Change Management Plan For Crystel

Introduction

It is a reality that organizations cannot be just endlessly managed, replicating yesterday's practices to achieve success. Because business conditions change and yesterday's practices often lose their effectiveness, there must be innovation, and innovation means change. This fact applies to CrysTel just as much as any other company. The purpose of this paper is therefore to provide a plan for CrysTel to deal with and manage the on-going process of change.

Major Implications

It is evident by results from both the Employee Satisfaction and the Climate Survey that changes made by the company will not be able to be made easily and without a considerable amount of resistance. According to the company’s Employee Satisfaction survey, “Communication” had an employee satisfaction rating of only 63%. This statistic is also reflected in the company’s “Climate Survey” which reflected a 60% communication level within the organization. In addition to a low indicator for “Communication”, the Climate Survey disclosed a “Security” rating of only 60% among the company’s employees. These statistics indicate that any efforts to implement changes within the organization will not come without challenge because changes will bring additional fear of job loss, and because change cannot be effectively implemented without clear and effective communication.

The task that confronts CrysTel management is to be able to make changes in a planned, managed, and systematic fashion, and in a way that would be viewed as a positive within the company. Their aim would be to more effectively implement new methods and systems as part of an ongoing and ever-revolving. These changes are ones that are internal, and are controlled by the organization. In addition, CrysTel management would have to deal with changes that are triggered by events that are external, or are outside of the company’s control. Whether the changes originate within the company, or are as a result to forces outside of the company, the current climate within the company will make it difficult for management to implant changes without a plan in place to deal with the changes.

According to the company’s Change Report, the Marketing and the Sales and Delivery departments are the two departments, out of the five, that will have the most difficulty dealing with change. This fact can generally be traced to the structures of these two departments. In the case of the Marketing department, different marketing teams are scattered in different parts of the country, which negatively affects their ability to work interdependently, and their ability to effectively communicate with each other. This leads to poor training and mentoring, which results in poor performance. Other negatives which come as a result of the marketing departments structure is a lack of delegation of team role responsibilities, lack of proper feedback, and a lack of accountability for individual tasks.

In the case of the Sales and Delivery Department, the department’s “top down” structure makes it difficult for the department to deal with change. In this department, there are many reporting heads at the senior level and the senior sales people carry the responsibility. This multi-role structure increases the potential for conflict, and thus for ineffectiveness. As a result, there is a lack of both participative leadership and problem-solving capabilities, which also leads to a decrease ink of risk-taking capability. The task at hand is therefore implement changes that would help these two departments be able to deal with change as well as the Technology, Technology Operations, and Human Resource Departments. By doing so, CrysTel will be in a better position to accomplish its mission of providing customers with “the best and most reliable telecommunications services in the state.”

An appropriate change model

Step 1: Re-write Mission and Values Statement

The first step in developing a change management plan for CrysTel would be to re-create the company’s mission and values statement. Currently, their Mission Statement reads: “To provide customers with the best and most reliable telecommunications services in the state.” (Simulation) At first glance this statement might seem adequate. However, this statement fails to mention anything about change. CrysTel is part of an ever-changing, very competitive industry and, as such, must adapt accordingly as market conditions dictate. Therefore in order to make the ability to effectively deal with change (both internally and externally) a part of the company’s culture it is important that that element be explicitly included in the company’s Mission and Values Statement.

The creation of the company’s Mission and Values Statement should be a “company affair,” with as many employees, on all levels, being as involved as possible. This allows every employee to “buy into” the mission of the company, and to take “personal ownership” of it as well. As a result, the company’s Mission and Values statement becomes integrated into the values and goals of every employee of CrysTel. Once the Statement is approved on all levels of the organization, and drafted, it is recommended a copy be created that includes every employees signature confirming their individual support of the statement.

Step 2: Build Trust

For change to be able to work, people have to believe both that management can speak the truth and that they are able to trust the things that they hear from others in the company. This building of trust, however, is an on-going project; and management must be able to demonstrate that they do the things that they say they will do. Therefore the process of establishing trust takes time. From the beginning, the commitment to change must be supported on all levels, from the top of the organization, to the other levels. .

Step 3: Utilize “Change Report” to implement changes for Marketing and Sales and Delivery Departments

In order to create an environment with CrysTel that is able to adapt to change, it is important to utilize the company’s Change Report to implement strategies within both the Marketing and Sales and Delivery departments. These include the following: Lead by example, improve