Change Leadership
This course has major project assignments that will be due in Weeks 3 and 5. It will take more than a week’s effort to adequately complete them. Plan time to start the research and other work for those assignments earlier than the week in which they are due.
Because this is the Week 3 portion of the course project, it is considered a major project worth a substantial amount of points. As part of your review of the assignment instruction, review the expanded grading rubric available as a link at the bottom of the basic rubric below.
Organizational Development (OD) is a method organizations use to manage change. OD implements change in an organization by using the action research (AR) model to identify a problem, plan change, implement interventions, and evaluate the success of the change process. Two key tenets of the AR model are:
- Involve those doing the work (e.g., employees, stakeholders) in the change planning, implementation, and review.
- Create a cyclical OD process whereby results from one cycle (i.e., evaluation) becomes part of the input for the next cycle (i.e., identify problem)
To begin this week’s section of the final project, briefly review your chosen organization. Presume that the reader does not know the identity of your organization or what you have evaluated thus far. What is the essential information the reader should know? This section of your paper should be a very brief summary, likely no more than three or four sentences. Be sure to provide an appropriate APA introduction to your paper.
Next, describe one or two recent change events that have occurred in your subject organization.
- What was the planned change?
- How well did the change effort work?
- Using research in organizational and leadership literature, evaluate the change event.
- What mistakes were made?
- What key lessons can you summarize from your evaluation of the past event?
Next, research the literature on change leadership. Defend a change leadership action plan that your organization should implement to create positive change outcomes and reduce or virtually eliminate resistance to change. Be sure to support your plan with research.
Next, assess strategic steps to leverage insights from the employees at different levels of the organization in every stage of the change process. Be sure to support your strategic steps with research.
Finally, justify how your proposed change process for the organization aligns to the organizational values.
