Elaborating play concepts

Question I.

Reflect on an organization you are known with, and consider which change approach might be the most useful one given developments in the environment, the context, the existing culture, the level of faith in management and the importance of innovation?

Question II.

Internet and social media are threatening the traditional post business with post offices and daily post deliveries. These developments results in lots of uncertainty within the traditional post companies.

1. Which steps might be useful to change the business strategy and change the traditional culture?
2. How would you collect honest feedback about the change process when your organization is in crisis and people are not certain about their future?

Question III.

Which points of attention would you take serious for a cultural change process in governmental organizations aiming to improve customer orientation and service and at the same time guaranteeing equality of treatment and service?

Question IV.

Focus on customers is advocated as one of the most important guidelines for strategic and cultural change in organizations. How would financial institutes like banks and assurance companies look like when they focus on customer needs and satisfaction? For reference: look at Triodos Bank, one of the most sustainable banks in the world.

Question V.

What are disadvantages and risks in combining upward and downward initiatives in strategic and cultural change?

Question VI.

In first sight the bottom-up approach to organizational change seams more appealing to realize changes in organizations. Some managers might feel overrun if their subordinates come to the front with new ideas. Their own position might be weakened and thus management will try to avoid it.
How to provide channels for a bottom-up approach, with which the middle management doesn’t fears to be overrun and the employees don’t fear some form of retaliation of their managers.

Question VII.

Assuming that a change process has to happen within an operation due to some external obligation and the change fails and none of the changes is accepted by the employees of the organization.

• Do you think that it is possible to try again to change the organization by using a different change strategy?

Question VIII.

How organizational change is managed is a function of the perspective taken regarding the phenomenon of change in assessing that situation. But since changes are ongoing processes that see multiple actors stepping in and outside, adapting to their evolution, different points of view eventually give different understandings of the process.

1. How should diverse perspectives on urgency take into account that each player perceives as crucial?
2. How should diverse perspectives of the usefulness of engagement take into account?
3. Would thus selecting the most suited change strategy be inherently partially biased by the subjectivity of each of the players’ perspectives?

Question IX.

In today’s multicultural workplace, a sustainable environment depends on the aptitude to correctly interpret information and in turn, prosperously navigate the challenges posed by change dynamics. Communication plays an integral role in change processes. In order to keep-up with such transformations, relevant information needs to reach each distinct group.

1. Since diverse cultural groups select or interpret given information differently, what steps can an organization take to ensure that the selected communication strategy will be effective across all employees?
2. Should an organization implement several, but tailored strategies to each cultural group?
3. How can the organization make sure that discrepancies are not present when dealing with fused corporate cultures?

Question X.

In organizational changes, communicating and interacting play a key role in determining the success or failure of the operations. Each kind of change policy is accompanied by a specific communication style, which has the main objective of strengthening the whole organizational change.

1. What can leaders do to strengthen their messages?
2. How can they keep track of their communication effectiveness during the process?
3. Are there any KPIs or parameters able to indicate how effective they have been in communicating and involving their employees?

Question XI.

Being change an arduous time- and resource-consuming process that cannot be executed from one day to another and might also encounter many individuals who struggle to accept it, a few questions can be raised.

1. When and what is the best strategy for managers to communicate and implement a structural or cultural change within an enterprise?
2. How effective would be offering incentives, simply redefining values and waiting for individuals to adapt, imposing change through authority and creating a new structure and culture?
3. How can consultants, as external professionals who don’t fully live the daily corporate culture and environment, suggest the most correct strategy according to specific situations?
4. How can change be successfully communicated to employees and managers across every hierarchical level?

Question XII.

Copying a strategy that was successful for other companies almost certainly results in a disaster in order to change a company culture. However, a Harvard Business Review paper that titles ‘Imitation is more valuable than innovation’ contradicts the previous point, suggesting that innovation is often driven by imitation from an already existing business idea.
In order for a company to implement a successful company culture change, must they imitate not their existing business culture but that of other businesses?

Question XIII.

Select an unmanageable issue in which politicians, citizens, action groups and the business community are involved. Collect information on this issue from newspapers, magazines and the Internet. Work out an approach for dealing with this unmanageable issue based on the ideas presented and discussed during the seminar.

Question XIV.

Read the case study of Philips-NXP on the website connected to this book and answer the questions at the end of the case description.

Question XV.

Read the case study of the Museum on the website related to this book and answer the questions at the end of the case description.

Question XVI.

Look at the change dilemmas described in the chapter about elaborating the play concept and make a well-considered choice how to cope with these dilemmas related to a change process in an organization you are known with.

Question XVII.

Read the practical example in the final paragraph of the chapter about elaborating the play concept and write a reflection how you think this organization has coped with the change dilemmas.