ResponsetoTwoColleaguesD1Wk7.docx

To prepare for your response to (2) colleague’s review and pay attention to this week’s Learning Resources:

Creating Corporate Cultures – Prof. Edgar Schein: Key note speech part 1 – YouTube

Creating Corporate Cultures – Prof. Edgar Schein: Key note speech part 2 – YouTube

Simon Sinek on How to Get People to Follow You Inside Quest – YouTube

How Do You Change An Organizational Culture? (forbes.com)

Read a selection of your colleagues’ postings see listed below.

Respond to at least to (2) two of your colleagues in one or more of the following ways:

· Share an insight about what you learned from having read your colleagues’ postings and discuss how and why your colleague’s posting resonated with you professionally and personally.
· Seek additional clarity or ask your colleague a question, with accompanying context that will help your colleague to think more critically or broadly about the how change can disrupt the cultural or emotional balance, or what leaders can do to facilitate the change process within an organizational culture.
· Offer an example, from your experience or observation, which validates or differs from what your colleague discussed related to how organizational culture can impact the change process.
· Offer specific suggestions that will help your colleague build upon his or her leadership skills to effect change within an organizational culture.
· Share how something your colleague discussed changed the way you consider your own change leadership ability.

· 1 pages
· No Plagiarism
· APA citing

1st Colleagues – Natasha Mills 

Week 7 Discussion 1: Balancing Important Tasks

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Contemporary organizational settings have become highly dependent on corporate culture for the smooth running of operations. People prefer predictability and certainty, which is always achieved through organizational culture (Schein, 2009). This predictability and certainty make the introduction of cultural change a challenging process for leaders. However, the most critical challenge that leaders experience when attempting to initiate cultural change is striking a balance between the bottom line and creating safe spaces for transparent communication. The enormity of this challenge stems from the increased focus on human capital that is slowly but steadily surpassing the focus on profits by organizations.

The change that I experienced concerned our organization’s integration of the working from home concept back in the day when the concept was still new, and many companies were trying it. The main reasons for the introduction of this cultural change of working some weekly hours in the office and the rest at home were intended to improve flexibility, agility, and productivity within the organization, which were common advantages identified by the proponents of the idea (Хлыповка, 2020).

The disconfirming forces associated with this change included an economic threat, a technological threat, and an internal discomfort. The economic threat was that since other companies were adopting the strategy, our organization was at risk of losing its market share if we failed to adapt to this change (Schein, 2009). On the other hand, the technological threat was associated with the new technological innovations that made working from home possible and a critical concept to adopt. Lastly, the internal discomfort was anchored on the notion that incorporating the working from home culture would help people achieve a work-life balance, which many of us desired.
The introduction of the cultural change in the organization caused immediate discomfort and anxiety for members of the organization, a common reaction during the initiation of change (Schein, 2009). However, the leaders convinced the workforce that the driving forces of the cultural change were far greater than the restraining forces. The economic threat, the technological threat, and the internal discomfort provided a strong background in convincing the workforce. As a result, there was an emotional and cultural balance during the initiation of the change since members of the workforce saw the need.

The most dominant strategy or method that the organization used to balance the tension between getting the job done and ensuring employees had a positive work experience was coercion. The coercion style is highly effective in an emergency situation (Berkeleyexeced, 2016). The leaders of the organization made this cultural change appear as an emergency situation before integrating the coercion style. This way, the employees did not have to deal with making any decisions as this became solely the responsibility of the leaders, ranging from which technological tools the organization would rely on and the designing of shifts. The elimination of the decision-making processes from the roles of employees helped significantly in reducing tension and maintaining a positive working experience during the change.

Whereas the coercion method turned out effective in initiating this cultural change, the use of educational interventions would have been more efficient in maintaining a positive working experience and reducing tension within the workforce. This is because educational efforts provide a better way for convincing the workforce about the need for change than coercion since the former does not leave the leader with more responsibilities as the latter does (Schein, 2009).

The culture of an organization plays a vital role in influencing the change process. The primary reason for this immense influence is that organizational culture provides the workforce with certainty and predictability. Thus, when cultural change is introduced, it causes anxiety and discomfort due to the need to abandon this certainty and predictability and adapt to new ways. At the same time, change requires unlearning something, such as certain tenets of the existing corporate culture, and learning new things, making the whole process of change difficult (Schein, 2009).

Most, if not all, organizations have three subcultures (Schein, 2010a). These are the production subculture, the engineering subculture, and the executive subculture. Since each of these subcultures has its leaders, it is important for leaders to align the three subcultures for ease of initiating change. Aligning these subcultures will make leaders more culturally sensitive because they will be aware of their commonalities and differences. This aspect will help them in supporting those impacted by change more effectively.

Berkeleyexeced. (2016). Leadership style & adaptive cultures. Retrieved from 

Schein, E. (2010a). Creating corporate cultures:Prof. Edgar Schein: Keynote speech part 1. Retrieve from 

Schein, E. H. (2009). The corporate culture survival guide. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
Хлыповка, Е. А. (2020). Telecommuting and its advantages.
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2nd Colleagues – Ryan Sharratt 

RE: Discussion 1 – Week 7

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     The most applicable initiation of cultural change is when my partners and I bought a business in another state, leading a group of strangers, and trying to learn their culture and way of things all while maintaining a flow of operations to maintain business. Coming from a group of college educated, or highly dedicated individuals into a group of self-entitled, and egotistical employees was difficult to understand. As the CEO I was tasked with integration of cultural fit and continuity of operations. This assignment and current situation led me to look at leadership techniques. Chatman (2016) illustrated that a leader is tasked with setting the right context for other people so they can make good decisions on their own (Berkeleyexeced, 2016) which is where my adventure began.
     I was witnessing the execution of tasks being conducted with substandard results and the judgement of success was if someone got hurt on a job or not. The pure metric of success was foreign to me and created all emotions to run freely as the designated fall person. One-on-one, each of the staff seemed intelligent, competent, capable, and eager for the next task. However, in a group setting the bar was lowered and the bar of success was lowered. These internal threats went against the very grain of building a company that raises the bar in our industry. When I started to analyze why the bar was being lowered, I simply could not figure it out.
     My first task was to write job descriptions and formalize the positions into a hierarchical system for advancement and standardize pay ranges as my first part of increasing human-value. It was around this point where I started to see that our workforce had been through training that filled their egotistical cup full of nonsense. The previous owner of the company had built a business upon hiring felons and convicts to take advantage of their situations. He built a training program that made those in desperate need feel as though this one-week training made the workers un-stoppable. Superior to all around and in the industry, until they went to an actual project and could not perform the tasks based upon inferior training. This came to light in the semantics of the job description. My basic level of knowledge was that of a senior manager at this organization. My senior level manager was equal to a response manager. It was epiphany number one.
     How do you tell someone they do not know as much as they think they do? My answer, in very small steps and phases over a long period of time. This has been one of the most difficult transitions of the entire acquisition process. Having to scrap the entire methodology and build the positions from ground zero has proven to be a difficult task and tap into a leadership potential I did not know I had knowledge, or patience for. I have also found that emotional integrity has been difficult to maintain and burn out has been knocking on my door for the past year. Hence, why I am in this leadership program. In addition to my efforts take so far, I have also enjoyed reading about unlearning illustrated by Schein (2009) and why it is important to understand how learning and change work with human systems, in which learners are adults who may have to unlearn something before they can learn something new (Schein, 2009 p. 105) which precisely describes the methodology I need to strive toward.
     Emotional integrity is a term I have used to combine emotional balance in entirety. Emotional intelligence, emotional control, psychological emotions, physiological emotions, and my own mental wellbeing. I know that some of this sounds redundant, however, as a business owner there are two lives in consideration. The life of your business as an independent heartbeat (think corporate veil) and the life of you the individual focusing on work/life balance. As I continue to focus on the transition from the old training to the new benchmark of success, I am also working diligently on the work/life balance within the organization mindful, as Schein (2009) states when two cultures come together and try to work in concert many forces are unleashed that will disconfirm cultural elements in either or both organizations (Schein, 2009 p. 109).
 

References:

Dr. Jennifer Chatman: Berkeleyexeced. (2016). Leadership style & adaptive cultures. Retrieved from 

Schein, E. H. (2009). The corporate culture survival guide. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
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