Role of Leaders/Managers in Crisis Management
A sequence of sudden, unplanned and unexpected events leading to instability in the organization and major unrest amongst the individuals is called as crisis. Crisis generally arises on a short notice and causes major disturbances at the workplace. Leaders and managers play an extremely important role during crisis. One should lead from the front. Show […]
Conflicts of Interest in the Insurance Business
Conflict of interest scenarios are common in businesses where multiple parties are involved. In many cases, these conflicts are small and harmless. However, when it comes to insurance, some of these conflicts turn out to be serious. In this article, we will have a look at the various situations in which the different participants related […]
Importance of Communication in Change Management
For implementing a change program successfully, communication is the key and one of the most complex parameters as it involves an exchange of ideas and feelings with people in an organization through various mediums. It is one of the toughest issues which an organization is faced with during the entire process of implementation of change. […]
Performance Appraisal System for Virtual Teams
Performance appraisal is considered as a challenging task by many business managers. It becomes all the more daunting in case of virtual workplace. With the virtual team members distributed globally and coming from different cultures and backgrounds, it is important to ensure that the entire process of performance evaluation is perceived as fair and upright […]
The Need to Actualize Purely Local Responses to Events by Corporates and Individuals
From Global to Glocal to Local: How the Wheel has turned Full Circle There was a time during the initial heyday of globalization in the 1990s when corporates were told by experts and think tanks to think global and become world class in their strategies and responses. During this period, almost everyone who mattered in […]
It is often the case that companies are faced with a dilemma about whether the change initiatives must be driven from the top or they should be organic from the bottom up. This is especially the case with organizations that are growing in size where the increase employee base or the skyrocketing sales and revenues mean that the top management’s scope of control is more and hence driving change from the top alone might not just work.
And for those organizations that initiate change from the top, they might find themselves in a situation where the middle and bottom layers of the organizational hierarchy may not be responsive or energized in the way the top managements wants them to be.
So, the existential questions as to whether there ought to a spontaneous involvement from all the levels, or whether the top management must induce the change, are very real and need to be answered for change initiatives to succeed.
The answer as to which option is preferable depends on a number of factors:
For a change initiative to be successful the top management has to communicate and the employees have to respond. Like Bees gathering around honey and being driven by the Queen Bee, organizations have to ensure that while the CEO or the other top managers initiate the change, employees at all levels must take to the change as well.
So, a mix of having the top management initiate the change and letting the employees take over from them works best for larger organizations where micro management by the top management might not work.
Examples of organizations that have embraced change successfully include 3M, Google and Facebook where the visionary leaders at the top ensured that the initial germ of an idea was seeded in the employees and then they let the trees grow by sampling nourishing them from time to time while at the same time preferring organic growth rather than transplanted growth.
The other extreme is marked by failures like HP where the top management was unable to make their employees buy into their change strategies. Of course, this is not to say that organizations need visionary leaders as essential elements of success. Though it helps, companies can make do with success if they have a combination of people enablers who take pride in their organizations and can empower the employees to participate in the change initiatives.
In conclusion, change can be driven solely from the top. However, for continued success, change has to come from within each employee and this can only happen in organizations that have an organizational culture that encourages each employee to contribute to the initiatives.
Change can thrive where there is an institutional catalyst and hence the key takeaway is that the organizational structures have to be built in such a way that no one individual can either make or mar the chances of success.
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