Term Paper on

Overview of Change Activities, Motivating Change, Creating a Vision

Department of Business Administration in Management Studies

Faculty of Business Studies
Bangladesh University of Professionals
Mirpur, Dhaka

Course: Organizational Development and Change Management

Course Code: MGT4103

Submitted to:
Farhana Ferdousi Aziz
Assistant Professor
Department of Management Studies

Submitted by:
Name Roll
MD. Rakib Hoaasin (L) 2024161012
Nusrat Jahan Pranti 2024161052
Farhana Omi Hafsa 2024161070
Sk Marzia Zafor 2024161092
Md Shakil Khan 2024161100
Faria Fatima Roza 2024161108
Section: B
Session: 2019-2020

Date of Submission: 18th May 2023

 Overview of Change Activities
1. What are Change Activities?
Change activities aim to improve an organization, product, or process. This can range from
introducing new products or services to changing organizational structures to implementing
new processes or technologies. Change activities are often part of a larger change
management process designed to ensure the successful implementation of the desired
changes.

2. Importance of change activities in an organization

● Change in Leadership: Changes in the organization's leadership can significantly
impact the organization's goals and objectives. By bringing in new leadership, the
organization can be pushed to innovate and explore new opportunities.
● Change in Strategic Direction: A shift in the organization’s strategic direction can
significantly impact the organization's operational activities. It can help the
organization stay relevant in a dynamic market environment.
● Change in Technology: Technological advancements can majorly impact how an
organization operates. By incorporating new technology, the organization can become
more efficient and gain a competitive edge.
● Change in Workforce: A change in the workforce can also shift the organization's
goals and objectives. The organization can gain a fresh perspective on its challenges
by bringing in new talent and ideas.
● Change in Culture: By changing the organization's culture, the organization can create
an environment more conducive to creativity and innovation. This can help the
organization to stay ahead of the competition.
● Change in Processes: The organization can become more efficient and reduce costs by
changing processes and procedures. This can also help the organization stay
competitive.

3. "Overview of change activities. "

● Planning Change: This is creating a plan for implementing the change. It involves
identifying the desired outcomes, analyzing the current environment, and defining the
resources needed to implement the change.
● Communicating Change: This informs stakeholders of the upcoming change and
ensures they understand the implications. It includes providing clear, accurate
information about the change and addressing questions or concerns.
● Implementing Change: This is the process of putting the change into action. It
involves taking the necessary steps to implement the change correctly and promptly.
● Managing Resistance to Change: This is the process of addressing any resistance to
change that may arise. It includes identifying the sources of resistance, understanding
the underlying causes, and developing strategies to address them.

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 ● Defining Impact: Change activities should include an assessment of the impact of the
proposed change on stakeholders, including employees, customers, vendors, and other
parties. This helps ensure all necessary steps are taken to minimize disruption and
ensure the change is successful.
● Establishing Support Structures: Change activities should include establishing the
necessary support structures to ensure the change is implemented correctly and the
stakeholders are informed and engaged. This may include training, communication
plans, policies, and procedures to ensure success.

4. The overall impact of change activities in an organization

The overall impact of organizational change activities can be significant and far-reaching. It
can create an environment of innovation and growth and improve efficiency, productivity,
and profitability. Successful organizational change activities can help the organization reach
its goals and objectives.

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 Motivating Change
Organizations resist changing it in the face of uncertain future benefits. Consequently, a key
issue in planning for action is motivating commitment to organizational change. This requires
attention to two related tasks:

1. Creating Readiness for Change

2. Overcoming resistance to change

1. Creating Readiness for Change: People’s readiness for change depends on creating a felt
need for change. This involves making people so dissatisfied that they are motivated to try
new work processes, technologies, or ways of behaving. The following three methods can
help generate sufficient dissatisfaction to produce change:

A. Sensitize organizations to pressures for change: Innumerable pressures for change

operate externally and internally. Modern organizations face environmental pressures
to change themselves, including heavy foreign competition, rapidly changing
technology, and the draw of global markets. Internal pressures to change include new
leadership, poor product quality, high production costs, and employee absenteeism
and turnover.

Organizations can make themselves more sensitive to pressures for change by

encouraging leaders to surround themselves by cultivating external networks that
comprise people or organizations with different perspectives and views; by visiting
other organizations to gain exposure to new ideas and methods; and by using external
standards of performance, such as competitors’ progress or benchmarks, rather than
the organization’s past standards of performance.
B. Reveal discrepancies between current and desired states: In this approach to
generating a felt need for change, information about the organization’s current
functioning is gathered and compared with desired states of operation. These desired
states may include organizational goals, standards, and a general vision of a more
desirable future state. Significant discrepancies between actual and ideal states can
motivate organization members to initiate corrective changes, particularly when
members are committed to achieving those ideals. A significant goal of diagnosis is to
provide members with feedback about current organizational functioning so that the
information can be compared with goals or desired future states. Such feedback can
energize action to improve the organization.
C. Convey credible positive expectations for the change: Organization members
invariably have expectations about the results of organizational changes.
Communicating realistic expectations about organizational changes is crucial in
achieving positive effects. Research suggests that information about why the change
is occurring, how it will benefit the organization, and how people will be involved in
the design and implementation of the change is most helpful. Organization members

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 also can be taught about the benefits of positive expectations and be encouraged to set
credible positive expectations for the change program.

2. Overcoming Resistance to Change: Change can generate deep resistance in people and
organizations, thus making it difficult, if not impossible, to implement organizational
improvements. At a personal level, change can arouse considerable anxiety about letting go
of the known and moving to an uncertain future. People may need clarification on whether
their existing skills and contributions will be valued in the future or may have significant
questions about whether they can learn to function effectively and achieve benefits in the new
situation.

At the organizational level, resistance to change can come from three sources.

● Technical resistance comes from following standard procedures and considering

sunk costs invested in the status quo.
● Political resistance can arise when organizational changes threaten powerful
stakeholders, such as top executives or staff personnel, or call into question the past
decisions of leaders.
● Cultural resistance takes the form of systems and procedures that reinforce the status
quo, promoting conformity to existing values, norms, and assumptions about how
things should operate.

Three major strategies for dealing with resistance to change

1. Empathy and support: A first step in overcoming resistance is learning how people are
experiencing change. This strategy can identify people having trouble accepting the
changes, the nature of their resistance, and possible ways to overcome it. Still, it
requires a great deal of empathy and support. It demands a willingness to suspend
judgment and to see the situation from another’s perspective, a process called active
listening.
2. Communication: People resist change when they are uncertain about its
consequences. Lack of adequate information fuels rumors and gossip and adds to the
anxiety generally associated with change. Effective communication about changes
and their likely results can reduce this speculation and allay unfounded fears. It can
help members realistically prepare for change. However, communication is also one
of the most frustrating aspects of managing change. Organization members constantly
receive data about current operations and plans and informal rumors about people,
changes, and politics.
3. Participation and involvement: One of the oldest and most effective strategies for
overcoming resistance is to involve organization members directly in planning and
implementing change. Participation can lead both to the design of high-quality
changes and to overcome resistance to implementing them.18 Members can provide
diverse information and ideas, contributing to making the innovations effective and
appropriate to the situation. They also can identify pitfalls and barriers to
implementation.

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 Creating A Vision
● Leading and Managing Change.
● Core values and purpose that guide the organization.
● Energize commitment by forming common Goals.
● Leadership Frameworks.
● Envisioned future with the desired future state.

Describing The Core Ideology:

● The fundamental basis of a vision for change.
● Core values are not “espoused values” but the “values in use.”
● Idealistic motivation.
● Organization’s core values, purpose, and identity.

Constructing the Envisioned Future

The core ideology of an organization sets the context for its future vision, which must be
created for each change project. The envisioned future varies in complexity and scope,
depending on the magnitude of the changes being considered. Simple changes like upgrading
software require a less complex vision than transforming a government bureaucracy.
The envisioned future typically includes two elements that can be
communicated to organization members:
1. Bold and valued outcomes: Envisioned futures often have specific results that
organizations or units want to achieve, which can serve as goals for the change
process and standards for measuring progress. These outcomes are valued and are
essential in guiding the change process. Descriptions of envisioned futures for
organizations often include specific performance and human outcomes as goals and
standards for assessing progress. BHAGs (Big, Hairy, Audacious Goals) are clear,
tangible, energizing targets that serve as rallying points for organizational action.
These goals can challenge members to meet targets in sales growth, customer
satisfaction, competition, industry role-model status, or organizational transformation.

For example, in 1990 Wal-Mart Stores made a statement of intent “to become a $125
billion company by the year 2000.” (Net sales in 1999 exceeded $137.6 billion.)
Following the downsizing of the U.S. military budget, Rockwell proposed the
following bold outcome for its change efforts: “Transform this company from a
defense contractor into the best diversified high-technology company in the world.”
2. Desired future state: This element of the envisioned future is a detailed and
passionate statement describing what the organization should look like to achieve
valued outcomes. It is intended to engage and inspire organization members and draw
them into the future vision. The organizational features described in the statement
help define a desired future state toward which change activities should move. This
aspect of the visioning process is exciting and compelling. It seeks to create a world
picture that empowers and motivates members to change.

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