Marketing also had to change its orientation, from creating appeals with broad general interest, to meeting specific needs and requirements at local levels. The change, that is, ultimately impacted all levels of the company and was met with varying levels of acceptance and enthusiasm. It was, in the characterization of Palmer, Dunford, and Akin (2008), very close to a "second-order" change, evidenced by a transformation of the organization at the very core of its' process and structural identity (p. 86).
Effects, Implications, and Lesson Learned. Because the change in sales force structure, process, and configuration did not ultimately require any downsizing -- in fact, in some cases, new sales reps were hired to cover new divisions created by the refocusing of responsibilities -- it did not place people in jeopardy of losing their jobs. However, it did significantly change the ways they did those jobs. For the first time, they were forced to really listen to customers and respond in meaningful ways beyond simply offering a better price. For the customer, this involved the customer having to understand their own needs and articulate them. For management it meant having to truly understand the marketplace and rally the company to the new approach. For rank and file workers it meant having to respond to the needs of the marketplace with creativity and thoughtful innovation. This required a recursive process of diagnosing problems, altering organizational approaches, accounting for resistance to change, and developing vision that would meet the change. The change was not a once-and-for-all change, nor was it one-size fits all. Ultimately it consisted of a number of changes that led into new ones. Different regions had different requirements. Different sales representatives were more adept at meeting the change than...
Different divisions of the company responded in different ways.
The way that management was able to drive all elements of the company toward the changing needs of the marketplace, and to create a variety of narratives that the stakeholders, customers, middle managers, and employees alike could respond to, was the reason for the change's success, in the final analysis. McNamara (2009) claims that among the most important needs for a company attempting to respond to the multiple perspectives of change needs are strategic management and field-based research. Because my company's change was specifically designed to allow management to take advantage of marketplace realities in a strategic way, and it encouraged the development of new approached based around the needs of the moment in localities across the country, it was ultimately successful. Management set up a system whereby it received timely information about market needs through more engaged sales processes, and then drove the company to respond to that information. Through accompmmodating concerns of the interested parties, and communicating vision, they got buy-in from all parties. They accounted for the different needs of stakeholders in the very system set up and then managed both expectations and results from a variety of perspective so that the change would succeed and endure.
References
McNamara, C., (2009). Organizational change and development. Free Management Library Retrieved from http://74.125.93.132/search?q=cache:PBqtrNPdMXsJ:managementhelp.org/org_chng/org_chng.htm+managing+organizational+change+stories&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us (January 8, 2010).
Palmer, I., Dunford, R., and Akin, G., (2008). Managing organizational change: a multiple perspectives approach (New York: McGraw-Hill).
