Introduction to business process management - MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about the Introduction to business process management. Answer: Introduction to Leaders and their role in the organization: Leader 1: Margaret Cushing Meg Whitman is an American business executive, philanthropist and political activist. She is currently serving as the President and Chief Executive Officer of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (Hansen, Ibarra Peyer, 2013). She belongs to New York and graduated from Princeton University and Harvard Business School. She was also the Vice President of Strategic Planning in The Walt Disney Company ("Forbes Welcome", 2018). She also served as the President and chief executive officer of eBay. Her leadership style is of transformational type. Leader 2: John Joseph Fallon is a British business executive, currently serving as the Chief Executive Officer at Pearson PLC. He completed his graduation from the University of Hull in economics, sociology and politics. He started his career as a researcher for the Labour politician then he became the Director of Communication of Pearson. His leadership style describes him as a transactional leader. Organization and its change: Hewlett Packard Hewlett Packard (HP) is a widely known American Information Technology company which has its headquarters in Palo Alto, California (Congdon, 2014). It provides various services to the consumers and a wide variety of software as well as hardware components. The various hardware components produced are printers, digital cameras, scanners, workstations and computers for business and home uses. The organisational change that took place in HP was the increment of employees and streamlining of administrative operations. Thus, the realignment meant to improve the focus of the company on the consumers. The change was transformational and was meant to evolve the fortune of HP. Pearson PLC Pearson PLC is a British multinational publishing and education company. It has its headquarters in London and was founded initially as a construction company. The service provided by the company includes Educational assessment, School management and higher education. The company publishes books, magazine and newspapers. It also includes online study materials, textbooks and latest digital technologies which enhance the scope of learning and understanding. The organizational changes that took place in Pearson were the introduction to reward and recognition which enhanced the employees performance and also played an important role in motivating the employees. Transactional leadership vs. Transformational leadership A transactional leadership is a style that involves rewards for good performance and punishments for not meeting the targets (Clarke, 2013). It basically involves the concept of embedding motivation among the employees. It enhances employees motivation by putting their self interest in the first place. The leader lays great emphasis on the relationship he/ she maintains with the employees. It is best suited for a settled environment and has only one leader. It is mostly focused on planning and execution. A transformational leadership is a style in which the leader incorporates enthusiasm to motivate and inspire his followers (Conchie, 2013). The motivation tool stimulates followers by setting group interest as a priority. The leader gives emphasis on ideals, morals, values and need of the followers. It is best suited for restless environment. It may have more than one leader and is basically focused on innovation. Identifying leadership styles: Transformational Leadership Margaret Cushing Meg Whitman, CEO of Hewlett Packard is considered as a transformational leader because she is focused on inspiring members and team building. She aims on earning trust, respect and confidence of the members such that it becomes easy for the members to adapt the changes incorporated by her. Example: Meg Whitman tends to gain immense trust and respect of the employees by breaking down the wired fences in the parking lot. The fencing created a separate area of parking for the executives and normal employees. The divisions in the office were also omitted. She never engaged herself into lavish offices and always supported her employees. She tried to inspire employees rather than forcing them to work. Transactional Leadership: John Fallon, the CEO of Pearson PLC is considered as a transactional leader since a transaction leadership is meant to provide motivation among the employees in terms of rewards and recognition, thereby ensuring the normal flow of operation in the organization. He also approached the method of involving the employees in decision making so as the employees do not feel neglected. Example: John Fallon decided to pay incentives to the employees whose works would benefit the organization. On the other hand for enhancing the professional skills of the employees he also decided to provide them with web based learning benefits to the employees for a year. Application of Leadership to manage changes in the Organization: Transformational leadership to manage changes in the Hewlett Packard: Meg Whitman the Chief Executive officer of HP, possess the transformational leadership style. She had a clear idea that she was to undertake a company that had suffered huge competitions in the past decade. The major competitors were low cost providers. She bought about a massive change in the production system and also changed the way of selling the software and hardware products. The transformational leadership is a leadership style which gives more attention to values and morals. The main focus is to motivate the employees. She constantly keeps on inspiring the employees for the betterment of the organization by guiding and supporting them. As, transformational leadership incorporates innovation the company dubbed the public cloud. This resulted to be beneficial as it was simple and easy to use. It proved to be an innovation for both the business model and technology. Transactional leadership to manage changes in the Pearson PLC: John Fallon, the CEO of the Pearson PLC has a transactional leadership style. This style involves giving rewards and recognition to employees whose performance enhanced the companys financial status or had good impact on its reputation. This in turn provides the employees motivation for further enhancing their performance. He provided the employees professionally so as to attain good skills. However, he was unable to meet his target, but still he continued to train his employees since he is a goal oriented person, such as to attain the accurate implementation of the target. The employees were provided with good motivation so as to increase their potential as well as efficiency. Incremental change vs. Radical change: Incremental change is a process which refines, modifies and adjusts the condition or the status of the organization through minor changes. These changes are simple changes so are not meant to bring changes to the core. It can also be referred to as first order change. Incremental changes are minor adjustments in the organization (Benn, Dunphy Griffiths, 2014). These are small adjustments in the hierarchies, products, services and processes. On the other hand, Radical changes are those changes that involve extreme changes within the organization (Dumas et al., 2013). They can also be called as transformational change. These huge changes have considerable effects on the function and structure of the organization. The change should be implemented when the employees agree and are satisfied. Organizational Change at Hewlett Packard: The major organizational change that took place in Hewlett Packard with Meg Whitman taking position as the CEO of HP was streamlining of the administrative procedures and employment of new employees in the company. The company also started investing in cloud services. This is considered as a radical change. Organizational change at Pearson PLC: The change that took place in the Pearson PLC is an incremental change as it required slow changes to take place and showed slow success in the organization. The CEO John Fallon introduced type concept of developing the professional skills of the employees by providing free web based learning. Initially, the concept of enhancing the professional skills failed, but later it showed great advantages earning huge amount of revenue to the company. Thus, the incremental change worked in the future and he is still working for the better future of the organization. Incremental change as Radical change and its management by the organization leader: The changes within the organization can be either incremental or radical. This can make significant changes in the performance and techniques of working of the employee. When new employees enter in the organization, they face difficulties in understanding the working culture of the organization. Thus, the higher authorities need to manage these employees. The managers need to change the managing techniques in order to train them, can be the radical change the manager needs to adopt. The manager is aware of the sale division of the products but when new products are introduced can lead to vast change in the managers perception. Meg Whitman divided employees into groups and teams such that it would be easier for them to manage such changes easily. Gradual implementation of Radical Change: It can be accurately said that radical changes can be implemented gradually. One of the reasons behind the relationship between Faxconn and Hewlett Packard was the introduction of Cloud Computing and the changes implemented in it. It is a radical change but was brought to action gradually. The employees were given specific learning access with the assessment of cloud solutions experts, such that it would bring quick customer response. Overcoming Barriers: Barriers faced by Meg Whitman: The various barriers faced by Meg Whitman are mentioned as follows: Growth through Acquisition: The Company is acquiring new technologies and acquiring new human resource is more prone to create challenges to the CEO. The new employees find it difficult to tackle with the harsh decisions of the higher authorities. Even the employees refrain to perform new tasks until they attain confidence in doing so. This leads to financial loss of the company and a major challenge for the CEO. Supervisory Oversight: The new employees required continuous supervision of the higher authorities such that they would attain proper guide. However, if the supervisor due to unavoidable circumstances is unable to supervise the employees, the organization will face difficulties in managing the new employees and thus, create another challenge for the CEO. Criticism faced by Meg Whitman: The CEO of Hewlett Packard (hp) decided to split hp into hp enterprises. This was done basically to involve new employees. The employment of new employees would lead to innovation but it has lead to certain issues in the administration. Thus, the leader faced certain barriers as the organization was not ready to accept the change. Strategies to overcome the barriers: The above stated barriers definitely lead to the hindrance of the proper working of the organization. Thus, it becomes necessary to adopt certain ways to resolve those issues such that the organization does not face problems. Some of the strategies adopted by the CEO of Hewlett Packard Meg Whitman to resolve these issues are listed below: Training: The introduction of new technologies brought greater chaos among the employees as it was difficult for them to get adjusted in the cloud service environment. Thus, training programs needs to be implemented so as to train the employees to gain expertise as well as benefits in the new field (Jehanzeb Bashir, 2013). Survey: The radical changes were not readily accepted by all the employees. Thus, a survey needs to be conducted so as to know the exact count of the employees who accepted the strategy readily. This would also help the leaders to design much proper way of delivering the changes to the employees. Hiring experts in cloud service domain: Hiring more experts from the cloud service domain would help the employees get better training and the aim of implementing better changes in the company. Effecting Change Using Lewins 3-step to manage change: Kurt Lewins Change Management Model defines motivation as a cause of change. He devised change as a 3-step model. The 3-steps consist of Unfreezing, Changing and Refreezing (Hayes, 2014). These 3 steps are required to bring changes in the organization. Unfreezing: This is the first step in the Lewins 3-step model. It lays emphasis on the idea of communicating the changes to the employees and makes the idea acceptable to them and also the methodology. For example, the CEO of hp explained her plan of implementing cloud services in the organization. She also explained how the plan would be beneficial to them as well as the company in the long run. Changing: This is the second step in Lewins 3-step model to manage changes. This step is the transition from the unfreeze stage to freeze stage. In this stage, the employees are reminded of the major reasons behind the changes being implemented. For example, the CEO of Hewlett Packard explained the employees the new opportunities and scope of the change being implemented in the organization such as that of the implementation of the cloud services. The CEO also explained the new options that would arise with the implementation of cloud services. Hence, it lead to change in the notion of employees during the implementation of radical change. Refreezing: This is the final step in the Lewins 3-step model to manage change in the organization. It guarantees that the change is solidified and there should be no revert backs from the new changes. It also makes sure that the employees follow the new guidelines stated and the new plan of action. For example, in the organization sited, Hewlett Packard, in the final stage majority of the employees were satisfied with the implementation of the cloud services in the organization as it provided greater opportunities and also incorporated innovation and it also provided latest web services to the employees. Thus, the change was successful. Kotters 8 stage change model for implementing change in Hewlett Packard: The world renowned change expert John Kotter, gave 8 stage change model for implementing the changes within the organization (Sarayreh, Khudair Barakat, 2013). The 8 steps are mentioned below: Create Urgency Creating urgency is the first stage in Kotters model to implement changes within an organization. Creating urgency is meant to create necessity for the change to be implemented in the organization. It also implies that for a change to be implemented there must a need for such changes and it should be urgent. For example, in the organization cited Hewlett Packard there was no cloud services implemented. The cloud services are in great demand in modern day hence, a change needed to be implemented to such that the company is in accordance with latest technologies. Thus, there was urgency for the change for its implementation and the change was implemented. Formation of Coalition The second stage in the Kotters change model is the formation of coalition. This stage involves the selection of employees having appropriate leadership qualities to perform the task. The major characteristics involved in effective guiding coalition are credibility, confidence, positional power and expertise in decision making. For example, Meg Whitman CEO of Hewlett Packard planned to hire experts in cloud services for better training of the employees. Creating vision for change The third stage is the creation of vision for change which consists of enhancing, developing and improving the vision of employees towards the change that needs to be implemented within the organization. This stage accounts for the following functions: Efficient co-ordination among the employees of different departments. Increased motivation among the employees towards the achievement of vision. Simplified directions to the employees from the leaders. For example, Meg Whitman vision for the betterment of Hewlett Packard was to make it a better product provider and gain maximum profit in the market. Her feasible vision and leadership skills led her achieve her goal and also incorporate cloud services in the organization. Communicate the vision Communicating the vision is the fourth stage in the Kotters Change Model. The leader faces various challenges in communicating his/ her vision to the employees. However, to attain the goal the leader has to overcome these issues. For example, interacting regularly with the employees helped the leaders to communicate new ideas to them. Organising workshops also played a major role in communicating visions of the leader to the employees. Remove Obstacles: The removing of obstacles is the sixth stage of Kotters Change Model. Obstacles lead to hindrance in change model. Hence, obstacles demands to be removed. For example, there were many major barriers that Meg Whitman has to deal with in order to implement the changes in the organization. However, due to her leadership skills she was able to handle those obstacles. Creating short-term wins The sixth stage in the Kotters Change Model is creating short term wins. It basically means to celebrate the small achievements of the employees and in whole the organization. Celebrating small achievements motivates the employees to perform better and work to the maximum potential to achieve the best. For example, Meg Whitman is a transformational leader and she gives more importance to motivation, values and respect. Celebrating small success also is a part of motivating the employees. She divided the sessions into various parts and on completion of the part; the employees were rewarded and congratulated for good performance. This added to the motivation that she used to provide to the employees because of which they thrived to perform even better. Build on the Change The seventh stage of the Kotters Change Model is to build on the change. Building on the change incorporates the execution of the change for some time. It is meant to keep in pace with the change. The implemented change is said to be successful only if it implemented for a certain amount of time. The leader should properly check that the change has been implemented for some time rather than declaring the change to be successful too early. For example, with the implementation of the cloud based service, Meg Whitman set targets for the employees to attain such that the changes are firmly maintained. Anchoring the changes in corporate culture This is the eighth stage in the Kotters Change Model. The final stage incorporates the core idea of daily work environment. The positive change will be recognized by the culture of the organization. For example, the organization Hewlett Packard implemented cloud based services which enhanced the accessing capability of the company and provided better services. The change was implemented successfully. References: Benn, S., Dunphy, D., Griffiths, A. (2014).Organizational change for corporate sustainability. Routledge. Clarke, S. (2013). Safety leadership: A meta?analytic review of transformational and transactional leadership styles as antecedents of safety behaviours.Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology,86(1), 22-49. Conchie, S. M. (2013). 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