Located in the busy Atlantic City in New Jersey, the United States of America, Brittle Company is a company that falls under the manufacturing sector of the United States of America. The company is one of those that have recorded a skyrocket in their revenues in the past one decade. Brittle Company has seen its sales soar from just a million dollars to a hundred million dollars per year in that decade. The future holds more for the company with slight changes in the leadership and operations. The company has some of its strategies outdated, and there is a need to have a change management consultant hired to reverse the possible negative growth.
The need for change at Brittle Company can be explained using the organizational life cycle model. The model states that there are five possible phases of organizational development that Brittle Company can undergo. These are startup, growth, organizational decline, renewal, and death. The assessment of the need for change in Brittle Company falls under the growth phase. In the growth state, Brittle Company is in the last part of the step and is almost going towards the decline phase where, if no changes are made, the performance of the company will begin to go down quickly. For instance, the antiquated operations and leadership styles need a facelift in readiness for the coming decline stage (Johannsen, 2012).
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A traditional organization differs from a learning one in the following ways. Firstly, a conventional organization is based on a vertical; leadership model, which is also called a hierarchical model while a learning organization, is based on a horizontal leadership approach. Secondly, a traditional organization has fixed job descriptions for their employees while in a learning organization, the roles of the employees keep changing depending on the goals of the company as a whole. Thirdly, a learning organization creates awareness on the need for the employees' conversance with the various systems that drive the company forward while a traditional organization uses the methods to manage complex information without necessarily having to teach the employees on how to handle them (Johnson, 2009).
The stage that the company is in can be analyzed through the Woolner's 5-stage model. The model has the following components. The first component is the formation of the organization. The second component is the development of the company. The third stage features the maturity of a company. The fourth stage is the adaptation of the organization. The fifth component is the learning organization. Brittle Company can be classified under the maturity phase of the Woolner's 5-stage model. The reason it has been organized under the stage is that the company is already gone past the development phase and has been in existence for more than a decade. The company has already established roots in the industry and now it needs to reorganize so that innovation in the organization will contribute to the growth and more sustainability in development. Also, the change in the organization is meant to make it a learning organization, which is the last step in the concept.
Brittle Company may also use Senge's five disciplines in its quest to become a learning organization. One of the ways is by developing a shared vision among the leadership. The shared vision may include alignment of values. The second way that Brittle Company may make use of the five disciplines is developing mental models. The mental models in the company will be responsible for creating a tradition of hard work and responsibility among the employees. The regulations also guide team building at Brittle Company. Team building will enable the organization to set achievable goals, and the division of labor among the employees will enhance cooperation that takes the organization further (Cropper, 2018).
Self-awareness among the employees, also known as personal mastery, will also be attributed to the use of Senge's five disciplines at Brittle Company located in Atlantic City, New Jersey, in the United States of America. The mastery of behavior among the employees at the company will be essential in regulating how they present themselves to the workplace, socialize with one another, and respect the outlined rules and regulations that guide Brittle Company. Senge's five disciplines will also lead to systematic thinking among the employees of the company. That is to say that the workers will have the ability to analyze the interrelationships underlying a complicated situation (Cropper, 2018).
Balogun and Hope-Hailey's model is useful in identifying the result of the transition of Brittle Company from a traditional one to a learning organization. The development is expected to be gradual and one that needs to have efforts invested into, to make it a success. The employees, as well as the management at Brittle Company, have to be ready to accommodate the new changes by being flexible enough and sticking to the stipulated changes according to the Balogun and Hope-Hailey's model. According to the model, the nature of change at Brittle Company is incremental. The result of Brittle Company, according to Balogun and Hope-Hailey's model, is evolution (Senior & Fleming, 2006).
The incremental nature of change, according to the model, depicts the constant and gradual series of adjustments to be made at Brittle Company to ensure a long lasting result. The primary merit of incremental changes is that they are long-lasting, from an organizational perspective. As a result, it becomes more convenient to get the workers back on track in case they deviate from the newly developing culture. The evolutionary consequence at Brittle Company is as a result of the inter-relatedness of the initiatives in the company. The interrelatedness ensures that the strategies work towards enabling one another to become a success. The effect of that is the gradual evolutionary adjustment of the cultural operations in the company (Senior & Fleming, 2006).
The action step model has some steps that could be of much help to Brittle Company in its pursuit of transitioning from a traditional organization to a learning one. The first step is the selection of a focus. It is compulsory for the company to have a defined focus that drives the objectives involving the transition into a learning organization, famously abbreviated as an LO. The other step is to clarify the concepts involved in the transitory process. The process encompasses the holistic organization. Therefore, the employees have to be informed of the various ideas that will be used in the change to an LO (Sagor, 2000).
The other step is the collection of the required data. The ephemeral process that will make Brittle Company a learning organization will be in the form of research. The data collection, in this case, will feature the data regarding the comfort of the employees in the transience, their flexibility of coping up with radical changes, and their job satisfaction before and after the adjustment. The other step will involve the analysis of the collected data. The methods used for data analysis in Brittle Company will highlight the employees' mentality to change and how it can be altered to ensure the change to a learning organization is a welcome idea to them (Sagor, 2000).
Innovation is inherent in a company's efforts to become a learning organization. One such company is Brittle Company located in Atlantic City, New Jersey. The first innovative strategy that would enhance the change is the automation of the operations. Automation of the procedures at the company will lead to some advantages contributing to the facilitation of change in the company. One of the merits is the reduction of bureaucracy. Brittle Company has had paid so much attention to the order of the systems and the long-timed approval of the processes and the operations that the issue of bureaucracy has been evident at the company. That would be a hindrance to the change. Therefore, the automation of the processes that the employees go through can be automated to make sure less time is spent on the operations. That will solve the issue of bureaucracy and ensure that the company changes for the better.
The second innovative strategy is introducing benchmarking for the employees. Benchmarking is one of the state-of-the-art ideas to facilitate the sustainability of change in an organization. There are many learning organizations in the United States, and the number has continuously been increasing. The employees of Brittle Company can learn from the employees of that other organization at such an excursion. That will instill a sense of ownership of the intended change at Brittle Company among the employees. One of the organizations that can be resourceful in the scenario is Deloitte LLP, a company based in New York City. The sense of ownership of change among the employees will increase their responsibility which will be essential to the realization of change at the organization.
Looking deeper at the automation of company processes as an idea that will introduce and sustain change at Brittle Company, it involves the increased use of technology which has been an essential factor leading to change in the organizations (Garvin, 1993). Brittle Company has been a company which has relied on the strict order of the procedures, and the employees have to go through a series of offices to get a simple task done. Automation will provide the company with an opportunity to get the approvals of functions for the employees in a short time and reduce their tediousness as they go from an office to another. Automation will, therefore, place the company at the cutting edge of change which will mean that change will be realized sustainably and in a short time. The company officials will also have more time to concentrate on the various factors that lead to change at the company and how to creatively respond to them.
Steps of the Kotter's 8-step model can also be applied to the change process at Brittle Company. One of the steps that can be used is the creation of urgency. In this case, Brittle Company can create a need by identifying the potential threats to the company in the traditional setup. The other step is the development of the vision. The lack of a vision may derail the pursuance of the company in the transitioning into a learning organization. The other step is to come up with guiding coalitions to facilitate the change. The alliances are supposed to further the implementation of reform. The additional level is communication of the vision. An uncommunicated concept is similar to lack of the whole idea itself. Therefore, the employees have to be fully aware of the image set in Brittle Company concerning the transition from a traditional company to a learning one (Hornstein, 2015).
Pillars of sustainable change can be used by Brittle Company to sustain the learning environment in the company. The first pillar that maintains the environment that favors learning is leadership. Intelligibly, effective leadership is usually the backbone of change and the enhancement of a learning environment. Leaders in Brittle Company will ensure the employees stick to the learning guidelines. The second pillar is the strategy. Understandably, the learning environment at Brittle Company is based on plans developed by the company. The third pillar is culture. The gradual changes in the lifestyle of Brittle Company will motivate the employees with the desire to learn more and more. The fourth pillar is structure. The structure of Brittle Company involves the facilities that the organization has. Adequacy of the learning facilities will cultivate a favorable environment for the employees to learn. The fifth pillar is systems. Now that Brittle Company wishes to become a learning organization from a traditional one, it has to acquire the necessary systems that enhance learning in the company (Clegg & de Matos, 2017).
References
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Cropper, B. (2018). 5 learning disciplines . Retrieved from http://www.thechangeforum.com/Learning_Disciplines.htm
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Johannsen, M. (2012, October 18). The 5 phases organizational life cycle . Retrieved from https://www.legacee.com/potpourri/the-organizational-life-cycle/
Johnson, R. (2009, March 3). Is your Company a Learning Organization or the Traditional Efficient Performance Organization? Hoteliers . Retrieved from https://www.4hoteliers.com/features/article/3821
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