as the workplace. People tend to resist change due to excess uncertainty, lack of mental preparation after the unexpected changes, and variations to daily work routines and habits. Also, change leads to more work during the transition process. Individuals who had built their reputation can lose their recognition due to change; hence, they tend to resist.

Poor communication can prevent the success of change implementation. Some leaders assume that employees will easily adjust after announcing the change. However, the immediate announcement of a change without proper preparation leads to a high rate of resistance.

It is vital to include employees in the change process by involving them in decision making and reminding them of the benefit of the change to the company. This minimizes the fear of change and lack of willingness to appreciate the new process. A change leader should provide enough resources to move employees towards the change.

Lack of step-by-step planning can make a change fall apart. A leader must know what changes will occur and how they will take place. The leader should assign competent and responsible people in all areas covered by the change. Also, a leader must understand how to solve the issues that arise due to change before they becoming too serious to affect the change process.

Management Consultants

Internal consultants have full knowledge of the organization's culture, politics, and policies; hence can easily navigate throughout the organization. However, external consultants have limited understanding of the company's features and require more time to adapt. For instance, internal advisors have an existing association with staffs within the company, which improve their communication from the start. Also, internal change management consultants are more cost-efficient than external advisors. Internal advisors have a flexible working method; hence accessible at a competitive rate. Conversely, external change advisors are expensive to hire.

Internal consultants lack defined responsibilities because of the lack of description during hiring. Various internal advisors are not aware of whom to give their findings and suggestions. Also, an internal consultant might lack respect from employees that are required to confer validity. They may lack the power to execute the required changes due to ambiguity.

External advisors are independent, unlike the internal advisors who rely on leaders within the company. Independency leads to more trust between the employer and the advisor. Confidence develops more in external than internal advisors. Also, an external consultant has broader ideas acquired from different clients; particularly the capability to scale compared with other parties is a vital advantage. However, an internal consultant lacks broad knowledge.

Limited knowledge about an organization and unwillingness to hear ideas leads to generalized strategies acquired from other organizations. Additionally, the come and leave approach can risk the change implementation process because they might not come back in case a problem arises, or might ask for more money.

Change Process

The success of a change can be indicated by the impact it causes on employees. Awareness is measuring staff's knowledge towards the change while preparedness is evaluating employees' understanding and capability to make the change and maintain it. Focus groups or surveys can be used to track employees' awareness regarding change throughout the change process. For instance, an increase in problems after installation of new technology indicate inadequate preparedness of the new system.

Measuring change can be achieved through assessing whether employees are making efforts to attain the set goals. Managers can ask employees to share perceptions to enable them to identify areas of weakness so that they can help the team to execute the change.

Conclusion

Discontinuous change is a non-incremental, unexpected change that causes a threat to the power structure or traditional or current authority due to the drastic alteration of how things are currently run. Discontinuous change concentrates on the design competition and technological substitution. It is characterized by a lack of knowledge of what is changing. Another feature is the lack of a plan on how to adapt to the change. An example of discontinuous change is great depression that caused the collapse of the stock market.