Table of Content

1 Question 1: Roberta's efforts to date ......................................................................................... 2

2 Question 2: Arguments to convince Stewart Jones to proceed with change implementation

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3 Question 3: Describe how you will develop a change process and the critical issues you will
face in managing the change ........................................................................................................... 5
3.1

Choosing an approach to change implementation .......................................................... 5

3.2

Factors affecting sustainable change ............................................................................. 7

3.3

Planning the change ........................................................................................................ 8

Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 9

References .............................................................................................................................. 11

Question 1: What is your (Robertas) effort to date?

After assessing the situation informally, Roberta Jackson quickly begun to identify and clarify
the various organizational issues faced by the manufacturing division of the company so that she
can take steps to improve the dire situation of the division. From her analysis, she has clearly
identified some key organizational issues that required immediate attention in order to fix the
documentation problem. It is evident that the documentation problem is actually only the tip of
the iceberg - a symptom of the other more pressing underlying organizational issues as follows:
1. The whole organization lacks a clear direction and proper strategy and this puts the company
in jeopardy as middle managers do not have a clear goal to work their department towards and
employees do not have a goal to aim for.
2. The overtly rigid organizational culture change resistant and does not welcome new ideas or
innovation. It was also hard to change the old documentation practices in PolyProd. This is
dangerous to any organization as this will lead to stagnation within the organization.
3. Major inconsistencies in workflow in the organization caused by rapid hiring which in turn
translates to high turnover. At the same time, cross-divisional promotions and lack of mentoring
for new employees and promotes resulted in inconsistencies in standards within and across
departments throughout the organization. In fact, many of the staff members have little or no
experience in documentation or any administration processes.
4. The lack of proper documentation and loopholes in documentation processes meant lack of
coordination within departments and across departments. Staff members are often not able to
find what they want by looking through company records.

Roberta discovered widespread of both employee and managerial dissatisfaction within Polyprod
regarding the current documentation process, resulting in negative work environment.
Additionally, the documentation problem poses problems in production process and sales,
discouraging the staff. Most problems are re-directed back from various locations and
departments to the headquarters, so the personnel at headquarters end up with unmanageable
workload that leave them further disgruntled. Furthermore, rapid turnover rate in temporary

workers causes further problems in documentation progress and more costs are incurred in
retraining the new temporary workers. As mentioned earlier, most of the staff members lack
experience and proper training about the documentation process. This led to errors or
insufficiencies in documentation, which later caused the organization millions of dollars. As a
result, production sites are unable to use or have problems with the documents transferred from
headquarters, as information is either missing or unavailable.
Hence, through her collection of preliminary data from the grounds, Rorberta Jackson has
identified Stewart Jones as the most possible project sponsor with the authority to approve or
reject her proposed project to right the documentation process.

Question 2: How will you convince Stewart Jones to allow you to proceed with the project?
What arguments might you use?
I will put up the following arguments to convince Steward Jones:
1: In order to deal with information at organizational level requires abilities to keep up with
increasing data complexity. The way high management relates and deals with employees within
the organization affects interconnectivity and the working environment of the organization.
PolyProd must allow for and encourage open and appropriate operating procedures, including
effective documentation processes. Without this, there could be a reality gap between what
happens on ground and what the management envisions, resulting in high losses and inability to
gain market share.
I will initiate a change in PolyProds M&D division to improve the inadequacies in
documentation by introducing standards across departments and standard operating procedures
(SOPs) in documentation as well as checklists so as to address the reality gap. As this change
will affect project management techniques, I will also suggest for re-training for all management
staff who will then hold training for their departments and put in a stable mentoring system with
checklists and buddy systems to ensure all staff members are always supported and wellequipped with what they need to learn.
2: I will also initiate a change in the structure required to obtain authority required for resource
allocation (or re-allocation) as well as a system to monitor the progress of this change process.
Management should have more rigid structures put in place for documentation but allow
flexibility in management by being open to ideas from employees. They should recognize efforts
from employees to better their working environments and gather ideas for good practices from
employees who will know the grounds better than management level staff.

Question 3: Describe how you will develop a change process and the critical issues you will
face in managing the change.
Whenever a change is implemented in an organization, it is important to first identify a few
factors:

Why is change required?

What are the aspects of change?

What is required in implementing the change?

Who will be involved in the change?

When should the change take place?

How should the change be impremented?

We have already identified the first 4 points above so we can now proceed to deciding when and
how the change in documentation process should be implemented for the good of the
organization.
A change should never be rushed and as such, it is good to go through a change in several stages
gradually so that any issues and employee and staff concerns can be properly addressed so that
the staff feel supported and valued instead of manipulated, resulting in change resistance. Hence,
the follow steps should be thoroughly considered:
1. The best approach to implement the change
2. Factors that will favor a sustainable change
3. Planning the steps for implementing the change

1. Choosing an approach to change

We can look at Leavitts four Interacting Organizational Variables
According to Leavitt, it is important to deal with change appropriately through addressing at
least the following 4 variables in order for it to be successfully implemented:
a. Task
b. Technology

c. People
d. Structure

PolyProd should be viewed as a multi-variate system, with all these four interacting variables
thoroughly analyzed as potential entry points for change action.
a. Task : PolyProds business strategy focuses on processes performed by headquarters site
such as:
Product design and
Manufacturing methodologies, with transfer of the mature manufacturing processes
offshore.
b. Technology: PolyProds documentation consists of a few main components.
An electronic vault that holds all documents
The computer system and networks that allow access to the vault
The documents themselves
The procedures and processes for obtaining approvals and making revisions to the
documents.
c. People: An important aspect of technology.
Any implementation of change in technology or documentation system cannot be
successful if the staffs that interact with the technological and documentation components
are change resistant.
Management has to ensure that the change is properly communicated and that concerns
from all staff members are addressed in order to validate the staff members. If not,
PolyProd risk reverting back to old habits after the change process as ground staff is the
most essential part of the change process and the direct agents to change.
d.

Structure of change implementation:

Various parts of change structure also have to be taken into consideration when implementing
change or risk failure of implementation.
Communication: Shaped by technology and structure of organization, this is one aspect
that is very integral to change. Various reasons of change and the steps and approach of
change implementation must be well communicated to staff from the management, for
them to welcome the change. This will affect the success rate of change within the
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organization as jumping steps will once again introduce problems in lack of training and
instruction to ground staff.
System of authority: If ground staff perceives managements authority as obstructionist,
they are likely to resist changes implemented by the management. However, if the ground
staff feels validated by the management, they will be willing to cooperate with the
management. In the case of PolyProd, the staff feels unsupported by the management so,
change has to be implemented slowly and carefully, making sure concerns raised by the
staff are addressed so that the work environment will change to become supportive. This
will impact any sentiments of resistance towards the change implementation, for the good
of PolyProd.
Change Management: PolyProd has to manage the changes carefully to avoid falling back
into the old ways with staff being lack in training and having lack of support in any way.
Hence, the best method may be to build in solid structures as well as mentoring and
buddy systems and checklists to ensure that every step is carefully monitored and that
every problem met along the way is solved immediately instead of allowing them to
snowball.
2. Factors that will affect a sustainable change:
Create a better cross-functional communication through simulation and trial for change
implementation in PolyProd
Running a trial or simulation will show both ground staff and management how important it is
for the change to be successful so that they see the impact of a successful documentation system.
If PolyProd is able to run a trial and allow for feedback from all employees, that will be even
more advantages as that will allow for improvements and modifications to the change aspects to
better suit the staff and their work processes.
By running the simulation or the trial, PolyProds employees will be able to fully understand the
reasons of change and welcome the change since they will be able to feel the impact. They will
also, through the simulation and the trial, have a better sense of their place and importance in
PolyProd and how communication between each of them is essential to the success of PolyProd.

Buidling a favorable climate and culture for sustainable change in PolyProd

Most staff in PolyProd are discouraged by the tense friction between headquarters and ground
staff. They are largely unsupported and unsatisfied with how PolyProd views them. Both parties
are upset with each other and with PolyProd and feels that they are unimportant to PolyProd and
that management has been largely patronizing them and not taking them or their concerns
seriously.
This intense friction induces fierce tension in PolyProds management level. However, I feel that
this is actually a good thing as we will definitely be able to leverage on this tension to drive the
change. In order to implement a change in such a negative climate, it is very important to
understand PolyProds structure well in order to effect a productive and innovative environment
in PolyProd. Hierarchical implementation will not work as staff will feel stronger resentment.
Instead, it may work to PolyProds advantage to package the change such that staff feel that
change is required in order to assist themselves to better serve the customer and to value add to
the customers experience with PolyProd. A sustainable change will be successfully
implemented when both PolyProds work climate and culture changes to one where staff
believes in the reasons of change and values the change.
3. Planning the change in PolyProd:
PolyProd has to integrate technological changes within it with social changes among the staff.
Ultimately, a problem in documentation is complex and takes more than a change in just one
aspect to improve the situation. Rather than to tackle the changes separately, PolyProd should
take actions to integrate both so as to ensure that there will be no future segregation in the two
aspects, greatly benefitting the business.
Our next step will be to identify potential problems that PolyProd will meet in its change
implementation. PolyProd must ensure that its staff views the change as part of problem solving
and that every level understands and is in line with the change policy before going ahead.
Managing the stages in change implementation:
PolyProd has to commit its leadership and hence, its management, to actively pursue training
program at the higher levels of management. It is not enough to simply train the ground staff

without having higher management understand the different aspects of changes in the
documentation system. Together with management and department directors, they should
manage the different stages of changes and monitor each stage carefully and closely. It may be to
their advantage to draw up a training program that will suit each different department while
ensuring that the core aspects of changing the documentation system are communicated clearly
and that mentoring is provided adequately.
Initiating change in documentation system in PolyProd through simulation and trial
As mentioned above, a trial will be advantageous to PolyProd in many ways. It will also allow
Stewart Jones and his team to monitor their implementation and to make necessary adjustments
to the change in documentation system in real time. It will also allow for accurate planning of
resource allocation and planning of maintenance programs to be put in place so as to ensure
sustainability of the change. It is a time when communication between management and ground
staff will be extremely essential. The other aspect of the change that has to be carefully planned
out and monitored is the technological design of the trial. It will provide for unbiased feedback
from the trial.
Stewart Jones and his team should especially look out for the following in their technological
design of the trial:

Cross functional communication between departments in locations within PolyProd

Customer-oriented end product

Technological parameters for a better documentation system in PolyProd

A certain degree of flexibility for decision-making by ground staff

Conclusion
Running a trial or simulation should be able to allow PolyProd overcome the above mentioned
barriers in implementing the change in documentation system. All participants, i.e. all levels of
staff in PolyProd, are expected to make just and fair decisions according to the technical
parameters and quality requirements they are in charge of, while being responsible for updating
the next person affected and documenting their decisions and reasons behind their decisions.

The trial process, combined with a thorough appraisal of the trial with complete and honest
feedback from all staff should assure that the following pillars of changes would be fulfilled:
Firstly, formal and adequate training of all PolyProd staff, including temporary staff. There
should also be formal and informal communication between staff and management and between
departments. Next, close monitoring of the change in documentation system to ensure adherence
to change process and new system is required. Lastly, financial incentives from success in
business turnover will be given to the staff and increased market share by PolyProd.
PolyProd must monitor the implementation closely so as to nip any problem in the bud and be
flexible enough to accommodate changes to the change implementations as trials usually have
their restrictions. They have to understand that changes must be met with flexibility and not
rigidity and that their staff are the best agents of change than any amount of planning.

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