University of Southern California Change Management Discussion

Please respond to this 4 peers' Discussion Prompts

ALL citations and references needs to be APA 7th edition format. (200-250 words each)

• you must also post substantive responses to at least two of your classmates' or instructor’s posts in this thread. Your response should include elements such as follow-up questions, further exploration of topics from the initial post, or requests for further clarification or explanation on some points made by your classmates.

Peer# 1

According to Joe Tye's 2015 video, having employees take the Florence Challenge can help them be emotionally positive, self-powered, and fully engaged; these make a great workplace and also creates high employee satisfaction. Tye's 2015 has a photo of the Florence Challenge, named after nurse Florence Nightingale, which is composed of the following requirements:

• Turning complaints into constructive suggestions, which is meant to improve emotional positivity.
• Taking the 7 Promises of self-empowerment: responsibility, accountability, determination, contribution, resilience, perspective, and faith.
• Fully engaging by being committed, engaged, passionate, effective with resources, fostering belonging and fellowship, as well as taking pride in oneself, one's work, profession, and organization.

All of these parts of the challenge involve ethics because in order to have ownership, one must have excellent ethics. Tye mentions that trust is huge in healthcare, because no matter what, patients will trust their providers to perform procedures on them without even knowing what they are doing (2015). Tye strongly believes a leader can use transformational leadership as well as ownership to help employees look at themselves as if they are their best selves; this can also help them stay emotionally positive (2015). Tye states that children have a vision of greatness in their self-perception of their future selves; leaders can help re-spark these dreams and self-perceptions of greatness that employees are currently missing (2015). As for engagement, Tye mentions that ownership happens when employees are motivated because they are proud of their organization and the job they do; he mentions how a high life satisfaction can come from being happy at work (2015).

Peer# 2

• How would a leader ensure that leaders and followers were emotionally positive, self-empowered, and fully engaged?

A leader will use the transformational leadership style to elevate his/her followers to a higher level. Ensuring the followers take accountability for their work or action and most importantly getting rid of baggage or pickle suckers as Joe Tye calls them. A good leader will get rid of the negative culture within their organization.

A good leader set the tone for the employees, especially for the employees who are not engaged. The good leader should recognize what or who is preventing the organization from being the best. Changing the employee’s mindset of the disengaged employees to a positive culture helps promote excellence, accountability, ownership and builds trust amongst staff. “It is the leader responsibility to create a workplace environment where toxic emotional negativity is not tolerated.” (Tye)

• Why and how does ethics fit into a culture of ownership?

Ethics fit into a culture of ownership because it is about having respect for others. Using the ethics principles to guide you, you can learn about cultures other than your own. It allows understanding and diversity within an organization.

Peer# 3

Hi everyone!

To be successful, a project manager must be able to handle unplanned scope changes. Larson and Gray (2014) point out that changes during the life cycle of projects are inevitable, but some changes can be very beneficial to project outcomes. The changes that have negative impacts on the outcomes are the ones that wish to be avoided and monitored. Even with the best planning, it is inevitable that changes will occur during the duration of a project and the scope with be altered.

As a project manager, no matter the project I was working on, I would plan for a change instead of reacting to unforeseen changes. Making sure that I have a thorough change management process in place is crucial. The key to managing scope creep is change management (Larson & Gray, 2014). All changes, especially unplanned ones, should be documented effectively so that they can be communicated to the team. As part of the change management process, the change should be evaluated to understand the overall impact on the scope, schedule, and budget (How to Deal with Last-Minute Scope Changes, 2021).

Project managers should monitor any scope changes very carefully (Larson & Gray, 2014). At the start of the project, the baseline must be well defined and agreed upon with the project customer (Larson & Gray, 2014). If I was the project manager and the scope of the project began to change in the middle of the project, I would document the change and compare the effects of the change to the baseline. This would include evaluating the impact of the change on the cost, time, dependencies, specifications, or responsibilities of the project (Larson & Gray, 2014).

The only constant is change and a project manager must be able to adapt to changes, whether big or small, during a project. Though it is impossible to plan for every change that may occur, the best practice is to have a change management process in place so when an unforeseen change occurs, it can be handled effectively and efficiently.

Peer# 4

When managing a project, “changes during the life cycle…are inevitable” (Larson & Gray, 2014, pg. 500). Even though we cannot avoid the scope’s change, there are ways to help mitigate scope creep. The main one is to have a very well-defined scope statement before the project begins. The clearer the scope statement, the less room there is for change of scope when the project begins.

If I were managing a project and started to notice change, the next observation to make is if the change is positive (like a shorter timeline) or negative (like late schedules or even loss of control of the project). If the change is good for the project (positive), then we endorse the change on the scope and get the project customer to approve and sign off on it (Larson & Gray, 2014). If the change alters the scope negatively, then we reassess the project’s data, timeline, scheduling, communication, accountability, etc. (Larson & Gray, 2014). In either case, it’s paramount to share the scope creep with stakeholders.