Change Management as a Manager of Students,

Change Management

As a manager of students, there are a number of changes that may be expected of me during the time that I am in the position of responsibility. It is therefore significant to understand the aspect of change management and how to implement change without meeting a lot of obstacles. The changes within the academic sphere could be in the form of improvement plans management or improvement of the daily work.

The chapter discusses in depth the aspect of improving the daily work which is very relevant within a school as well as the methods of problem solving. The concept of managing and improving daily work has been given a five pronged approach while problem solving has been given a seven pronged approach.

Managing and improving daily work

The five steps towards managing and improving the daily work within an institution has been summarized as Understanding the process, Eliminating errors, Simplifying the process, Reducing variations and Planning for control and improvement.

Understanding the process: The fundamental questions to be asked here as the author suggest are; How does the process currently work? What is the purpose to accomplish? What is the current best known way to carry out the process? The benefit of this stage is that it helps in arriving at a common understanding, eliminates inconsistencies and helps highlight obvious problems.

Eliminating errors: it is significant to make changes that will dramatically eliminate errors that could have been overlooked in the daily work by simply verifying everything once more before calling a client or taking a decision within an institution.

Simplifying the process; the author notes that many organizations that still stick to the archaic manner of following long winded processes with many bureaucracies are prone to having lesser outputs per day. The use of short yet relevant processes helps in eliminating unnecessary hurdles in a days work.

Reducing variation; it is noted that variations can come in common causes variations type as well as special causes variations. The common variations are due to ever recurring reasons while special causes are not always present. Variations can be removed in two stages-taking it out of the measurement process and taking it out of the work process. Reducing measurement variation should always be done first since it hinders the process.

Planning for control and improvement; this is stage that comes once the obstacles have been removed and there is need now to ensure the improvements stay in place. This process needs someone to be fully responsible for it.

Seven steps to problem solving

The seven steps to solving problems within an organization have bee categorized here as project, current situation, cause analysis, solutions, results, standardization and future plan.

Project; here the main goal is to define the projects purpose and the scope of the project.

Current situation; here there is more focus on the improvements and data and information on the current is crucial hence gathered with a lot of keenness.