Leading Change -Transactional Vs Transformational Leadership

Running head: Leading Change Paper

Leading Change Paper: Managing Across the Organization

James Boyles

University of Phoenix

Leading Change Paper: Managing Across the Organization

In the simulation, Managing across America the class explored the effects of power and influence on a company's growth and development. This paper will discuss the opportunities and challenges for the Good Sport Company.

The Good Sport Company is based in Coral Springs Florida .The company manufacturers fitness equipment such as treadmills, bikes, steppers and rowing equipment. Jason Poole, ex-basketball super star formed the company over 15 years ago, Jason is currently the chairman of the board for his company.

Marvin Wallace has been for the last 4 years, the chief executive officer for Good Sport. The company has been very successful at marketing its exercise equipment to Hospitals. Good Sport needs to grow and expand their operation to other markets in order to realize continued success (Simulation, 2006)

Good Sport Organization

Organizational structure is the way in which the interrelated groups of an organization are constructed. From a managerial point of view the main concerns are ensuring effective communication and coordination (Daft ,2004) At Good Sport company effective communication and coordination was a very low priority for management.Another reason that contributed to the ineffectivity of the Good Sport company is the nature of its organizational structure.The Good Sport company operated in a functional structure. This type of organization is structured according to functional areas instead of product lines. The functional structure groups specialize in similar skills in separate units. This structure is best used when creating specific, uniform products. A functional structure is well suited to organizations which have a single or dominant core product because each subunit becomes extremely adept at performing its particular portion of the process. The funtional structure can be productive and efficient, but lack flexibility and communications. Communication between functional areas can be difficult because each unit acts independent of the organizations overall vision if any.

An organizations culture is the values and practices shared by the members of the group or company. Company culture, therefore, is the shared values and practices of the company's employees. Company culture is important because it can make or break the company. Companies with an adaptive culture that is aligned to their business goals routinely out perform their competitors. Some studies report the difference at 200% or more (Heathfield, 2006) results like this for organization, the culture is important to figure out, then decide what it should be, and move everyone toward the desired culture. The problem at Good Sport was that each subdivision on the 2nd tier had its own culture for example, members of the sales division adopted an informal attitude about most things,In contrast the production department was very formal about most things,and they disliked interferences from other departments.

Good Sports functional structure was much like its culture because niether was adaptive to the needs of the organization.The structure at Good Sports lacked the inherent flexibility and communication processes required for a succesfull company.The culture at Good Sport was not adaptive,they were divided because of the lack of one vision and common goals.At Good Sport the structure and current culture did not support the development of the company.Unfortunately, current leadership at Good Sport uses power and politices to get things accomplished,these tactics produce fear and reduces support and cohesiveness among employees.In the benchmarking studies company structures that encouraged communications and adopted "open-door" communications methods were usually very effective at sharing one company vision with the team.The bench marking studies also developed organizational cultures that empowered employees and united them under one vision.

The power structure at Good Sport consisted of 4 tiers of management first starting with the chairmen of the board Jason Poole,owner.The 1st level consist of Chief Executive officer. The 2nd level has four units each headed by a V.P. The first is the Production unit , second Research and Design , third Sales and finnally the Finance department.Management at Good Sport often used their positional power and politics to accomplish short term gains and further support their agendas. As stated earlier the functional structure is not very adaptive and flexible, communications is not a very high priority either.Under these conditions, when conflict arises or decisions have to be made management appeals to the various stakeholders short term gain by using organizational politics and political tactics to accomplish their goal.The unfortunate thing is that the goal could be personal or corporate.Employees since the desention and lack of unified leadership because of this poor environment employees mimic their leaders lack of style and become very nonchalent,this in turn produces a poor company culture.When promoted to executive management one action item would have included developing a new vision for Good Sport, and implementing strategies to bring some level of cohesiveness among the various units.The goal would be to change the organization to have a more adaptive culture,then employees can focus on the need for change and support the leadership and organization as well. At Good Sport each of the company units operarated as if it were a separate entity of the company.One company should operate with one vision in order to realize the vision.

Change management is a structured approach to change in individuals, teams, organizations and societies that enables the transition from a current state to a desired future state. The change referred to in this context includes a broad array of topics. From an individual perspective, the change may be a new behavior. From a business perspective, the change may be a new business process or new technology. From a societal perspective, the change may be a new public policy or the passing of new legislation. Successful change, however, requires more than a new process, technology or public policy. Successful change requires the engagement and participation of the people involved. Change management