Understanding and Leading Change

This report is based upon Marks & Spencer which is a UK based multinational organization dealing in retail sector of clothing and beauty products. It was found in 1884 by Michael Marks and Thomas Spencer and currently working with about 1000 stores in Europe. In this report, different roles, approaches, and strategies of a leader while applying organizational change have been discussed. Also the impact of driver change and the ways to reduce negative impacts have been highlighted. Besides this, barriers of change have been analysed with reference to their influence upon decision making.

P1 Impact of changes on organizational strategies and operation

Changes are very common in a company and, also, it is a very healthy process for any enterprise. Organisational change is a term which refer to the alterations introduced in organisation related to employees, structure or processes used in entity. These changes have both positive as well as negative impact over working of an organization. Marks & Spencer is one of the leading companies in retail sector of clothing and beauty products, they also need to review their current performance and bring about modifications within organisational premises to ensure their sustainability in competitive environment. On other hand, TESCO is also a leading firm for retail sector of grocery in the world (Aslan and Reigeluth 2013) . Both of the companies introduced some alterations within the enterprise to sustain in marketplace. Organisational changes only done when they have positive impacts only but some time it gives some negative impacts also. Some of positive and negative impact of such changes are discussed follow:-

Positive impacts of organizational changes

Stay current –

It is very important for an organization to keep them self up-to date and introduce changes according to need. These changes help them to keep their - self a step ahead to their competitors. Mark & Spencer and TESCO have also made many changes in organization like structural, processional, technical and many other to maintain their position in competitive environment.

Negative impact of organizational change

Mental Stress – 

Changes in organization also leads to mental stress for owner as well as to employees. This all is because the working and leading unit of organization have to opt that changes and have to change their working styles as well. M&S and TESCO make changes in their organizations for numerous of times, this make very tough for them to opt new changes and get settled with new techniques and, work efficiently as they were working earlier.

Comparison between Organizational changes done by Mark & Spencer and TESCO:-

Basic	Mark & Spencer	TESCO
Technological Changes	Since early 90's, M&S follows a trend of making changes and updating it's technologies on a regular basis of time period. Analysing the competitive environment, they have planned to introduce many technical changes in their production and operations so as to stay ahead of its rivals. For this, company has adopted Stormwear Technology so as to keep the users protected from wind as well as rain. By the use of this, company has gained strategic edge in market as this is a new concept not brought forward by any other company.	TESCO also have a strong technical background in terms of updating technologies. They had analysed the need of  ascertaining and adopting latest technology in late 80's, which help them to invest in latest advancements and innovations on right time. Today, they are in the list of very few industries which are using RFID technology for their products.  With the help of this, company generates a radio-frequency identification for their products, which have a unique digital tag or a smart label or each of the product
Structural changes  (modifications in policies related to working, employment and processing of an organization)	M&S has brought changes in structures of UK departmental stores by way of modifying its clothing and home team. This change is a significant part of the bigger transformational plan being brought forward by company. This change has helped the company in combatting with regularly falling sales and significantly increased the company revenues (M&S restructures executive Clothing & Home team, 2019).	TESCO also make constant changes in their policies for betterment of organization and customers. Recently, Tesco has announced that its operational structure will be simplified by removing the roles of People, Compliance and Customer Experience Manager. These changes have been made to stress upon the role of Line Manager. This has largely reduced complexity within organisational premises and simplified the experiences for customers (Tesco to simplify operational structures, 2019).

Differences in Organisational Approaches to Change

Marks & Spencer's core approach to change involves a structural process involving a series of steps to execute the change. These include analysis of market gap, review of the variances between organisation's current and desirable performance to fill the gap and then bringing alterations and modifications in activities and processes. This is done so as to adapt itself as per customer needs and requirements.

Contrary to this, Tesco focus upon continuously evaluating the internal and external environment of organisation so as to ascertain any necessary changes that need to be brought. These changes are then communicated to employees to gain their support and then executed within the enterprise.

Similarities in Organisational Approaches to Change

There is one similarity between the approaches to implement changes in Tesco and M&S. This is that both the companies adopt changes in a way that the new operations or alterations in products and processes of company are able to fulfil customer needs.

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P2 Effects of  internal and external driver changes upon leadership, team and individual behaviour

Leadership is a art of managing and guiding group of people in order to achieve an organizational goal. A leader must be full of qualities like motivational, inspire-able, deliverable, have good communication, and most important, should know how to guide a team. A leader must  have control over the team to lead their behaviour towards the successful implementation of organisational change. (Foltin and Keller 2012). M&S is a big enterprise which need to continuously review its existing processes and activities so as to ascertain any necessary changes within the entity. These alterations are introduced for betterment of their working and also for employees. When it come to introducing changes within the entity, the role of leaders in M&S get increased towards individuals and teams and organisation as a whole. Many  a times, when a change is proposed, business personnel who are a part of entity start feeling insecure about their job. It may not be suitable for them to adapt to such changes. In such cases, leaders of M&S have to understand the problem faced by employees and take appropriate steps to develop solutions.

Internal Drivers Of Change And Its Impact

Some of the internal changes which can affect roles of a leader towards individuals and teams in M&S are:-

Innovation: 

In a world, where companies are continuously coming up with new and creative ideas, innovation has become a key element that need to considered by every organisation. It is a basic aspect that an organisation need to keep in consideration to ensure its sustainability in market. M&S also make some innovations in their organization to make their technologies and other internal factors stronger, by which they can improve according to requirements (Hintz and Bahia, 2013). Innovation has a positive as well as negative impact with respect to individual and team behaviour. Most of the employees feel pressurised to change their skills according to requirements and when they are not able to do that, they started considering the option of switching job. With respect to team and individuals, it also has a positive impact as the group recognises that company is making efforts to increase its share in market. Thus, the chances of career enhancement and appraisals of personnel increase. In addition to this, it gives a boost to group behaviour in M&S as they feel motivated to increase their productivity.

Employee Morale: 

To grow with time, M&S use to make changes in their organization on a regular time period, but this also increase the weak points of them. When it is concerned about weaknesses in changing environment, employee moral is one of the biggest challenge that an organization faces. In such conditions where employees getting their moral down leader have to communicate with employees and have to motivate them by inspiring speeches (Hintz, 2012) . For an individual it is necessary for for leader to understand it's problem and encourage them.

 Wastage of resources:

Often, in some enterprises, it is noticed that there is a lot of wastage of resources within organisational premises. This happens because when a new technology or process is implemented, employees are not skilled and competent to deal with such advancements in an effective and efficient manner. Also, at times, when employees are adapting to alterations in operations and structures, they may unintentionally lead to wastage of resources. This acts as a driver for change in Marks & Spencer and has a significant impact upon individuals and team behaviour. When a change is introduced, individuals are often hesitant to adapt to new scenarios. Also, teams that are functioning within M&S also have conflict of interests. This happens because when leaders communicate the change within enterprise, personnel have diverse set of responses towards the change. Also, some individuals within team feel the need of being trained as per the new requirements, thus often the complexity levels among the individuals as well as within the teams increases leading to bigger negative effects than positive outcomes.

External Drivers Of Change And Its Impact

Customers:

For any organisation, the biggest external driving force for change are customers. It is imperative for leaders of any entity to continuously analyse the needs and requirements of consumers so as to develop products that meet their demands. It is the culture of M&S to adopt a customer centred approach and operate in a manner that is in public interest. Often, these customers become the reason behind implementation of change within M&S. Also, when any change gets implemented, it does not guaranty about it's success. M&S involves many changes in their organization and sometimes, it leads to barriers of communication as some individuals are facilitators while others act as resistors of change.

Technology:

\With rapid advancements in technology, there is a dire need for organisations to bring external changes by adopting latest tools and technology. M&S is making continuous changes in their technologies to fulfil needs and requirements of customers. These  changes are not easy to be adapted to, by employees. At times, technological changes decrease the morale of employees as they do not possess the required skills and competence to conduct activities as per the latest technology within M&S. This often lead to conflicts within team as some personnel are equipped with technical skills while others are not. This implies that there may be diversities in opinions of individuals within team which causes an atmosphere of tension within the team.

P3 Measures to minimise negative impact of changes on organizations

Organizational change is a crucial process which is done with the motive of maximising internal as well as external benefits for organization. At times, these may also have some bad impacts on enterprise as well as on employees (Latham, 2013) . Some measures that M&S can take to reduce negative impact of changes are as follow:-

Train and prepare–

When any change in organization is implemented, it is necessary for employees to get adequate training to get comfortable with the changes. Also, this helps in understanding the way to work and use that change to gain competitive advantage in marketplace. Here, leaders of M&S have to check and build communication with employees to know about the problem being faced by individuals during adoption of new practices as a result of that change. Leaders analyse the issues faced by staff and then develop appropriate solutions to deal with such situation.

Positive attitude–

While implementing change it is very necessary for M&S to show a positive attitude against their employees and to their problems. In such cases a leader have to keep them self calm and have to be positive always.

Supervise employees –

In changing environment it is very necessary for a leader to keep a regular supervision on their employees, and on their performance. This help a leader to communicate with their employees as soon as possible and this reduces problem in accepting change.

Above discussed factors can help leaders of M&S to minimise the negative impact of change in organization.

The Burke - Litwin model –

This is a model to understand change in an organization, which was developed in 1922, by two organizational change consultant (MacKian and Simons 2013) . This tool was designed to identify the important components of organization which are related to change. M&S can use this model to identify the areas which will get affected during change. Components of organization that can identified in this model are:-

External environment:

This component reflects that when change will be introduced in M&S, some external factors will be affected as a result of it. These components include customers, competitors and marketplace in which M&S. As a result of changes, customer loyalty can increase or decrease depending upon the change that is introduced within organisational premises.

Individual and organizational performance:

This aspect deals with the impact of change on overall performance of organization as well as the employees in Marks & Spencer. The factors that come under this can be turnover, productivity and customer satisfaction. As a result of organisational change, many a times, response of employees is unfavourable as they are not ready to adapt to changes. On the other hand, by adopting effective alterations within processes, productivity of staff is enhanced.

Leadership:

 To implement a change within Marks & Spencer, the most significant role is of a leader. Leader communicates the need of change and the probable outcome associated with the implementation of such alterations within the entity. It is duty of a leader in Marks & Spencer to motivate the employees and align their behaviour towards positively accepting the change.

Strategies:

This is a plan of action designed to implement the change within M&S. It is required that an effective strategy is devised so as to gain acceptance from employees and tapping the advantage of change to gain a strategic edge in market ahead of its competitiors.

Task 2

P4 Barriers of changes and their impact upon leadership decision making in organizational content.

Understanding change management helps a business concern in forming new and innovative strategies that help in identifying and implementing changes ( Mukherjee D. and et. al., 2012. ) .  Change is a key aspect of all organisations. It targets shifting from one state to another for growth of a business concern. Main aim of managers of Marks and Spencer behind bringing about a change in their business is enhancing and maintaining production environment of a business on daily basis.

Barriers of change management:

Not every individual prefers or is ready for changes. Hence, this creates barriers in bringing about any change in an organisation structure. Barriers always create a gap in initiating changes and eventually have a negative effect on day to day production process of Marks and Spencer. There are numerous barriers of change management that have been explained as under:

Lack of Employee Involvement:

 This is most widely noticed barrier of change management. Employees always have a negative approach towards change and feel that they may get replaced. In case of Marks and Spencer, even the most loyal employees tend to resist change unless they feel that they are a part of change management. This creates a sense of fear among employees and they do not support in formation and implementation of policies. This greatly affects decision making of managers as they forget to involve employees.

Lack of Effective Communication Strategy:

Many business concerns lack communication strategies which means they do not convey any policies to employees. Managers and top leaders of Marks and Spencer assume that employees will easily adapt to any rules or policies once they are implemented (NHS England, 2016) . This strongly forces employees to resist any changes and leads to ineffectiveness in decision making and leadership as they loose trust of employees.

Furthermore, for change management, Forcefield Model has also been explained as under:-

Force field analysis:

Force field analysis is a key approach for studying change management. This approach was developed by professor Kurt Lewin. It involves five phases which help in motivating employees so that they can accept change management. These phases have been explained as under:

• Phase 1: This happens to be an initial stage in which managers and leaders need to make effective use of tools and techniques for assessing current market situation. By doing so, they can even measure requirements for changes and also fields where where change is needed.
• Phase 2:Changes that are brought in an organisation always involve some kind of risks within them. Therefore, second phase analyses risks while initiating any changes. Managers can also assess strategies which help in reduction.
• Phase 3: In this stage, managers and leaders of a business concern find out areas where necessary modifications are to be made . They also assess how to create these changes.
• Phase 4: This happens to be the second last stage of Forcefield model where superiors are entitled towards formation of an action plan in an effective manner. It also involves entire process of alteration.
• Phase 5: This is last stage in which managers and leaders should evaluate existing strategies and policies. After evaluation, managers also to make necessary changes are per their future requirements.

These are certain barriers in change management and how they will affect in leadership practices and decision making.

Task 3

P5 Leadership approaches to deal with organizational change

Role of a leader in a changing organizational environment is the most significant part for organization as well as for employees. The success of change is more dependent on the behaviour and approaches of a leader, that who they handle the problems and how efficiently they provides the solution for that problem. To achieve the organizational change there are different leadership approaches that a leader can adopt, which are as follow:-

1. Laissez – Faire – It is also knows as delegative style of leadership. In this style of leadership, leader of M&S releases the power in organization and allow their employees to take decisions. This style is generally work in a team which have skill full and highly expertises members (Salmela, Eriksson and Fagerström 2012). In this leader have to provide information and data accurately which is required to start a project. This style also have some drawbacks like shows uninvolved leader, confusion in roles to individual, also can result to poor out comes (Laissez-faire, 2018).
2. Autocratic – It is also known as authoritarian leadership. In this type of leadership, only leader of M&S is responsible for the out comes and results of the organization. As in this leader have all the rights reserved with it for taking decisions, it is very rare that leader take any advice with other. This helps in quick decisions, leader have good command over chain, and is good where strong and directive leadership is needed.
3. Participative – This is also known as democratic leadership. In this leader of M&S can invite all the employees of organization to participate in decision making. In this leader provides opportunities to communicate and give suggestions. Here people are open to share information, knowledge and ideas, and after getting all the informations leader use to summarise all the inputs. After summarizing it leader takes a best decision and communicate back it to employees. This increases the creativity level in employees and help employees in increasing their morals.
4. Transactional – It is also known as managerial leadership. In this the main focus of leaders in M&S is to be on supervising, organizing, and group performances. They can use this style of leadership when they have to focus on a specific task they can use rewards and punishments according to performance of employees (Transactional, 2019). Their is a clear chain of management which help employees to give their best, and primary goal of them is to obey the instructions. Leaders have to maintain a clear monitoring on subordinates to meet the goal.
5. Transformational – This is a type of leadership where a leader plays an inspire-able role for employees. In this leaders of M&S must be energetic, enthusiastic, and passionate for their work. In this leader use to inspire their employees to give some suggestions to do things in new way.

Above discussed may be the different approaches that a leader in M&S can opt according to situation, in order to achieve organizational change effectively. This also help leaders to have a control over organization during period of change.

Conclusion

Above it is discussed it is concluded that organizational change have both the positive and negative impacts over strategies and working of an organization. Organizational change have many positive impacts like new opportunities, innovation and many more, but also have some negative impact also like loss of loyalty, moral stress and other. Also, a discussion took place on different changes introduced in organisational premises. Leadership in these conditions are very important part for an organization, as in organizational change leader have to keep it-self cool and have to understand different problems, which their employees are facing, and have to provide best solutions for it. A leader have to adjustable in terms of their roles, as it is not sure that at what time which conditions will get appear. A leader can follow some basic practices in their organization, which can help their employees in adopting the changes easily. A leader can make changes in their approaches, which will depend on the conditions in which they have to lead a team or individual.

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