You have been engaged as an Organizational Development (OD) consultant by an organization with which you have deep familiarity that has endeavored to implement a system of organizational change and has failed. For the purposes of the assignment, the organization should be one that you know well, such as your employer, former employer, or a client. For the sake of confidentiality, you may disguise the actual identity of the organization. The chief executive officer (CEO) of the organization has asked for your help to determine what went wrong with the failed change attempt and to develop an action plan for re-engaging the organization with change efforts that are based upon systems thinking and decision making.
Stages for Developing the Organizational Change Action Plan
Start with a thorough analysis of the current situation, an analysis of the factors requiring the organization to adopt change, and an analysis of the failed change effort. Ground your analysis in a comprehensive review of the literature that is pertinent to the organizational environment as well as for academic and practitioner support for the new action plan that you will develop.
The action plan that you will develop must be developed using a system thinking and decision-making approach, and it should consist of the following stages:
- Guiding the organization to develop new cognitive capacities
- Guiding the organization to develop new action rules
- Guiding the organization to develop new values and assumptions
- Guiding the organization to implement the organizational change initiative
Organizational Change Action Plan (Completed in Week 10)
- Part 1: Background of the Organizational and its Current Situation (Completed Part 1 due in Week 2)
- Introduction (Week 1)
- Overview of the organization (Week 1)
- Overview of the organization’s industry, environment, and competition (Week 1)
- Background of the change initiative (Week 1)
- Review of the failed change effort (Week 2)
- Potential consequences if effective change is not adopted (Week 2)