Organizing play division

Question I.

Imagine that you are asked by top management to select and collect people to build a leading coalition. What would be your way of working and what criteria would you consider as useful?

Question II.

How important are leaders when strategic and cultural change needs collective action from most people in the organization?

Question III.

Read the case study of Philips-NXP on the website related to this book and consider the roles to play to give this change process a new impulse.

Question IV.

Read the case study of the Museum on the website related to this book and consider the roles to play to prepare this museum for the future.

Question V.

It is not uncommon that a challenging vision for the future meets sepsis and resistance by middle management and other people in the organization. These persons may have a faithful perspective on the possibilities of fulfilling the vision or they may be resistant based on uncertainty or defense of their own positions and privileges.

1. How are you able to distinguish the critical positive participants from the resisting and negative ones and what kind of communication would you use for both groups?
2. How are you able to distinguish the critical positive participants from the resisting and negative ones and what kind of influence tactics would you use for both groups?

Question VI.

When a change process is going on, there are always pioneers (who support it), followers (who are the majority of the people) and opponents (who are totally reluctant to change).

1. How do you think the management team could change the opponents’ negative attitude towards change?
2. What moment of the change process would you invest in dedicated time for this group of critics?

Question VII.

Do you think that a need for using external help in initiating and leading change in an organization could signal a lack of leadership and competence within an organization?

1. In which situations and in which phases of the change process do you think external consultants can play an integral role and be more successful than a change led and managed by an internal coalition?
2. What are possible supportive actions for consultants to start collaboration with middle management?
3. What are possible destructive actions for middle managers to limit the influence of external consultants in a change process?

Question VIII.

When you consider the player groups in an organization that has experienced some ineffective change processes in the past, one would expect that the groups critics and laggards are larger than usual. There may be more people within the organization that fear for the feasibility of change management. Meanwhile, the groups initiators and early followers could be smaller.

1. To what degree influence bad past experiences with change strategies the success rate of new change processes?
2. Could this be considered as a downward spiral whereby struggling companies have a more difficult job getting out of their bad position?
3. Which change strategies can be most effective in such a situation?

Question IX.

Considering your own work experience: Have you ever been/observed a situation in which a player, or group of players, were willing to engage in change and innovation but their willingness was drained or they were not able to turn will into action?

1. What do you think were the main reasons for that?
2. What can be done by the players or the organization in order to prevent these failures?
3. What do you think might have been an appropriate action by the player and what would you have done in that situation?

Question X.

When change is occurring in an organization, behavior needs to be exemplary. If you were working for a firm, and you were in the position of not thoroughly understanding the current change being implemented, or the long-term change of the company but you would like to show exemplary behavior,

1. How would you go about making sure that you fully understand the intendent change?
2. How should you show the change leader you want to be onboard and able to provide different expertise that would complement the rest of the change agents?

Question XI.

Imagine that an organization with a culture of low-risk taking and incremental steady innovation, is being disrupted by a high growth startup. Management decided that it is crucial to have a fast turn-around strategy to stay relevant in the market, and they hire you as a consultant to come up with a strategy and implement it.

1. Bearing in mind time constraints, to what degree would you involve various players when coming up with a strategy and who would you involve?
2. What would be the trade-off between the involvement of players, the quality of the strategy and the employee´s buy-in?
3. If involvement is limited to top management how would you ensure other stakeholders adopt change without using coercion and power as a tool?

Question XII.

Ideally, people commit to a change within their organization and play an active role when they see a positive development and a role for themselves in the change porcess. Taking the initiative will eventually lead to a certain kind of ownership of the ongoing change, thus increasing peoples’ interest and contribution. As an effect, the change owners could get blind for flaws in their change approach and be reluctant to required adjustments.

1. Do you think that such bias could arise during a change process?
2. Do you think that having owners driving the change will be beneficial in any case?
3. From which level of contribution onwards is someone considered an owner?
4. Could conflicts of interest arise between those owners?

Question XIII.

In order for a change process to be successful, consultants make efforts to build a lasting and trustworthy consultant-client-relationship, often supported by a shared vision, high involvement and commitment among all parties involved.
At the same time, it is essential for consultants to stay unbiased, specifically during first observations, by including many different viewpoints.

1. When and how should the relationship building process really start?
2. Is it possible to stay unbiased when you have already started building a relationship with your client, specifically if this relationship is comparatively stronger with a client from one department over another?

Question XIV.

Within an organization there are many players with many different interests, therefore there will be certainly players whose interests will not be aligned with the change strategy. And if we change this strategy to accommodate these players’ interests, the new strategy will be misaligned with some other players who have different interests. For this reason, there will always be people who will have personal interests not in line with change strategy.

1. How can we involve players with different interests, which can be damaging for the change required? Or should we not involve these players?
2. Which combination of change strategies would, in most cases, be appropriate to use for these players?

Question XV.

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 XVI.

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.