Organizational Background
Discuss about the Leading Change and Innovation for Organizational Studies.
The report is prepared to discuss about the movement as a leader who possesses relevant knowledge and skills to manage significant changes and promote innovation all throughout. The business organization that will be chosen as the case study is Metro Inc. in Canada. Metro Inc. is one of the major retail supermarket chains in Canada that has been considered as an online grocery store. The company delivers the best quality and freshest products and services to its customers and the company has maintained a positive culture with proper support given by the leaders of the organization. Leadership is essential to promote innovation and foster the growth and development of the organization within the retail sector, furthermore determine the approaches that are to be undertaken to become high performing in the transformational servant led culture or structure (Fullan, 2014).
Metro Inc is one of the major retail supermarket chains in Canada that is a leader in food and pharmaceutical distribution. The company operates more than 600 food stores including Metro Food, Food Basics, Adonis, etc. Few of the drugstores are Metro Pharmacy, Brunet, Drug Basics, etc. The company boosts and operating income of CDN$601.6 million and revenue is more than CDN$11,402.8 million. The number of employees is more than 65000 (corpo.metro.ca, 2018).
According to Dawson and Andriopoulos (2014), within the competitive business environment, the companies in Europe and America compete with other companies that have lower costs of production. Due to his, it has become necessary to change the competitiveness program and manage it according to value of products delivered, innovation, quality and other technological aspects. Tezz, being an automotive company has invested in various plants in different countries to ensure it can bring innovation, creativity, sustainability and better revenue generation (Doppelt, 2017).
Can the promotion of new ideas and concepts by the leaders at work enhance the leadership skills?
At Metro, there is continuous need to innovate, remain creative and promote new ideas for fulfilling the changing needs of customers. To meet their demands and expectations, it is necessary for the leaders to manage consistent sharing and exchange of ideas and opinions and improve own leadership skills along with the knowledge of workers to facilitate the production process at Metro Inc., Canada. Innovation and creativity would be essential for sustaining business as well as differentiate the products and service properly within the competitive business environment. It will lead to economic growth as well as enhance the leader skills to form a transformational servant led culture and structure (Norman & Verganti, 2014). Changes are incremental and thus are essential components for managing transformational changes. It will also help in obtaining the different views, opinions and decisions made by individuals working at Metro Inc, furthermore bring consistent changes through innovation, creativity and openness. The change initiatives would also help in managing the situations to involve or engage the employees properly and remain more autocratic in driving the changes all throughout (Frame & White, 2014).
Sustaining Changes
How can the leaders serve as role models and develop a culture of servant leadership at the organization?
One of the major ways by which the employees can be informed about the leadership is to act as a role model whom they can respect, admire and emulate. Once the business owner of Metro Inc provides a powerful, consistent and brings out the role model, it will be easy for the employees to follow the lead. The leader can serve as a positive role model by demonstrating the personal responsibilities for the actions that have been accepted and undertaken by him. Few examples include apologizing for the loss of temper, criticizing employees for their mistakes and about looking forward in case the company faces a down turn (Gobble, 2013). All these behaviors present in the business leader can make him act as a responsible role model and establish a culture to promote communication, consideration of individual views and opinions and creativity. This would encourage cooperation and enhance the customers’ services’ delivery too. The most important characteristic of being a role model to others could be the ability to innovate, be creative and remain open to innovation. The management of time is important keeping focus on the tight priorities should be managed properly to ensure completion of tasks within the assigned time (Dawson & Andriopoulos, 2014). To develop a culture of servant leadership, the leaders must promote the significance of team working, coordination and communication, which should increase the production rate and ensure managing the workload quite comprehensively.
How does leadership promote changes within the organizations?
The servant leadership allows for fulfilling the needs and requirements of the employees, which has helped in managing the human aspects of change and planned for smooth transitions and handling the political aspects of change. Leadership affects various factors that are considered as major drivers of change both externally and internally. With the leader of Metro Inc working as the role model of the employees, new ideas have been promoted, which has given rise to the development of new products and services along with triggering changes through internal activities (Bloom, Draca & Van Reenen, 2016). The supply chain is influenced by innovation and new technologies have come into play like use of in-time technologies and RFID technology. The leaders make sure that the company follows the Government laws and rules properly and manage the international agreements on trade and tariffs. The employees are educated through training and development sessions for meeting up to the societal expectations and operate both ethically and in a socially responsible manner. This would also allow the business to grow with higher level of commitment by employees and create scopes for merger and acquisitions, privatization of public sector businesses and international expansion too (Cummings & Worley, 2014).
Promoting New Ideas and Concepts by Leaders
Does the servant leadership help in managing teamwork, coordination and betterment of team performance?
Metro Inc. describes the servant leadership as an important aspect that one wants to serve people and a constant choice of remaining at the beginning, aspire to lead. It is a kind of philosophy that evaluates the practices and various leadership skills and qualities including empathy, considering views and opinions of others in the teams, persuasion, conceptualization and commitment to the growth and development of employees at work. A servant leader can share power and put the needs of others working for the company at first and then help them to develop, grow and manage optimization of performance. This assists in personal advancement as well as concentrates on performance planning, everyday coaching and understanding the expectations of others. The main responsibility of the servant leader would be to nurture the employees by enduring investment of the lives of leaders in the lives of the employees who would follow the leader (Anderson, 2016). The servant leadership could promote team problem solving capabilities and motivate the employees by providing them with autonomy, power and resources all throughout.
The management of teamwork, coordination and betterment of team performance is dependent upon the transformational servant leadership and the ADKAR model has been utilized often to make sure that a proper culture and structure is maintained at the company. The ADKAR model helped the servant leaders to bring change management practices through awareness, desire, knowledge, ability and reinforcement. The awareness aspect helped them to gain clear understanding about the needs for changes and nature of changes to be communicated to the employees at Metro Inc. The desire aspect makes them interested in providing support to the changes, encourage participation of the workers and provide their useful ideas to contribute to the proposed change (Hrebiniak, 2013). This could facilitate the communication process and enhance the knowledge of employees. The development of knowledge and skills would help in transition of changes that had been implemented and allow the employees to obtain knowledge too through formal training modules and mentoring sessions. The ability of individuals will be improved and this can ensure that the changes stay in place and individuals slowly adopt to the new ways of doing things at present. Lastly, the reinforcement of new skills and competencies achieved by the individuals through proper support by the servant leaders should build a new sustainable culture revolving through the changes at Metro Inc (Carayannis, Sindakis & Walter, 2015).
Leadership’s Role in Managing Organizational Changes
Is it true to the fact that teamwork, collaboration and coordination bring formation of a high performing workforce within a Transformational Servant led culture/structure?
Yes, teamwork and coordination while implementing changes within the organization can help to develop a vision and recognize the workload or behavioral change. This will assist in shared ownership and engage all the employees together. The servant leadership support would facilitate the design process, communication and implementation of changes communicated to every employee. The leadership support is expected to bring change management plan required to identify the potential risks at the early stages and overcome the barriers to change as early as possible. The key components should include vision or goal of the organization, communication tools and strategies used, resources and major stakeholders, understanding the roles and responsibilities clearly and lastly managing the institutionalization and post roll out process (Anderson, 2016). The cooperation among workers brings out the best from them and they can easily share their individual ideas, which make them capable of engaging the stakeholders and develop an initiative to drive changes forward. Communication at all levels create a sense of transparency and openness along with the clarification of goals and objectives, addressing the concerns, providing feedbacks to the employees of Metro Inc and sharing information. Communication should be done through multiple channels to improve the structural aspects of the company and adopt the desired changes to measure progress at regular intervals (Dawson & Andriopoulos, 2014).
What are the nine considerations of Dawson on the organizational change process?
According to Dawson (2014), no silver bullet is the first consideration to manage changes and bring competitive success. It allows for making assumptions behind the linear sequential models and implement successful changes while the shifting of terrains are the norms to achieve high performance in a transformational servant led culture. It can include the contextual changes, changing views and opinions of the various stakeholders, contingencies that occur suddenly and disruptions within the environment as well (Dawson & Andriopoulos, 2014). This is how shifting terrains can help in adjusting with the unforeseen consequences and ensure changes through proper and considerable planning. Allowing considerable amount of time is essential for continuous improvement and enhances the skills of team members working at Metro Inc to exchange and share ideas for giving sense to what has to be achieved and how. Enabling change as a learning experience is another consideration of Dawson that makes individuals learn from the failure and success experiences, furthermore deliver a specific message to the intended audience to develop own skills and abilities (Sarros, Cooper & Santora, 2008). Training the new skills and acquisition methods are important for making sure that the employees are equipped with changes and the right messages and information are delivered to the right audiences through effective communication procedure. Communication must be promoted both formally and informally to align with the contextual needs of people while the change considered as power politics should assist in continuing with the desired changes without any occurrence of uncertainties and failures in the future. These are the basic nine considerations that can reflect the effectiveness of the organizational change process and at the same time, facilitate critical thinking among employees, improve the workplace culture and become high performing within the Transformational Servant led culture and structure (Noruzy et al., 2013).
Servant Leadership and Betterment of Team Performance
With the help of the servant leadership approach, the organization has achieved highest standards and even becomes a high performing workforce. At first, the core behaviors are assessed and knowledge is developed and afterwards the smart action plans are prepared. This has helped in individual assessment and evaluating the actions undertaken by them to build relationships and community. The teamwork is facilitated and proper cooperation at work further influenced the production value. Metro being a large sized retail supermarket chain in Canada, promotes a diversified workforce consisting of individuals’ whose needs have been prioritized on to bring out their best in terms of performance. Implementation of new technologies, machineries, investment in infrastructures is vital and at the same time, management of human resources is done properly when driven by servant leadership (Büschgens, Bausch & Balkin, 2013). It has developed a cohesive workforce and established better communication streams between the various groups of people, new systems of training are recreated to influence the behaviors of the employees and remain transformative to the culture and development of workforce. The changes could be seen in respect of innovation, creativity, better teamwork, communication and higher production at Metro Inc. The servant led culture has allowed focusing on long term objectives and getting the right behaviors of behaviors to support the teamwork and provide excellent customers’ services too (Donate & de Pablo, 2015). It has always been a major aspect of the strategic plan and with the servant leadership approach, the transformation of culture and structure further contributed to the satisfaction of both employees and customers. Vast amounts of major changes have made the organization high performing in the servant led culture or structure. The few areas where changes are facilitated include improvement of “employer of choice” status by attracting the most suitable employees, enabling customer recognition of the cohesive team, reduction of breakeven point through cooperative lean continuous improvement techniques and lastly, creating more value and solving problems with ease. The organization is in a sustainable position at the present and is likely to implement more changes and influence the innovation and creativity all over the workplace (Holten & Brenner, 2015).
A positive culture and leadership aspects are essential for developing a climate for innovation and allows Metro Inc to manage changes and improvements all throughout. The structural model of relationships among transformational leadership and climate for innovation includes various major aspects including the articulation of vision, fostering the acceptance, intellectual stimulation, providing individual support, expecting high performances from the employees and lastly providing appropriate role model. It is true that the transformational leadership factors are the most important for shaping the culture of innovation (Boutros & Purdie, 2014). The performance oriented organizational culture and climate for innovation are interconnected concepts, which can facilitate the articulating of vision, set high performance expectations and provide individual support for their enhancement of skills, knowledge and expertise. When a positive work culture is created, it becomes easy to form a climate for organizational innovation and facilitate the processes of production and delivery of products and services to its customers. The two most important transformational leadership factors including the articulates vision and provides individual support are considered as effective factors responsible for building a climate for innovation at the organization (Saruhan, 2014). According to Sarros et al. (2008), the transformational leader of the organization defines a vision and it has been accepted and anticipated by individuals working there. The articulating of vision has further helped in achieving the desired results and even engaged the staffs altogether with the shared vision components of culture related to the management of innovation. Individual’s support not only enhances the ability to set high performance expectations, but also strengthens the relationships between the leaders and employees through the vision statement and improvement in existing skills and knowledge too (Piercy, 2016). The intellectual stimulation could enhance the capabilities of the leader to articulate the vision of the organization and at the same time, influence change in culture for building a climate for innovation at Metro Inc. A transformational servant leader must take into consideration the feelings of others and understand the needs of theirs, so that those could be met and organizational change is encouraged. It would bring innovation, at the same time, foster creativity, achieve high performance, and drive the employee behaviors and performances too (Adams & McNicholas, 2007).
ADKAR Model for Change Management
The change process is to be enabled for managing changes in the organizational operations and processes, furthermore ensure business growth, development and sustainable competitive advantage in business. The skills and knowledge of the employees and leaders are associated with the development of organization and maintain stable relationships to deliver the best quality services. The change process involves a major component that drives the change potential and ensures organizational development. It is also known as the change agent who can develop some changes through implementation of the information technology, quality programs, process improvement and the management of supply chain properly (Jones, Jimmieson & Griffiths, 2005). The managers and leaders are responsible for developing the teams and coaching individuals to make them understand their roles and responsibilities accurately. This would also provide a foundation of the most suitable practices in ensuring change at the organization, Metro Inc. There are academic training sessions that are arranged for the people working in areas of psychology, research methods, group dynamics, adult learning, career development and organizational theories (Appelbaum et al., 2012). The practical experiences can further assist in gaining the relevant skills and knowledge to perform as professionals, furthermore monitor the progress of organizational development work in action (Canina et al., 2013).
The change process is managed for ensuring successful organizational development process that includes various stages such as the entry, contracting, data gathering, diagnosis and feedback, intervention, evaluation and exit (Pollack & Pollack, 2015). The first stage is the entry that starts with discussion between the consultant and client while the contracting allows for determining the work that is needed to be accomplished. It creates organizational development consulting opportunity and develops consulting relationships, which facilitates the collection of data and information along with diagnosis and feedback of data and information presented. By providing feedbacks, it would be much more convenient for addressing the problems and implement intervention strategies for making sure whether to stop the engagement during the change process or re-start the cycle. Another major component of change is the leadership aspect that allows individuals remain motivated and encouraged to perform better and bring changes (Müller & Ulrich, 2013).
The assessment of readiness is one of the major components of the change process, which can help to assess the organization’s ability or readiness to change and adapt new ways of business operations management. The team involved with the system management can gain detailed information about the challenges and opportunities that might arise during the process of change management at Metro Inc. Proper communication planning is important to enhance the skills of workers and make them understand the information and messages passed on by the managers. It is important for making the employees motivated and encouraged to perform to their potential (Ritter & Mostert, 2017). It will create awareness among the employees as well as establish a positive mindset among their minds to know about the significance of changes and risks associated with it as well. The communication planning would carefully analyze the target audiences and send the key messages and information to the right people and at the right time. The sponsor activities drive changes through both active and visible participation and it develops a coalition of support among the leaders and employees of Metro Inc. The changing management training is an important component for the managers while the development and delivery of training are other components of the change management process too. Providing feedbacks to the employees is another important element that facilitates the changes and allows the managers to analyze the feedbacks and implement any corrective action (?erne et al., 2014). It is mainly done for overcoming the challenges faced while managing changes; furthermore ensure adopting adoption of the changes at Metro Inc., Canada.
For enabling proper change management, it is important to develop a suitable plan of action for ensuring that the change management process takes sufficient time, effort, knowledge, skills and expertise to function and implement. Not only the employees are involved, but also the leaders who guide them in the right direction and encourage them to perform to their potential.
This model consists of unfreeze, change and refreeze, which can help in managing the change process and transform the system by leading change and innovation at Metro Inc. The unfreeze stage helps in preparing for the changes ad make people influenced to understand the needs to change and also understand about the significance of changes implemented. The change process enables to adopt new developments, changes and occurrences to make the process much easier for the staffs and individuals to get involved. Communication and proper time allocation are important for managing the changes appropriately while the refreeze stage would ensure that the changes were accepted and implemented by people to maintain stable functioning (Doppelt, 2017). The staffs and business operations fall in the right place, making it convenient to bring innovation within the assigned time and accomplish the goals and objectives too. The employees will be comfortable with the changes and adjust to those.
Kotter’s change management theory is used to build a team through proper leadership skills and lead innovation across the entire system. The first stage enables creating a sense of urgency through motivation of the staffs while the development of team should be done by assigning the right employee with the right roles and responsibilities while combining the skills, knowledge, expertise and commitment of employees. Change is evitable when the company can communicate the right vision by considering the objectives to be achieved, emotional connection, creativity and innovation. Communication is another important aspect of the change management process where people need to interact with each other and discuss about the various aspects of the system; furthermore divide the short-term goals into smaller components and tasks that can be achieved with much ease (Norman & Verganti, 2014). Rather than just managing the changes, it should be vital for reinforcing the change, integrate it with the workplace culture for improving the performance of the workforce, and make it adaptable to changes and innovation in the system.
Figure: Kotter’s change model (Norman & Verganti, 2014)
The leaders of the company could utilize the ADKAR model to spread awareness among the staffs regarding the need for change and improve their interest level to bring change and become a part of it. This would enhance the skills, knowledge and expertise of the employees at Metro Inc and ensure that the changes were implemented and reinforced afterwards too. This would bring expressive change and at the same time, ensure creativity and innovation all throughout. The after project review can assess the areas where changes need to be implemented and based on the post project implementation outcomes, a system will be implemented for continuous improvement of change management. Creativity enhancement techniques would not only facilitate changes at the organization, but would also make them adopt the changes properly (Frame & White, 2014).
Fostering an open, creative working environment is important for making the workers of Metro Inc to communicate with each other frequently and ensure greater flexibility to bring profitable innovation. The employees would be provided with freedom to work on their own with proper guidance as well, which should bring creativity and innovation within the organization (Cadden, Marshall & Cao, 2013). The teams must be motivated and encouragement of diversity could further lead to different working styles, enhanced way of thinking and creative ways to share and exchange information and messages. Innovation teams should be formed by engaging individuals with different styles of working, skills set, experiences and knowledge so that the different views and opinions offered by those individuals combine to form a right decision or choice, which could be vital for the business success (Cummings & Worley, 2014).
Conclusion
The report mainly focused on the different concepts of leading change and innovation at the business organization named METRO Inc in Canada. The questions provided in the report helped in providing relevant solutions to become highly performing in the transformational servant led culture or structure. According to Sarros et al. (2008), the climate for innovation should be built for innovation through leadership aspects and ensuring that a positive workplace place would be formed. The change processes involved the change agent responsible for innovation and creativity within the organization while the two most important approaches to change that could be implemented by the leaders were Kotter’s change model and Lewin’s change management approach. To enhance the creativity level and innovation, the managers made sure to create an open and creative workplace environment and motivated them through providing better flexibility to them. This would result in making the leaders positively influence the employees and drive the business performance too.
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