¶ … adapt change for an organization, there would have to be a couple of steps. The first step would be doing an assessment of what is currently going on. It would need to be figured out what is going well, what is not going well, what needs to change and why. Another huge part of adapting and creating a change is getting the proper people to buy in to the change. Indeed, it is quite easy for one person to change their behavior, especially if it makes sense to them. However, when dealing with a medium to larger group of people, there has to be some cooperation. The people that are otherwise involved with the change need to "buy in" to that change or the change will be incomplete or it will completely fail. There is a litany of reasons why people refuse to buy in to a change. One example would be that they think the current/prior way of doing things is better. Another example would be that they think the new method is not the proper or correct way to proceed. Third, the change could be seen as a threat as they are losing responsibilities or prestige, for some reason. Regardless, the change needs to be explained to the people that are involved in implementing it and both the leadership and the people "in the trenches" (the front-line people) need to be on board or the change will not occur.

One might think that just telling those people to do something would be enough. However, if other senior management is not actively on board and/or the change does not make sense and/or has not been explained and justified, there will be resistance (or even mutiny) by those whose cooperation is sorely needed. Any good leader knows all of this and will actively campaign and convince people why the change is needed and what is to come before the change is actually attempted.

However, the question talks about how the leader adapts the...

The leader needs to know what needs to be done, why it needs to be done and how it needs to be done. However, the leader also has to know how to extend that to his/her followers. The leader must figure out the details of the change and adapt the change to what needs to be and what can be done. He then needs to create a message and then adapt that to his fellow leaders and followers. The message needs to crafted and adapted in such a way so that the people receive it well, understand why the change is happening and so forth. There needs to be buy-in or the change will probably falter.
Student One Response

The A-10 Warthog is a plane that I am very familiar with and really hope they never do away with (although they seem to be trying). I'm not terribly familiar with the A-10C. Indeed, there is a lot of controversy about the mothballing or reducing of use of that plan. However, there always has to be an upgrade somewhere down the road. Either the plane itself has to be improved or there needs to be an all-new plane to replace it. The former is obviously quicker and cheaper than the latter but there are indeed outward limits that all planes and other complex machines hit where further upgrades are not possible or practical. As such, a desirable future would be a plane that does what the retiring plane does while doing it better, faster, more efficiently and more safely. If the regular A-10 Warthod were to be eliminated, it would have to be replaced with a plane that does what the A-10 does, but better. However, a lot of people seem to be less than convinced about this but I'm not sure if that includes people in the military or not or it's just people on the outside looking in. Regardless, people offering their two cents can influence change management even if they are not involved…