To be an effective leader, one must be able to lead change efforts in a way that is collaborative and demonstrates the culture of the organizatio

9-1 Final Project: Change Plan

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Directing change in Alaska Airlines

          Alaska Airlines was founded in 1932, and it is an airline company, but when this company was introduced, it was recognized as McGee airlines. This airline company started to provide its services to numerous individuals that traveled with them from that time. Even though the corporation has lived through outstanding achievements on a massive scale, it has accelerated the locations and fleet it serves. This method is vital in ensuring that the air corporation proceeds to develop. Nonetheless, numerous troubles have cropped up with the airline's improvement, which has precipitated the dissatisfaction of several customers. However, powerful techniques have been carried out to ensure the air employer is on the proper track, labored successfully. During the time of effecting change, some steps have been formulated. It is distinguished that quite some matters have been executed through Kotter's steps.

Primary steps of Kotter's

          The first step accomplished to make an experience of urgency changed the airline's explanation regarding the conferences, which best the pleasant management could have daily (Laig, 2021). These conferences took place every morning, and it created an experience of the need for speed inside the managers of the normal execution of activities. This step made them understand the cost of the particular urgency that existed inside the airline's specific branches. The second step calls for the established order of a dominant coalition to ensure that the business enterprise can steer the numerous modifications that must be accomplished. At this point, the air business enterprise appointed Ben Minacci (Schönholzer, 2021). He went from being a team member to running the management organization. Minacci's function in dealing with the Seattle operations was as the Vice President immediately certified him because of the pleasant nominee for the job. Also, he changed into performing and became familiar with each man or woman who labored inside the airline. This capacity allowed him to accumulate an excellent organization to behavior change the business enterprise desired for it to maintain functioning correctly.

Create Urgency

          As of now, the approach to help with the execution of this alteration is to make sure that each one-of-a-kind branch is included. Every one of the departments inside the corporation has to recognize the super modifications that the airline would possibly want to execute (Lantry, 2022). It is formulated to ensure that each one-of-a-kind problem is treated in the meantime. Secondly, the conversation technique has to be modernized to ensure that every communication system is accomplished in the most excellent manner possible. It likewise ascertains that more than one modification is conveyed efficiently in a perfect manner.

Implement Change

           Techniques to implement alteration start an experience of urgency inside the company. The top preliminary step is to ensure that all of the consequences of not actualizing the extrusion are clarified. This system may want to ensure that all of us inside the corporation know what is in jeopardy while the adjustments are not finished at a suitable time. Secondly, it is essential to have the cap potential to determine clever picks and make sure that they may be accompanied upon directly. It will make sure that the welfare of each exclusive man or woman worried is considered.

Support of Employees

           To acquire private aid, attracting them to the decision-making system might be a priority. It will raise the aid that every worker has inside the system. Furthermore, by ensuring that the staff takes part in the decision-making system, it is miles workable to certify that they could aid the alternatives made (Mohammadian, 2022). The employees should be supported because employees can help the company run faster and efficiently. This can be done when the choice of that company participates in the decision-making procedures. The support should be provided to the employees because it will help them work faster and more efficiently.

Effective strategies

           This approach will make sure that the people who are related to the alternate will sense that they are included inside the whole system of creating choices for the corporation, which will, in turn, enhance their involvement in making sure the last alternate is completed as expected. This strategy will help the employees to feel like a part of the company. Employees will feel that they are crucial to the company as they make decisions. Making decisions is a crucial part of the company; if any decision made by the company has a defect in it, this will, in turn, affect the reputation and working of the company.

Building a Guiding Coalition

Guiding Coalition

          When it involves the guiding coalition, an appropriate combination of people should be covered: 44% leaders, 44% managers, and 15% casual leaders (Tian, 2021). To start with, 44% of leaders are vital. The leaders are the folks that draw the scheme of alternatives that must be executed. These folks recognize the first-rate methods of interacting with the hundreds and how to pay attention to them and make sure that everybody contends.

          Secondly, 44% of managers are the diverse folks that are taken into consideration to be in the price of the diverse departments within the organization. Bearing in mind that Alaska airline is a tremendous business enterprise, several managers are engaged in the operations of ordinary activities. Thus, it is far more critical to implicate this organization of human beings inside the execution of an alternative within the business enterprise.

          Finally, the casual leaders made of the ultimate 20% are the folks that are tons reputable inside the business enterprise with inside the diverse departments and feature energy over a say with inside the moves finished via way of means of the human beings. It is vital because it guarantees that every exceptional individual who can affect the alternate execution procedure is considered.

Stages for commitment

          Ensuring commitment is also essential, so ensuring the commitment towards the process by using the percentage of the individuals for people involved. It is vital to ensure that they are kindly compensated for their distinctive fruits and which they play in determining that the alteration is executed (Tang, 2021). We will also ensure that the people and individuals who have top results or outcomes are acclaimed in the administration to motivate them to proceed with their excellent performance in the administration. We can make sure that every individual or person will give their excellent performance so that the company can run more efficiently. These are the commitments that are used in ensuring commitment towards the process.

Conclusion

          It is concluded that taking note of the several entities is crucial and essential because they can influence the execution of change in an administration or organization. For that reason, it is so much success to implement and alter in an organization; it is also crucial to monitor the numerous things that make it difficult for an entrepreneur or businessman to have positive and successful consequences. After the insurance that each distinctive party e in the airline company is included and is necessary e as it currently is that everyone is conscious of the activities taking place in the company or organization. Kotter's eight steps are likewise crucial as they ensure that every distinctive element is mired and the rate of achievement of the alteration surges.

Alaska Airlines: Navigating Change

The case provided revolves around Alaska, an airline company looking for strategies to implement changes in its operations. During their attempt to navigate for changes through Kotter's steps 3 &4, the company's executives realized that the company was facing significant issues. The changes made the situation worse than how it was. According to the case study, Alaska has faced a stream of recurring problems that none of the changes have helped mitigate. Any attempted change has led to adverse impacts on the existing situation (Avolio et al., 2017). The problem is that the leaders were not ready to take responsibility for the prevalent issues to help resolve them. This paper discusses the formation of a strategic change and communication of the change in Alaska Airlines to pursue a successful shift in its operations.

Successful companies need to have strategic changes in their operations because strategic changes guide the ultimate voyage of the business. It serves as a compass that guides the executive management and relevant stakeholders on devise plans and strategies or actions that will help the company realize its set goals and objectives (Caster & Scheraga, 2013). In this case, Alaska airline management should develop a strategic vision that has essential values to help the company actualize its changes.

Companies need to have great values for business operations, such as honesty and trustworthiness among their employees, stakeholders, and management. Without core values of integrity, honesty, confidentiality, and trust, employees and customers will always be cautious about the company because of a lack of trust and confidence in their operations. These core values are essential to Alaska Airlines because they help guide employees and the staff's behaviors, standards, and actions to achieve organizational objectives (Avolio et al., 2017). Aligning your efforts with the core values shows that an employee or staff member has integrity. Initially, Alaska's core values were rooted in consumer loyalty; however, their failure to pay keen attention to customer service and commitment was ironic. 

In the case of Alaska Airlines, the company managers should ensure that the change is rational, creative, involves other people's perspectives and has extensive data, has facts and a solid foundation, and focuses on the team members' roles and responsibilities. That implies that I will establish a holistic and structured vision that focuses on the current operational issues. Therefore, I will ensure those vendor representatives are tagged to create the picture. This change effort will ensure that Kotter's steps 3 and 4 change implementations are followed for a successful and functional change within the airline (Caster & Scheraga, 2013). Kotter's institution requires organizations to shape their vision, steer the change efforts, and implement strategic initiatives to help the company achieve its vision. 

The targeted outcomes of this change will be to have better management and performance at Alaska. With proper and better control, the performance issue will automatically be resolved. Therefore, if the outcomes are met, it will imply that the change is a success. Because the company would have resolved the underlying issues that were troubling the peaceful operations of the company (Caster & Scheraga, 2013), the change will succeed because the desired outcome will be viewed in the long run.

Communicating the change

The most critical requirement in communicating change in an organization is to display the shift's vision to shareholders correctly. Alaska failed to do this because it never involved a ramp vendor in its strategic change planning process. In the case provided about Alaska, the higher management created a vision for the change. The top management would devote and dedicate fully to the fixation of the Seattle Hub. Ben Minicucci made efforts toward this change, and since his proposal was viable, he was named the VP of the Seattle operation (Avolio et al., 2017). Therefore, as a significant operation in fixing the issue within Seattle, Minicucci resolved on handling the ramp operation since Alaska has been reportedly saying to have harsh, strict measures, penalties, and bonuses for on-ramp vendors. However, this strategy was ineffective. Hence, Minicucci's approach was to create a vendor oversight group that would make a plan of change within the ramp. Thus, managers or leaders need to communicate the plan to relevant stakeholders for support, effectiveness, and success after creating a change plan. 

In this case, Alaska managers required two actions to communicate the changes. First, the managers would have focused on the pre-engagement process with representatives for the initial planning sessions. In such a case, the members present will surface their concerns, inquiries, and suggestions about the vision and the change. The following requirement is for the managers to create or come up with a suggestion box to allow those who speak about their thoughts to do so in privacy publicly. 

When implementing organizational changes, proper communication is vital; however, not all supervisors have the know-how to provide full details of the change plan to the shareholders. Therefore, if an employee is concerned about the change planning process and feels that the supervisor has not provided an in-depth answer to the issue, I will come in to help them get clarification. 

Change comes with a lot of concerns of anxiety. Therefore, managers should be prepared to face and address any arising anxiety issues during change communication. They can do this by giving answers that help ease anxiety, eliminate doubt, and allow for a smooth transition. 

Organizational changes affect or impact every person within the organization. Regardless of their service capacities, every individual within the organization should be called to action towards supporting the change initiative. 

In conclusion, Alaska Airlines needs to successfully create a strategic vision to sustain its change initiatives. They require the managers to develop a way to involve relevant shareholders such as ramp vendors in the change initiative. There will be accessible communication of the strategic plan of change and a smooth company transition through this. Proper and effective communication is paramount in communicating modifications; therefore, the company managers should adhere to the discussion provided in this paper to ensure that this time around, the change initiative is successful, and Alaska airline is back on its feet.

Alaska Airlines: Navigating Change

Removing Barriers

After analyzing the case scenario of Alaska Airlines, some factors influence the strengths, obstacles, and limitations to changes. Therefore, managers must recognize all of these issues to remove the barriers because they manifest in different forms. 

Some of the barriers presented in the case study include resistance to change which manifests through stakeholders holding onto political opposition because of differences in perception of change. Another barrier is the lack of a blueprint of existing culture and structure. In this case, the organization strives toward change efforts but does not know how to go about it. Also, there are many integration stages in the mission of change at Alaska Airlines, which is likely to be unsuccessful due to issues of employee turnovers and complexities. Forces and hindrances prevalent at Alaska Airlines include but are not limited to external threats, economic issues, conditions on the market, and technological changes. If uncontrolled, all these forces and hindrances can lead to change failures because the managers will be unable to tackle a complicated change plan. 

How to recognize and mitigate resistance during change

Organizational changes face resistance within and out of the organization. This is a common, inevitable, and natural reaction from stakeholders whose impacts can be felt within the organization if they are not mitigated on time. Therefore, change managers should always find a way to identify and understand where resistance can likely come from; based on the case provided, Alaska Airlines managers recognized that the ramp operation was the primary challenge to the airline's performance (Avolio et al., 2015). It was evident that the initial hands-off approach was not practical since the managers would not walk through the ramp. In such a case, the Minicucci Vendor Oversight Group would have utilized the available data to let the stakeholders and ramp vendor all functional aspects that led to ramp operation failures. However, the vendor disagreed with the evidence but went ahead to adapt to new changes showing a form of resistance. 

Mitigating this change resistance was necessary to avoid unnecessary impacts on the airline's change implementation plan. The most appropriate way to do this would have been through the Prosci tool, which helps change managers know where resistance to change is likely to come from and how to address it. With the inclusion of other parties during the transition, stakeholders will contribute and air out their opinions on how to go about the change. Mitigating resistance because they feel included, and every detail will be communicated to them. 

Actions

At Alaska Airlines, there was a need for the change managers to perform actions that would have been ideal for driving employees' change efforts. Communication would have been the immediate and overall step performed. Alongside effective and open communication, some of the crucial actions would have been;

1. Simplifying the change effort

1. Inclusions to ensure that each relevant party contributes to the change efforts

1. Accounting for the concerns of the victims of change

1. Minimization of skepticism

Generate short-term wins

Short-term wins refer to organizational improvements that organizations can implement between 6 to 18 months. Effective short-term organizational changes are forms of enhancements to an organization. Hence, it should meet criteria such as unambiguous success, be visible, and relate to the change efforts. Short-term wins are necessary within organizations like Alaska Airlines because they play a vital part in preventing losses and loss of momentum hence keeping the organization engaged during a change (Avolio et al., 2015). Implementing significant changes in Alaska will take time; therefore, with short-term wins, the change managers can eliminate any forms of discouragement as they slowly work towards implementing substantial changes. 

Short-term efforts help in enabling and empowering employees to work towards the change efforts. Based on Dan Cohen's proposal of short-term wins, workshops and the development of specific project plans are essential in identifying short-term wins. In this case, they derail any forms of cynics and issues of self-interest from resisters. With short-term wins, organizational change managers can understand whether the change effort is valid or not. Therefore, employees will be rewarded through incentives, positive feedback, and training to help in boosting their morale, confidence, and motivation.

Gains

Organizations gain a lot through short-term wins. Through these wins, organizational managers can earn the loyalty and trust of employees because they will willingly participate and support any changes since they would have already seen and tested the positivity of any changes. More so, short-term wins deter skeptics. Skepticism can be both positive and negative; however, it is essential in revealing worse things happening within organizations and the need to work towards mitigating them and winning over employees' trust. Therefore, celebrating and rewarding short-term wins to sustain employees' morale and erase unhealthy skepticism.