Below is a segment from my former University of Phoenix blog. I have since rolled the blog into my main blog for posterity.
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1. Provide two more bullets to the above list. Why did you choose them?
Be upfront and honest with employees. Knowing the difficulties of the road ahead may add stress to employees’ lives, but not knowing almost always leads to perception errors and rash judgments on those perceptions. When a solution presents itself, employees are skeptical to adopt the new solution, just waiting for their misguided perceptions to take place. By keeping employees current with news of decisions, plans, short-term and long-term goals, you can save face by establishing trust that, while you aren’t delivering great news, you are at least giving them the whole story.
Give employees something to do. Company mergers do not necessarily change the way all employees do business. Business needs still exist. When a plan is established for the merger and someone has informed everyone about the plans, make steps to start employees working towards that plan. Don’t overwhelm them, but if you keep them working, it may help keep their minds occupied and at least reduce some of the perceptions that could lead to problems.
2. Describe a change that took place in your organization. If it was handled well, explain why. If it was handled poorly, explain what should have been done differently.
I took a Friday off to visit friends before their wedding that weekend. One of my coworkers called my cell phone to let me know that strange things were happening at the office. I asked him what he meant. He told me that Alvin (a programmer) and Pat (our boss) had been let go. The new company we had recently acquired had a boss that became our new VP, and this was one of his first moves. Not knowing anything about why this was done, I thanked my friend for calling and came home early that weekend. I cleaned up my desk, took all personal items home and completely gutted things out. Not knowing who would be next, I couldn’t take any chances.
On Monday, we were gathered up by our new VP, who told us about the future of the group. We met him again in one-on-one discussions where he told us to trust him and that we’d all be safe.
This was handled horribly. I understand that we couldn’t know about their leaving before they actually left, but none of us even remotely saw this coming. No one should have started their weekend wondering if they’d have a job on Monday. Better communication should have been implemented.
Losing a boss of 3 years to a VP of three weeks doesn’t instill any trust. The VP later transferred me out of his department, which I didn’t mind too much considering his leadership abilities, and four months later, his group is still in an area of disarray.
3. From this week's reading, discuss one thing that stuck out. Why did it stick out to you?
Before reading, I had never heard of a Change Agent. This is a fascinating job, which no doubt has its share of stress. I can see that a company may have mixed feelings about a 3rd party Change Agent because he/she may not know about the inner-workings, culture or history of a company. They may understand the Wall Street Journal portion of the company history, but not the day-to-day operations. This could lead to some decisions that are perceived as quite drastic from inside employees. Still, having an objective party look at a company and work to change things might be exactly what a company needs. Very interesting!
Posted by admin at July 19, 2003 02:11 PM