Maintaining Change, Essay Example

The key element to facilitating successful change process is to make it to make change stick and assimilate change into the organizational culture, thus taking certain steps in the new direction. The old organizational culture must not be neglected or put away; however, it has to be demonstrated to be no longer efficient. The new change has to be based on some parts of the old culture to be more incorporated, thus the company has to “graft some key values onto already well-formed cultures.”(Kotter, 154) Each and every hire or promotion must be directed towards the new style and new culture, in order to more forward to innovations.

One of the ways to assimilate change into company’s culture would be Collin’s flywheel concept. The main idea of this concept is creating a momentum that affects company culture, through persistent turns on the wheel through continued improvement and delivery of results.(Collins, 2001) The organization first has to clearly define the actions that need to be done for the change to occur, and actually perform them. Moreover, sustaining a continuous sense of urgency would be a great method to make change stick. Celebrating a short-term wins without continuous urgency can lead to huge drawback in the change process.(Kotter, 132) Another sufficient tip would be embracing a culture and attitude of a ‘winning team’. Each and every person wants to be a part of successful and winning team, in order to achieve their personal goals through organizational. Moreover, people feel happy and important when they see that they directly participate in decision making and make a difference.(Brenneman, 176) People who do not incorporate the company’s vision will have to leave the organization for good. A system must be created that gives employees the freedom to take decisions and responsibility for certain aspects of change process. Thus, everybody will feel responsible for the change to occur, and it will be highly assimilated into organizational culture.

References

Brenneman, G. (1998). “Right away and all at once: How we saved Continental”. Harvard Business Review, 76(5), 162-173.

Collins, J. (2001). Good to great: why some companies make the leap and others don’t. New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

Kotter, J. P. (1996). Leading change. Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard Business School Press.