Change Assessment

On the "Are you good at change?" self assessment I scored a massive 36 points! According to the test I, “welcome every change that comes into your life—even the tough ones—believing that each one serves a purpose and will eventually lead to good,” (Bonvoisin). I would say that I agree with this score as I generally view change as something exciting and different; however my current manager tried to tell me the other day that I feared change.

The situation goes back to several years ago where the company I work for experienced a buyout. Initially I was ecstatic about the merger however after about a year it became abundantly clear that the acquisitioning firm had no idea as how to utilize us, market us, or support us aside from their already pre-existing product line. Since then I have been lobbying extensively for the upper echelons of management to re-evaluate how they are going about their efforts as year after year we have been experiencing substantial negative growth. The new management tells me that I am too attached to the old ways and that I need to look to the future. My response is always, “I am not attached to the old ways, we can come up with a brand new way, but the way you’re doing it is a substantial failure and if you’d take the time to ask your employees, they’d tell you the same thing.”

In an article from the Academy of Management Proceedings about organizational change the authors write, “the ways things are framed and talked about plays a significant role in shaping how change agents, impacted employees and other stakeholders, think about and respond to an organizational change related issue or situation” (Grant & Marshak, 2009). This was the overall problem with change in management at my organization. There was much talk of how things would work and the next week that would change. The following week it would change again. The week after that would bring another set of brand new policies and procedures that replaced the ones from the week prior. This has been an ongoing theme over the course of the past five years. In order to implement successful change it is the responsibility of the management team to construct a broad based plan and adhere to it firmly. If the employees in the face of change can’t find anything structurally sound to grasp onto, they become disenfranchised and lose all positive motivation that had gained momentum before the change was initiated.

As my assessment results clearly show, I am not adverse to change. I tend to get excited and embrace it just as I did in the case of my own company, but the chaos that erupted on the management level ripped through the organization and has yet to redeem itself. Every day I find myself in talks with management about alternative ways we could do things to help re-empower and re-motivate our employees. I come up with new ideas as well as suggest old ones that had previously been very successful. All these suggestions are met with opposition. I would in fact say that it is management who is afraid of change; however they seem to like constant change. As big of a change supporter as I am, I do believe that changes on the part of management need to be well thought out as they affect all aspects of the company and can have disastrous results if not implemented in a secure fashion. I definitely look forward to the day management figures out what it is they want to do and dig their heels into the dirt. That will be one change I will be ecstatic to see.

Works Cited

Bonvoisin, A. d. (n.d.). Change Quiz. Retrieved 02 04, 2010, from Barnes and Noble: http://images.barnesandnoble.com/pimages/resources/pdf/Change_Quiz.pdf

Grant, D., & Marshak, R. J. (2009). A Discourse-Based Theory of Organizational Change. Academy of Managment Proceedings , 1(6) 02/04/2010.