Organizational Change model

Organizational Change model

The team leadership model will be used to offer direction when the San Diego VA Healthcare System and Pathfinder Consulting starts the organizational change. Northouse (2019), established that team leadership model suits the change program since it will limit the aspect of putting positional power to the management to improve the efficiency of the team and the overall organizational operations. Besides, team leadership entails members who are guided by a mutual objective. However, these individuals are usually independent of each other but ensure team spirit prevails by coordinating the roles to achieve the established goals. According to the analysis, the information is relevant to the identified problems in VA, which entailed many sections and departments associating with each other without acting as a team.

Consequently, Parker (1990), further supported the model by outlining that a valuable organizational team has various benefits in which it promotes higher creativity among themselves, effective use of resources, greater productivity, better services, and decision making. This claim will be reflected by focusing on arranging the team to enhance better outcomes. The structuring will be achieved through promoting the decision-making process, encouraging accountability to maintain better standards, and suitable training.

Additionally, Whipp’s (1993) Dimensions of Strategic Change was selected to determine the proper layout for the change model. This selection was based on two considerations, which lead to similar results and what suits the consumer. The considerations are that the change model is appropriate for both systematic and linear approaches. Similarly, Pettigrew and Whipp (1993), highlighted that strategic change was a complex and continuous process, which depended on situations. Here, the strategic change is dynamic and entails multiple processes, which have many operations.

Moreover, the dimensions of strategic change of Pettigrew and Whipp (1993) are divided into three important parts; content, context, and process (figure 3). Basing on the context dimension, it is identified by the “where” and “why” of the change, which is further divided into internal and external settings. Internal setting entails the organizational politics, culture, abilities, and resources, while external is made up of social, political, and business aspects. Worth noting, the content dimension refers to the “how” of change and entails choice and evaluation of assumptions, goals, markets, and brands. In particular, content is the association of stakeholders, their preferences, and anticipated change. On the other hand, process dimension entails time patterns, implementation, and both change models, and masters.

Figure 3. Dimensions of Strategic Change Model

The aspect of politics is found in both external and internal components of context. According to Pettigrew and Whipp (1993), politics signified anyone who had the power to determine the results among the members of the decision group. Similarly, Pettigrew (1993) formulated that decisions in management as a role represented organizational politics due to the associated process. Additionally, according to the research of Pettigrew (1993) on strategic change, the findings indicated that the strategic change process could be arranged in four stages.

1. Concern development: This aspect was realized through change validation by treating it as a corporal agenda. The process requires some effort and time, which is viewed as an administrative task, thus inclining towards organizational leadership.
2. Receiving acknowledgment and comprehending the problems: This stage entails a process of developing sound opinion and climate to understand that the anticipated change will consume some time, which calls for the encounter of inevitabilities, such as unpredictable, setbacks, shortfalls, and iterations in the movement areas. Similarly, the internal politics, power, and career paths of stakeholders will be impacted by the change process, which calls for the necessity of incentives to promote its success.
3. Planning and acting: In this stage, there is a formulation of expectations, which is achieved by developing the preferred future state of the firm, which will be aligned towards planning to create effective engagement.
4. Change stabilization: The stage is dominated by communication, where the management conveys relevant information to reinforce the authority and power patterns towards the new positions. Worth noting, similar to other change processes, there is resistance from some people who have the egocentric motives of securing their powers and interests.

Moreover, strategic change has the other four stages in which there was an identification of five management problems related to the process (Pettigrew and Whipp, 1993).

1. Environmental evaluation: firms should not leave this process in the hands of technical experts, instead they need to take it as a multifunctional task where the participation of everyone is required as a way of learning. The statement is reinforced by the view that a suitable environment is determined by a large subjective component that entails their understanding and the tasks of the company.
2. Leading change: This stage has a specific and complex situation, which is achieved through sequential accelerating steps and involves various managers. Leading change is about developing a healthy environment to welcome the change within the organization and also allocating resources to support it.
3. Connecting functional and strategic change: This phase is challenging since the encountered implementation can overpower the original strategy. The situation calls for the necessity to be focused on bringing harmony between the general strategy and the operational aspects. Harmony is brought by ensuring that all change managers practice actionable targets. Besides, they will be reinforced by new incentive systems and a clear communication mechanism. However, the main challenge relates to the perception that both operational and strategic change processes may become political issues and takes place concurrently.
4. Treating human resources as both liabilities and assets for actions: There should be relevant learning to offer knowledge to the members of the firm in which the knowledge will also be discarded whenever it becomes inappropriate. However, the management should understand that eliminating outdated attitudes and approaches is a difficult task.
5. Coherence: This aspect relates to the capability of reshaping and molding the firm together to promote cohesiveness among the members. The success of this stage depends on four elements.

• Consistency: The element implies the absence of internal contradictions in attempts to eliminate the problem.
• Consonance: There should be compatibility between the environment and the strategy.
• Competitive advantage: The result of the formulated strategy should be a stronger market base.
• Strategy viability with the necessary resources: Success of the strategy lies here where change managers need to bring better alignment between various structures with content, context, and external and internal processes.

From earlier discussion, linear change was explained through the model of dimensions of Strategic Change by Pettigrew (1993), which helped understand the Veteran’s Affairs. However, the application of the change model to the evaluated needs has minimal disruption on their set values and is in line with that of VA. Similarly, the goals use the change sequence as established by Pettigrew (1993) and are fully aligned with the model. In this project, four steps will be followed; creating the concern, understanding the problem, planning and performing the change, and change stabilization.

Operational Change

Pathfinder Consulting will concentrate on VHA to make improvements to enhance the effectiveness of scale and scope. Besides, San Diego VA will be the starting point of Pathfinder Consulting. The main reason for starting with VA is that the firm has similar problems with VHA systems in the United States, which will promote effective process refining and validation. Consequently, Pathfinder Consulting will shift to other VHA healthcare systems after performing assessment and validation of change based on the existing needs.

Furthermore, Pathfinder Consulting will take six months to solve the identified problems in VHA, which will fulfill and resolve the elimination criteria from the high-risk of Gao. The four-stage of strategic change by Pettigrew and Whipp (1993) will be used, with an established finishing timeline to enhance the success of the organizational change and meets the deadline. Analyzing the performance problems model by Mager and Pipe (1997) was developed by Pathfinder Consulting to complement the four-stage process of strategic change. Here, efforts are made to understand whether the problem is; simplified or not, requires skill or knowledge, its importance, and skill repetition. For effectiveness, Pathfinder Consulting formulated goals and objectives. According to Mager and Pipe (1997), the goals were achieved through the objectives, which acted as a stepping stone, thus making them be focused through the performance problems model. Also, the change will go through three stages, according to the established dimensions, as illustrated below in an overall period of six-months. Worth noting, the change will be consistent with the strategic model by Pettigrew and Whipp (1993) of context, process, and content through its dimension is flexible, making it prone to shift and overlap. Fig 4: Three stages of change

The dimensions of context and content will be assigned five weeks, each to confirm the validity by the analysis of Pathfinder Consulting. Besides, overlapping of the context and the content dimensions will be encountered since they will both come up during the discussion, with the mid-level and senior leaders about the acknowledgment and concern of the problem. However, the recapping of the analysis will be vital to realign it to the VA Healthcare System of San Diego, to structure it to the strengths and weaknesses to solve all the challenges facing the firm. The subsequent fourteen weeks will be allocated to the process dimension for change execution to cover the planning, acting, and stabilizing phases with the leadership. Consequently, during the twelfth week, there will be improvement and remediation about any unexpected extension of the desired effort.

Furthermore, during the three months of the process, emphasis will be put on three iteration goals of each month. Each iteration has goals, which do not connect, but they communicate their respective objectives. The development and implementation of training programs for the staff and leadership of VA are the first established objectives to create a two-year schedule with prioritized initiatives and goals, as shown in figure 5. However, there is also the necessity of the second goal, which requires the creation of a strategic plan on resources, while the third one for the leaders’ accountability on the progress. Besides, the second objective entails resource identification with resource prioritization vital for program establishment, while the last one is leadership accountability. Consequently, the third objective focuses on measuring and assessing performance to promote their supervision and administer accountability, which also has all three goals.

Figure 5.  Summary of the operational change

First, the VA Healthcare System in San Diego will identify and develop their leadership objectives and goals to achieve the first objective, which is a role placed to its deputy secretary-general. Identification of these objectives will involve writing for the two years, both short-and long-term plans, which should be measurable and specific. In the first performance goal, there will be an identification of training projects and initiatives on skills and leadership to achieve the related objectives and goals. After that, there will be the creation of an implementation plan for the established projects and initiatives in a continuous sequential. The next phase will entail developing measurement of the projects and training results for success. Finally, there will be the provision of opportunities for leadership training by setting goals and becoming responsible for the team. The practice will help the team in the VA health system to realize both accountability goals and objectives.

In the next iteration goal, there will be direct building and connecting of goal and that of performance. In this phase, where there is a development of an effective approach for resource prioritization, the initial role will be to identify relevant requirements. The second performance goal will be to create and execute a strategy of issuing the resource requirement, followed by designating various teams for implantation. Here, the designated teams can either be those, which are identified as directed and instituted by the leadership. Also, the same goal will require the development of teams, which will be responsible for attaining the formulated objectives.

In the last iteration, there will be training and support of teams and their leaders in accountability through; attaining communication styles and performance goals, development of objectives, feedback, and observation. Besides, measurement of achievement by the leadership will entail how to measure success and its nature. Using an example, do people recognize and align with the identified leadership objectives? According to this iteration, the major goal of supporting and training teams and their leaders is to enhance project continuation by upholding accountability. The first objective is aligned with this goal, where in both, there is the accountability of healthcare system staff and leadership training. Approaching these aspects will call for an initial step of offering staff and leadership training in communication techniques and holding other people within the firm accountable. This situation is vital since it imparts relevant skills in the target group. Interviewing leadership and staff and administration of training will reflect the follow-up activity to understand whether the training was essential.

Also, the staff will be offered with observation and results to identify the existing gaps to get the necessary information and to help address any problems in holding each other responsible towards attaining the formulated goals. Similarly, these goals and objectives belonging to the first three months of the iteration. Worth noting, understanding each iteration and objective of the VA health system is a vital step since it offers the stages and direction, with a continuous evaluation to enable ongoing and prolonged progress in meeting the objectives. Besides, the staff and leadership must be in a position to appreciate others over the past processes, which VA health had also conducted, aimed towards partnering with the present system. This approach is realized by recognizing that the VA health system is characterized as a top, down, and low content firm in which individuals within it must be dynamic to cope up with this situation. The importance of this dynamism is to allow the leaders and staff to be adaptive and undertake the required change to address the rising problems or objectives. Generally, the management will be in a position to exhibit flexibility and understand how to attain the goal by learning to focus on the required changes.

Culture change

Structuring the present culture is effective in recognizing the behaviors, thoughts, beliefs, and values that ascribe to accountability in the entire levels and departments. There will be an exploration of the cultural framework by the program of Pathfinder Consulting through various observations, surveys, and interviews in one month in which all the project teams and individual leaders in all departments will be spoken to. The initial step will be to recognize the self-awareness of leadership. According to Burke (2018), leaders with high self-awareness are attached to the best results in a project. Besides, the aspect of self-awareness is characterized as having a narrow gap between how leaders perceive themselves and other people (Church, 1997). In this project, evaluation of team and leadership awareness will be attained by speaking to the management about the way they handle accountability in their various departments. The approach will be an opportunity of understanding the effectiveness of the team members’ expectations and goals. Moreover, there will be an identification of whether there are trust differences between the team and their leaders to evaluate the self-awareness of those in power. The two techniques have the objective of developing a basis of realizing the addressed gaps before embarking on enhancing organizational accountability.

Addressing ambiguity

Using the past interview (1, 2019) about situational analysis, the results showed that leaders in the San Diego VA system have minimal ambiguity tolerance since they depended on procedure and policy reports to push for accountability. Here, one of the executives said that if there was no documentation of the change request, then it was not looked at all (Interview 2, 2019). The comment was encountered in the context, which was about how change is welcomed by the technology group and the benefit of allocating suitable requirements earlier enough before associating the developers. In this situation, accountability depends on documentation, which consumes much time due to developing, keeping, and retrieving information for conducting simple roles. In the next phase, Pathfinder Consulting conducted a random interview on the workforce to gain an insight into how they addressed ambiguity in their daily tasks. At the beginning of the interview, the workers highlighted that their daily tasks have less ambiguity since they followed the established procedures and process in which the occurrence of any unfamiliar issue was reported to the top leadership (Interview 1, 2019) (Interview 2, 2019). According to the claim, the organization is eclipsed by the hierarchical arrangement of departments and minimal workers’ empowerment. Similarly, the interviews showed that there was little partnership across the departments to share essential information obtained from the training.

In both the 1^st (2019) and the 2^nd (2019) interviews, the participants established that the departments are highly isolated and do not analyze the procedures and policies with each other to detect the existing defects. The individual department avoids ambiguity by relying more on documentation to manage accountability since it drives the required expectations and behaviors. Consequently, as a result of minimal empowerment in the firm, there was the necessity of addressing the degree of trust between teams and leaders, and if the challenge restricted accountability improvement. However, the findings relied on two interviews in which discussions will be made during the content and context dimensions in the first ten weeks of the program.

Exploring trust

According to Burke (2018), the necessity to control is to obtain unusual results. There will be an exploration of control in terms of how trustful the workers are to each other in attempts of being accountable to the entire goals and their individuals. The approach will be obtained by administering a trust survey tool, with chosen project teams and individuals from each department in which Steven Covey’s Speed of Trust will be used to derive the questions. Also, the results, capabilities, intent, and integrity are the measurement dimensions of this tool (Covey, 2006), where the target group will be required to rate their teams and themselves across the Likert scale: strongly agree, agree, neutral, disagree, and strongly disagree. The following are the queries asked teams and their leaders.

Integrity:

Individuals: a) I am not clear about the values and mission of the team/organization, which forces me to lead with my set believes.

1. b) I often lead with a set of values, which are in line with myself, team, and organization.

Teams: a) There is a lack of functional values in the team

1. b) There is a tendency of the team to function within its formulated set of values, which are accepted upon.

Communicating Clear purpose:

Individuals: a) I do not think about the reason I undertake what I usually do. I hardly reflect on enhancing my motives.

1. b) I knowingly recognize my intentions and restructure them so that I can do the right things for correct reasons.

Teams: a) The team does not know the member’s intentions, and everyone operates on individual purposes.

1. b) The team is knowingly aware of the member’s intentions, and everyone ensures that the right things are done for the right reasons.

Capitalizing on Capability:

Individuals: a) Sometimes, I take time to sharpen my skills and knowledge at the workplace or any area in my career life.

1. b) I always increase and advance knowledge and skills in all aspects of my career life.

Teams: a) The team does not accept change in which they love to maintain things the way they are.

1. b) Team members are willing to frequently look at how to improve their awareness and knowledge for exceptional results.

Concentrating on Collaborative Outcomes:

Individuals: a) I am often worried

1. b) I focus on outcomes that develop engagement and trust from other people.

Teams: a) The team concentrates on obtaining outcomes that only benefit it.

1. b) The team concentrates on obtaining outcomes in a manner that assures inspiration, commitment, and trust from external members.

After undertaking and gathering the outcomes, the findings will be analyzed to determine any differences between the team and individual feedback. The step is vital to recognize that if the outcomes are smaller in collaborations and capabilities and higher in intent and integrity areas, then it will signal the existence of trust in commitment and ambition. However, the result will also indicate a lack of trust in each other in terms of achieving the goals. The survey aims to confirm the differences in the perception of trust and how it can be resolved through learning experiences that involve exceptional team commitment and increased coaching conversations between team members and leaders. The practice will promote and heighten conversations about enhanced accountability across all departments and levels.

Case for change

The phase will start by exploring the culture, mainly to provide insight into accountability by understanding ambiguity through interviewing the leaders. There is a measurement of the consistency of formal artifacts, such as policy, procedures, and process documents, by Pathfinder Consulting using trust tool surveys and interviews. The measurement is an assurance of high clarity and accountability for the management of goals and expectations. Besides, the outcomes will provide an understanding of the way leaders and teams view trust among themselves. Basing on situational analysis, accountability is the problem within the VA organization, which signals less trust and partnership between teams and leadership. According to the analysis of the obtained outcomes, there will be a concentration on accountability improvement through developing partnerships between teams and leadership.

Additionally, there will be a determination of sincerity in patience and learning for the uncertainty that creates the task-based, linear, and hierarchical culture. Using the past report of GAO and the anticipated trust survey and interviews, there will be an evaluation of the team and leadership collaboration and learning sincerity in the way they handle their tasks. Also, using the same framework, an evaluation of whether the team and leadership have adopted a culture that creates less empowerment promotes silos and relies on artifacts to promote accountability.

Change Values and Vision

The vision statement of the Department of Veterans Affairs (2019) is to offer exemplary beneficial opportunities and services to veterans by obeying the stipulated standards of stewardship, accountability, integrity, professionalism, excellence, commitment, and compassion.

Evaluation of the vision statement shows that there is a concentration on external and internal areas. Veterans form the external area in which, when incorporated with internal, there will be a focus on taking care of the target group through effective leadership. Besides, the vision statement calls for the firm to make judgments, which are in line with the established values.  Here, the values of the VA organization is to take care of veterans. Consequently, these values are essential since they remind the workers why they are serving and what is needed, as shown in the figure below.

Fig 6: VA values

From the table, the vision and values of the organization are practiced by the veterans and the leadership, thereby offering direction. Change intervention will not affect the vision values of VA. However, the only influence it will have is changing how leadership align and handles decisions and adjust their behaviors.

Moreover, there will be development and attainment of alignment initiatives and goals, accountability, and creation of objectives and teams during the dimension of the change process. This approach implies that the culture of the VA will be restructured by concentrating on three objectives. Although the process will take longer, the initial stage will start by training. As shown in figure 7, using a culture map (Meyers, 2014), San Diego VA healthcare system was mapped on eight classes using interviews and analysis. Besides, the firm will be remapped and then determined. There was no variation in characteristics of the culture change map, apart from the first look where there was stark. For instance, a superficial context reflects the present VA structure and communication mechanism. According to Meyes (2014), low context is clear, but the objective of the program on the San Diego system will be to bring the center both high and low context.

The purpose of bringing the VA system

The reason for bringing the VA system to the middle map to communicate between the two contacts is beneficial to the leaders since it provides intent and guidance while allowing their subordinates to innovate. Worth noting, VA will not be made a flatter hierarchy by the program, instead, the middle contact will be closer to enable the leaders to be flexible to become an organized governmental institution. Also, to decide the program scale, there will be the necessity of making the San Diego VA system have a closer consensual instead of present top-down decision. This approach enables small teams to take part in the decision-making with their detailed results, rather than a single top-down approach. Analysis of the map from the deciding scale, the team, only makes a decision, hence showing lack of complete consensual. The approach is an opportunity for daily decision tasks, initiatives, and projects to make decisions, either from the top-down management or within the team, based on the view that the employee is answerable to the leader.

The major aim of the change is to enable individuals to learn to be responsible, instead of holding others accountable. The figure below shows the Culture Map Change Comparison chart, which helps explain the purpose of the San Diego VA system. The map intends to have a direct assessment compared to the present one, which has an indirect evaluation (Meyers, 2014). Direct evaluation from management to employees will play a significant role in empowering the leadership of VA to hold them responsible. Initially, the direct evaluation would be taken as a way of offering positive or negative aspects in which corrective mechanisms would be put up.