Change project proposal with MRI machine implementation for ministry

Change Project

A variety of technical and management issues arise during the implementation and operation of any change process. Change management in technology projects is essential to implement and monitor mechanisms to support and control users, business, and technology (Yarberry, 2007). There are different change project modules used at any stage of a project development. These include the change curve, Lewin's change management model, and Beckhard and Harris change model used in the understanding phase. The project-planning phase uses the impact analysis, Burke-Litwin, McKinsey 7s framework, Leavitt's diamond, organization design, and SIPOC diagrams. The implementation stage uses Kotter's 8-step change model, training needs assessment, while the communication change uses stakeholder analysis, stakeholder management, mission statement, and vision statements. In this analysis, the Leavitt's Diamond, the Kotter's 8-step change model, and Leavitt's model for organizational change is concerned with the interdependence of four main factors, including structure, people, technology, and task. The model is used in the planning phase of the project change process, since it illustrates the importance of aligning structure, task, technology, and people to bring about change. The model also offers managers the framework for starting the thinking phase of the project (Sharma, 2007). In this phase, the model assist managers to fit the components required for the project together to the best of their knowledge. The model is based on the theory that a change in one component leads to a change in others. The implementation of the model in a project involving the change of technology, involves change in technology which affects the tasks of stakeholders to employees performance and which requires people to adopt new responsibilities or roles. Effective management of change is a key success factor in technological change project implementation (Targowski, & Tarn, 2007). Leavitt's model identifies in this change process, it is necessary to involve people to accept the changes and allow the change to happen.

Leavitt's diamond-change model requires the identification of the four components of a project as technology, people, task, and structure. People are those who carry out tasks in the project change phase. If a project is occurring in an organization or project team, the people component are those carrying out tasks associated with the project (Sharma, 2007). In an organization, people are employees of the organization. Leavitt's model requires the project manager to look at people in terms of their knowledge, skills, and productivity not as accountants, managers, or receptionists.

Leavitt's model requires the project manager changes or modifies the people component with respect to the other three components. This implies that change of people in tasks involves changes in the manner things are done in the project. Therefore, if the project manager makes changes to tasks, the employees will require education and training to familiarize them with the new methods (Sharma, 2007). Change in people in structure involves a change in job role, and will require that employees be trained on their new duties and responsibilities. Lastly, the change in people in technology involves shifts to new technology (Targowski, & Tarn, 2007). This also requires intensive training for the employee to manage the new technology efficiently and effectively. In this phase, the project manager may be required to hire new and skilled employees to manage the new technology if it is advanced for the organization.

The second component in Leavitt's change module is tasks. The model requires that in this component the project manager also include goals along with tasks. In this component, the project manager will require to analyze two things, which include what they are seeking to achieve and how things will be done in the change process (Targowski, & Tarn, 2007). This component requires the project manager to focus on qualitative aspects of goals and tasks instead of the actual goals and tasks. This implies that the project manager leads the team to look at tasks and think about their benefits and relevance, and look at goals in terms of their productivity and yield (Sharma, 2007). Changes in tasks are affected by change in people, structure, and technology in Leavitt's model. This implies that a change in people like the change in manpower requires a change in the goals and tasks for the project manager to make maximum use of their knowledge and skills. Change in structure of the organization or project involving a shift from a hierarchical setup to a flat organization will also require an alteration to the processes, tasks, and goals (Sharma, 2007). Therefore, a project that requires the merging of organizational departments will require a change to the project goals and tasks assigned to people. Lastly, a change in technology where the project manager shifts to new technology requires a change in how things are done. Therefore, a project that uses technology, must raise its goals to reap the highest benefits and cover costs of installing new technology.

The third component is structure, which includes the hierarchical structure of the organization and the relationships, coordination between management, employees, and departments, and communication patters. Structure also includes responsibility and authority flowing through the organization or project (Targowski, & Tarn, 2007). Changes in the structure of a project must be matched by changes to other components. Leavitt's models requires that changes in people like hiring more qualified and skilled employees, requires different supervisory skills as compared to those used on less qualified and skilled employees. Changes like empowering employees or project team through training and workshops, leads to the cutting down of supervisory and management posts and leading to a more flat organizational structure. Changes in tasks like the creating of a new department or role in a project requires more people to carry out the additional tasks.

Lastly, the Leavitt's model recognizes the role of technology in the change process. Technology is the tools that aid or facilitate people to carry out their tasks like software applications and computers. In the Leavitt's model, technology changes with changes to other components. Changes in people like hiring computer literature workers like engineers, in this model drives the project manager to take full advantage of the skilled manpower (Targowski, & Tarn, 2007). Therefore, technology changes with the change in qualifications, skills, and knowledge of the workforce. Changes in tasks and goals also require a change in technology to handle the additional processes integrated into a project from goal changes. Lastly, a change in structure like the reduction of employees in a project may drive the project manager to automate some tasks. Therefore, Leavitt's model of change requires that change management of any project not to be viewed as a set of soft factors but like a business process like other organizational business processes. The goal of the model is to lead project managers towards change management that is planned, managed and uses rational strategies.

Kotter's eight-step change model, is useful and practical in implementing, planning, and sustaining the change process. This is because Kotter breaks down the change process into eight steps involving the establishment of sense urgency, creation of guiding coalition, development of strategy and vision for specific change, and communication of vision and strategy (Cameron & Green, 2012). This also includes the empowerment of employees' actions, generation of short-term wins, and the consolidation of gains and produce more change, and the anchoring of new change in culture.

The first step, is the establishment of sense urgency. The role of this step is to lead project managers in creating a sense of urgency in the organization, especially among top management. This is because top management is responsible for initiating and motivating change in the organization. A higher sense of urgency assists in gathering a project team together with the credibility and power to guide change efforts (Cameron & Green, 2012). This group is also responsible for convincing key stakeholders the necessity of investing their time and efforts in the change plan. The goal is to create a need in top management and cause them to communicate the vision of change to the employees. Kotter (1996) identifies that a sense of urgency eliminates complacency in the change process by avoiding issues like denial of problems, lack of feedback between stakeholders, measuring the wrong performance metrics. In the change process, to raise urgency can make use of visuals of what will happen to the organization without the change, establish goals for everyone, create cross-sectional teams, evaluate methods of measuring success, reward, and openly discuss organizational weaknesses.

The second step is the creation of a guiding coalition. The project manager and management must create a strong coalition of leaders in the organization to guide the project change effort. The goal is for the management to achieve buy-in among key stakeholders (Cameron & Green, 2012). Kotter (1996) identifies that those that buy-in or in the coalition must have position power like board members, diversity, and expertise to make intelligent and informed decisions, leadership from proven leaders, and credibility based on the reputation of the members. Kotter (1996) recommends change managers to eliminate "snakes" and "egos" for the coalition to succeed. Members must be talented leaders with realistic sense of own to avoid egos, and avoid those that slither and destroy the union in form of snakes.

The third step is the development of a strategy and visions for the specific change. This implies the creation of a well-defined vision and strategy especially in the buy-in step when the project manager uses the expertise and leadership of other coalition members to create a vision and strategy for the project (Cameron & Green, 2012). Vision and strategic plans can arise from active participation of coalition members as they provide value to the decision-making process and from their sense of ownership. For vision to be created, change managers must lead the coalition team to adopt characteristics like desirability, focus, flexibility, communication, feasibility, and imagination.

The forth step is the communication of change vision and strategic plan to members of the change process. The vision and strategic plan only gains value after it is shared to the organization to gain assistance in goal setting and decision-making. Kotter (1996) advocates that change managers avoid under communication of the message or giving inconsistent messages to elicit maximum support from subordinates. He also recommends to adoption of effective communication by using simple communication, use of examples, analogy, or metaphors to give meaning. Kotter (1996) recommends management use multiple forums and repetition through training sessions, memos, meetings, and company intranet. The vision and strategy is also communicated to the rest of the organization through a leadership example (Cameron & Green, 2012). In this method, leaders communicate by leading and walking-the-talk to subordinates. Lastly, communication requires explanations and creating a give-and-take situation where feedback from subordinates is welcome to management.

The fifth step is the empowerment of employees for broad-based action. This is based on the leadership principle of path-goal theory. The empowering process aims at removing obstacles to the change process like resistance and indifferences in the subordinates (Cameron & Green, 2012). This also involves the construction of feedback from employees to management on the change vision and strategy plan. Empowerment entails allowing others to participate in the change process by allowing them use their expertise, skills, and knowledge in carrying out different responsibilities in the change plan.

Step sixth involves the creation of short-term wins by setting aims easy to achieve, and manageable small initiatives. This is to avoid the loss of momentum or stakeholders becoming complacent. Short-term goals and small initiatives in the main strategic plan and long-term goal prevent the loss of motivation in people that cannot work on a project's long-term goals (Cameron & Green, 2012). This is because short-term goals and initiatives present to persons the fruits of their efforts thereby making them to push on in the change process.

The seventh step is the consolidation of improvements and the maintenance of momentum for change. This is requires the change manager to ensure that the changes have sunk into the organization's culture. This step in the model recognizes that new approaches and subjects are fragile and require time and effort to mature (Cameron & Green, 2012). Change plans must gather momentum in order to gather the necessary powerful forces among leaders and employees to effect the changes. Lastly, the model requires the institutionalization of the new approaches. This is when the new changes become part of the organizational structure, culture, and behavior. This means that the changes are deep rooted in the organizational and individual's behaviors.

ADKAR Model, identifies that in change projects, it's the people that change not the organization and that successfully changes occur when an individual's changes matches that of the organization. The ADKAR framework reveals that there are basic essentials or critical success factors, which must be considered for effective management of change. These are awareness, desire, knowledge, ability, and reinforcement.

Awareness is a critical success factor as the manager leads employees to a conscious need to factor in the implications of the planned changes. The key task for the manager and leader is the building of user acceptance of the plans and the creation of positive employee attitudes (Wasson, 2004). As Wasson recommended, a manager needs to get deeper into the organization's issues (2004, p.4). This then will require that needs are identified both from the organization and employee point-of-view. Wasson recommends that an effective manager not only identify needs but also backs up their finding with diagnosis and facts before carrying out any change process.

This step also creates a situation through which a working relationship is created between management and employees, as they identify needs. This identification will be through an education of the needs and benefits for the change management system to build user acceptance. Aladwani recommends that part of the user acceptance process incorporates the securing of support of the opinions of the leaders from the organization (2001, p.3). Leadership creates an opportunity to implement effectively change management plans, since it offers guidance and a sense of direction to the entire organization, and forges the way forward for the staff. The realization of needs is vital for this plan since there is a necessity to understand the characteristics of the business.

The second step is the creation of knowledge and definition of the change process. Wasson recommends that this step should entail the definition in detail of the needs and the methods of achieving them (2004, p.14). This is because change management entails more than one dimension. As literature reveals the changing of the business strategy will also entail a change in structure, for example the introduction of a new information technology system will require a new structure (Wasson, 2004). Therefore, for change management to be effective it is necessary to reveal all needs, as well as key dimensions of the needs. Literature has proven that the main organizational dimensions, which are affected, are people, culture, structure, strategy, performance measure, processes and technology. Hence, effective change management must be a holistic change process that affects these key dimension areas.

As Davison (2002) suggested, there is a need for managers to be aware of the cultural preferences and differences that exist in the organization. The organizational culture affects how business processes and interactions are carried out, for this reason, change management must factor in organizational culture. The organizational structure is an important dimension for it determines how leadership, communication and business functions are carried out. Moreover, other dimensions like strategy and processes determine goal setting, planning, strategy, mission and direction of the organization. Since change management is designed to improve the overall performance of the organization, it is important that these key dimensions be factored into change plans.

By factoring in key dimensions in change management, this plan reduces the risks of resistance to change from the staff. This is because poor record of accomplishment of organizational change efforts has been associated with poor identification of needs with key dimensions. Poor linkage of change with key dimensions elicits a negative impression and stress from the people in the organization. Martin associated this need for linking needs and expectations to the key dimensions as an important step in the elimination of the barriers of change.

The third element entails the resources of the change process or ability. This step is referred to as the conceptualizing phase by Martin, where the change management strategy is defined and equipped with resources, performance targets and people (2011, p.23). Wasson identifies this step as vital in change management as it is the most challenging step (2004, p.14). For a change manager, it is challenging to identify and allocate the change process duties to personnel due to unfamiliarity. This is because literature has identified several organizational stress indicators, which surface during a major change process (Bruckman, 2008). Organizations and staff are stressed when major decisions and changes are made, when new assignments are announced, reorganization occurs, new bosses appear, change in procedure occurs (Bruckman 2008, p.213).

For the change management to be effective there is need to involve experienced managers from the organization (Wasson, 2004). Though such leaders will not work full time of the change process, they can offer insight into what the organizational culture requires of a new manager. In order to realise resource allocation to the change process, delegation of duties is vital. This will ensure that the change process not only emanates from one individual but also rather has the workforce involved. This will then follow the teleological model for planned change where participants agree and move together towards shared organizational goals (Van de Ven and Sun 2011). This then implies that there must be consensus between the employees and the new management in order for the new change happens smoothly.

The last step is reinforcement of employees in the change process. An effective change management plan must attend to people involved (Wasson, 2004). This implies that as the new manager it is important to explain the need for changes to the staff. This is to reduce the lack of consensus arising from attempts to achieve goals, due to individual and group biases arising from errors in critical thinking, recognition, poor decision making and group thinking (Van de Ven and Sun, 2011). Van de Ven and Sun realised that a breakdown in change management occurs when managers focus on the correcting of the processes and the people involved, rather than in the change management process itself (2011, p.66). This is because, there is a failure in the explanation for the need of change to those involved. In the process, the change takes effect without the consent of those involved. This recognition also entails their opinions, thoughts and needs in areas that the change process needs to address.

Wasson identifies that the lack of recognizing that people matter in the change process creates a situation for resistance to change to prevail (2004, p.15). Therefore, for this change process to be effective, the change plan will factor in the needs of the staff directly under my authority. Moreover, this change process will incorporate key people in order for the process to receive minimum resistance. Key people are higher-ranking managers, peer managers, and subordinate staff within the department.

As an effective leader, change process must be a process that is motivated and involved from the top. Employees often follow the example of their leaders, therefore, the acceptance of new changes by top management also leads to acceptance by subordinate. Martin proposed that for effective changes, the change process and messages should be communicated from the top to employees, in a clear concise message. This is because communication between change managers and employees is an effective motivation or reinforcement tool during the change process. During the implementation of the changes, a key variable is the communication of prompt and clear messages to employees to create dialogue and decrease resistance and anxiety of the changes.

Chapter Two

In this project, Leavitt's diamond-change model is selected since it assists in identifying the elements of change in terms of four main components, people, tasks, structure, and technology. The model is used in the planning phase of the project change process, since it illustrates the importance of aligning structure, task, technology, and people to bring about change. The model also offers managers the framework for starting the thinking phase of the project. The model assist managers to fit the components required for the project together to the best of their knowledge. Apart from identifying the elements required for change, the model will also assist in making a connection or showing the interdependence of the elements. The model is selected for this project since the change process is only successful if changes in individuals match changes in the organization. The change process is also identified in theory as successful if it incorporates the participation of everyone, from management to employees or subordinates. Leavitt's model is selected for this project since it recognizes the role of people in the change process. Not only does it recognizes the role of people in their capacity as financial advisers or planners, but recognizes them in terms of their expertise, skills, and knowledge. In this essence, the project will increase the motivation and involvement of managers and subordinates by recognizing them as individuals who have the knowledge and skills required in the change process. Moreover, the model has been proven successful for change managers planning and implementing changes in the organization. The model requires change managers to focus on both the change process as well as the change content. Therefore, in the project, using the model will realize ability to integrate content and process in organizational change. Lastly, this model is selected for its ability to broadly categorize change needs or requirements in four broad categories. For example, organizational processes like workflow, communications, and decision-making authority fall under structure. Aspects like machinery, tools, and applications fall under technology. The model identifies tasks as any activity that leads to the production of services and products the organization is creating, and can include any business process, supply chain processes, or management duties. The project identifies several elements required for the change process. The first step in the change planning process of the project is the identification of the four components; tasks, people, structure, and technology.

People are identified as those carrying out various tasks during the change process. For this project, people are identified as the ministry that is supposed to provide the new MRI machines and specialists who will manage and run the new MRI machines. The third type of person required in the change process is radiologists who will also use the new MRI machines, along with physicians. The third person involved in the change process is the receptionist staff and senior specialist in charge of receptionists. There was a need for information technology staff in the department.

Tasks are those organizational activities or change initiatives required to be carried out in the organization to produce goods and services. In this project, the first task is the purchase and provision of new MRI machines. The second task is the training of specialists to acquire the skills and knowledge required to manage and run the new MRI machines. The third task is departmental duties, which run in the morning. The fourth duty is the training of receptionist staff by the senior specialists.

Structure is all the components of the organizational structure and culture involving decision- and policy-making, workflow, and communication. The first structure in this change project is the requesting for new MRI machines from the ministry, which requires using official business communication letters and lobbying from our department. The second structural elements are the approval for the request from other departments in the organization. The MRI and radiologist department was based on the paper-based system.

Technology in this change process entails elements like new MRI machines, computers and MRI application software, database storage software, printing machines, internet.

Leavitt's Change Model for the Department

The model is based on the theory that a change in one component leads to a change in others. Leavitt's model requires the project manager changes or modifies the people component with respect to the other three components. This implies that change of people in tasks involves changes in the manner things are done in the project.