TESC Change Initiative Discussion

Use Exercise 8.1, Raising Awareness of Your Implicit Model of Organizational Functioning, in Chapter 8 of the Hayes text as a guide to complete this assignment. Note: The steps below guide you in completing Exercise 8.1. You will follow all of the instructions in the text exercise, with a couple of important additions:

1. In Step 1, identify the change initiative you will be using in your      final project. This allows you to get feedback on the appropriateness of      this choice for the final project.
2. Add a concluding step (as directed) in which you explore the      challenges of the diagnostic model you have built.

Introduction. Provide a brief Question of your organization and your role in it; in addition, include a problem statement for your paper. The problem statement should clearly indicate the purpose of your paper and might read something like the following: “This paper describes my implicit model of organizational functioning of [your organization] based on the Tichy and Hornstein (1980) procedure described in the Hayes text.”

Initial Assessment. This is Step 1 of Exercise 8.1. Prepare a short note that describes your organization (either the total organization or an important unit that you are familiar with) and assess or diagnose its current state. Make reference to the issues you feel require attention, which could be problems or opportunities. If you feel there is a need for some kind of change to ensure that these issues will be managed more effectively, justify this view. Do not explain the kinds of interventions you think may be necessary to bring about any required changes. The aim of this exercise is to diagnose the current state of the organization (and assess whether it is and will continue to perform effectively), not to provide a prescription of actions required to improve matters.

In addition, identify the change initiative you will be pursuing in your final paper. It should be finite enough to realistically be the basis for a change proposal for your final paper yet large enough that it could make a difference in the company’s sustainable competitive advantage. Indicate the issues you feel are present and what change you will be focusing on.

Kinds of Information Used. This is Step 2 of Exercise 8.1. Identify and list the “bits of information” that you considered. Focus on the information that you actually considered. Try not to let the kind of information you think you “should” have considered influence your list. Identify at least 25 different bits of information. (You can just list the “bits of information”; you need not make a table like Table 8.2 if you don’t want to.) Table 8.1 provides some examples of the types of information that people might consider when assessing the state of their organization. These are only offered as examples to stimulate your thinking; your own list may contain none of these.

Categories of Information. This is Step 3 of Exercise 8.1. Here, you will need to create your own version of the element-grouping table in Step 3 to submit with this assignment.

Some of the types of information you used to make your assessment might be related and it might be possible to group them together into a number of more inclusive categories. These categories reflect the main elements or variables of your diagnostic model.

• Group related information in the category boxes in table format (see table in Step 3). Typically, people identify 4 to 12 categories, but there are no restrictions on the number of categories you might identify.
• When you have categorized your information, describe the rationale you used for including information in each category.

Relationships Between Categories. This is Step 4 of Exercise 8.1. The categories identified in Step 3 reflect the elements of your implicit diagnostic model. This step focuses on interdependencies and causal relationships between the elements. These can be identified by considering whether a change in any one element will have an effect on any other element.

• Using the format of Table 8.3, list the elements (categories) identified in Step 3 down the left-hand column and across the top of the table.
• Take each element down the left-hand column in turn and assess the impact a change in this element might have on every other element, using a three-point scale, where 0 = no or slight impact; 1 = moderate impact; and 2 = high impact.
• Sum the scores for each row.
• Rank the scores (1 = highest). The rank order of the elements indicates your assessment of the key drivers of performance.

Discussion. After completing Step 4, explain the challenges associated with the diagnostic model you have completed. What does this tell you about the system you work within and the need for alignment when addressing the change initiative that you are contemplating?