The six images of changes have their own uniqueness; these six circumstances are generated within the continuum of manager’s desire to manage the change and his expectation of the outcome. The image of change is further divided into controlling and shaping, similarly, expectation into intended, partially intended and unintended. Manager builds his soft skills and assumes participator model rather than rule-based approach of management as he inclines towards shaping from controlling. And at various moments he may further relax his expectation of outcome into three variants. This creates six images, i.e., director, navigator, caretaker, coach, interpreter, and nurturer.
I personally believe that there are no best consistent images to follow. The agility and robustness of manager for me is his/her undisputed talent to practice contemporary management roles of planning, organizing, leading, staffing, controlling (Mintzberg, 2009). When it comes to be essential and objective are crucial to achieve, outcomes which are mostly mandatory for any organization, manager practices director role.A perfect apotheosis could be standardized accounting procedure mandated by the regulatory body in disclosing annual financial reports.
Irrespective of various adverse situations, where managers have limited or no hold on the outcomes, they perform navigator and caretaker role. Multiple variables, in reality, work tangentially to the organization. They could be impactful. While navigating, the manager uses his skills to reach the end by compromising and acknowledging. Whereas, as a caretaker, he takes care of each unit of his organization (i.e., effective communication, resource availability, build the strong morale of employees et cetera). The nature of care and attention should be as per the "state of company’s life cycle" as supported by life cycle theory. (Van de Ven, 1995). In times, managers need to practice human relation fundamentals which focus in employee engagement and interpersonal behavior (Mayo, 1945) this helps to enhance capabilities of his employees, manager behaves as a coach and focuses in establishing right values and skills. Here he gently guides his team to get intended results.
In contrast, various scenarios may come in organization where ambiguities prevail in the task, here manager plays interpreter role by legitimately arguing and helping employee understand the reality. Whereas managers also need to work in the situation where the divergence in expectation could happen, here he builds up confidence among his teams and their ability to self-control, organize and manage themselves. Here he assumes nurturer role. (Palmer, Dunford , & Buchanan, 2016)
One of my friend used to work in the government-owned bank. Government launched financial restructuring program where the bank was to be re-structured, World Bank(WB) injected massive amount of financial loan to track the oldest government bank back to profit. After signing the memorandum of understanding between government and BOD it was circulated to its branches disbursed all over the country. It includes laying off more than half employees, introducing Core Banking Software and other stringent disciplinary actions. Soon, agitation from trade unions begun as most of the employees of their retirement age didn’t like to take any risk.
Here the bank management played sustainable transformation change strategy. The corporate level divisional managers in coordination with line managers played controlling as well as shaping roles. For certain process which was mandatory to be accomplished within stipulated time, management assumed director and navigator role. It included abolishment of manual accounting practices and adjustment of core banking software(ERP). But when it came about the layoff of employees who were with the bank for more than decades, worked in shaping coaching , interpreter and nurturer relation, bank formed a special human resource committee to work in making organization structure thin, the committee in an active coordination between trade union, bank and government created win-win situation.
To conclude, none of the images could maintain their uniformity, for me, these all are strategic, tactical tools the managers should use along with his emotional intelligence and diplomacy. Predictability reduces the ambiguity and makes decision making easier whereas uncertainty creates an illusion. Yet, all images run in an organization and managers have to be proactive to deal since the organization operates in an open environment and uncertainty could never be ruled out.
Bibliography
Mayo, E. (1945). the social problem of an industrial civilization. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Mintzberg, H. (2009). Managing. Harlow, Essex: Financial Times Prentice Hall.
Palmer, L., Dunford, R., & Buchanan, D. A. (2016). Managing organizational change A multiple perspectives approach. McGraw Hill Education.
Van de Ven, A. (1995). Explaining development and change in organizations summary. Academy of Management Review.
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