Leadership commitment and organizational change at my workplace

Change Management

The pace of change at my workplace is surprisingly slow -- well, slower than one might think given the changes in the external environment. This, to me, asks questions about leadership commitment to change. Bradt (2007) notes that leaders invest time in leadership development, as a means of facilitating change. They understand that change is driven by leadership, but that there cannot be only one leader on the team, but rather a coordinated leadership effort from everybody. My workplace still has a very top-down style of management, and there is little investment in the future leaders, or even lower-level leaders who can help to drive change practices. So organizational change ends up being driven at the top of the organization, and only when those in power are interested, or have the time.

If we consider different change strategies, it is hard for me to see those in my organization. We shall begin with the first step in organizational change, which is recognizing a need, and creating motivation around the need to change. Senge has argued in favor of change as a process, a continual process that starts with empowering people. That puts the workforce in a position where it is ready and able to deliver on a rapid pace of change. This is not something that I see in my organization. We do a little bit of development every now and again, but there is no focus to this, no vision for how development work today is going to help the organization in the future. Instead, we are in a state of structural inertia, without much recognition of the need for change, and no real thought as to the best means by which change can be achieved (Hannan & Freeman, 1984). While it would be nice if every organization worked in line with something like the Fullan model, the reality is not like the ideal.

Change, when it happens, is not strategic in nature. You will see some incremental changes, maybe, as things just happen, but for the most part response at the organizational level tends to be reactionary. Even a model like Fullan\'s educational change model does not really apply to what I see at my organization. That model has four steps: initiation, implementation, continuation and outcome (Fullan, 2007). The Fullan model is said to help a change agent understand the implication s of change for people or organizations. When you have a reactionary, top-down view of change, you\'re not looking at other stakeholders. Further, those other stakeholders have almost no involvement in the change process. If something like Fullan was implemented, different stakeholders would be able to contribute to the change process. But at my organization, what is more likely is that change is something that happens to you, rather than something that involves you. So it is unfortunate when you have leadership that does not genuinely understand how to implement organizational change, but there you have it. A lot of organizations still run this way, especially in education.