Lead Strategic Transformation – Project Portfolio

$15.00

Lead strategic Transformation Project Portfolio

Word Count 5372

Description

Complete the following activities:

  1. Carefully read the following:
This project requires you to lead a strategic business transformation for an organisation or large work area. You will be required to analyse and lead organisational transformation and learning for strategic outcomes based on case study scenario which you can access in the Simulation Pack for this unit.
Vocational education and training is all about gaining and developing practical skills that are industry relevant and that can help you to succeed in your chosen career.
 It is important that you are able to access enough information for your chosen business in order to be able to do your assessment. As a minimum this should include organisational objectives and need for change along with policies related to managing the change.
You will need to communicate with people who are involved several times. Your communication may be either directly with fellow students/your assessor can play the roles of relevant people/parties. Communication can be in any appropriate format (e.g. face to face, video conference, email) as long as it meets the requirements outlined below, and in the Project Portfolio.

You will be collecting evidence for this unit in a Project Portfolio. The steps you need to take are outlined below.

  1. Preparation
Make sure you are familiar with the organisation you are basing this assessment on and have read through the necessary background information. For the case study business, this is all of the documents included in the Simulation Pack.

If you are using the case study, you will assume the role of the Change Agent as per the case study provided.

Complete Page 4 of your Project Portfolio for this unit.

Read through the requirements of Section 1, 2 and 3 of your Project Portfolio.

  1. Preparing for strategic change
Complete Section 1 of your Project Portfolio.

To complete Section 1, you need to work through several steps to prepare for organisational change.

Make sure you have answered all questions in Section 1. Submit to your assessor for review.

You are also required to attach certain documents as part of your evidence – review the documents you need to attach as outlined in Section 1 of the Project Portfolio and make sure you attach these upon submission.

You will use the work done in this section of the Portfolio to consult with others in the next activity. In preparation, read through step 4.

  1. Stakeholder consultation
You now need to conduct stakeholder engagement and interviews to gather valuable insights to help inform your strategy. Conduct 3 short one-on-one interviews with three identified key stakeholders (at least one internal and one external) and then document your findings.

If you are using the case study business, you can use other students who are working on the same case study as you will all be familiar with the scenario and you can draw from each other’s unique perspectives and ideas. Arrange for three other students to play an identified role – this can be anyone from the case study that you choose, for example, a graphic designer moving from permanent to contract, a head office staff member staying on and a reader of the magazine. The role player has licence to make up their answers based on their own ideas and experiences. As everyone’s ideas and situations are unique, even if playing the same roles your answers will be different. It’s very important that you develop your own set of questions to ask the stakeholders and that these are not the same as anyone else working in your small group. You are all being assessed individually.

Your assessor will be looking to see that you can:

·           express your opinions and information to the stakeholders when interviewing them

·           respond positively and respectfully to their views using language appropriate to the audience

·           adapt your personal communication style as necessary to build a positive working relationship and show respect for the opinions, values and individual needs of others

·           demonstrate effective communication skills including:

o     Speaking clearly and concisely

o     Using non-verbal communication to assist with understanding

o     Asking questions to identify required information

o     Responding to questions as required

o     Using active listening techniques to confirm understanding

The meetings should last for approximately 15 minutes each. After the meetings, complete Section 2 of your Project Portfolio.

i
This can either be viewed in person by your assessor or you may like to video record the session for your assessor to watch later. Your assessor can provide you with more details at this step. Make sure you follow the instructions above and meet the timeframes allocated.
After the stakeholder meetings, complete Section 2 of your Project Portfolio. As part of this step, you are also required to develop written communication to both internal and external stakeholders affected by the change. Choose the internal and external group of people based on two of the stakeholder engagement meetings. Attach the communication developed to your portfolio.
  1. Develop a change management strategy
Develop a change management strategy for the business. You can use an organisational template if you have one or you can use the Change Management Strategy template provided in the simulation pack. Ensure you complete all parts and that you use appropriate vocabulary, grammatical structure and conventions when developing your strategy.

Attach this to Section 2 of your Project Portfolio.

  1. Develop a communication and education plan
Develop a communication and education plan to be used in conjunction with the change management project plan.

This plan should show how the change will be managed, including the provision of information to staff about the proposed changes and benefits.

Ensure that the strategies you develop are designed to promote the benefits of change to staff and to reduce the likelihood of a negative response/adverse outcomes.

Your communication and education plan should also show the communication and reporting process to senior management, which will be required on a regular basis.

Use can choose to use an organisational template or the Communication and Education Plan Template provided in the simulation pack.

  1. Request feedback from staff
Assume a month has passed and you need to collect feedback from staff about how the change is being managed by the leaders. Develop an email, memo, survey or request for feedback that can be sent to staff. You can do this anyway you like as long as you include at least three questions that cover their experiences of the processes implemented, their thoughts personally on resistance to change and how they believe the communication is that management has had with staff.

Attach this communication in Section 3 of your Project Portfolio.

  1. Carefully read the following:
Assume that the following change management objectives are included as part of the change management process that was implemented:

·           Employees were satisfied with information provided as part of the change management process

·           Communication occurred through multiple channels

Assume that the following communication activities were implemented:

·           Weekly staff meeting

·           Newsletter updates through staff email

Assume it is 1 month into the change process and a Staff Survey of the remaining staff has been conducted.

  1. Reflect personally on feedback
Review the change management objectives, communication activities implemented, and the Staff Survey Results. You need to reflect personally on the feedback received so you can identify areas for improvement.

Complete Section 3 of your Project Portfolio.

  1. Write a change management review
Evaluate the effectiveness of the change management process and provide recommendations for improving communication activities to further mitigate the risk of change resistance.

Develop a short brief for the CEO of the organisation that includes your review. It should also recommend updates to the change management plan through relevant communication activities.

Your change management review should include the following:

·           What the change management objectives are

·           What change management communication activities took place

·           Recommended changes to the change management plan and the communication and education plans

Your review should be between half a page and one-page long.

Use the Change Management Review template to guide your work. Attach this to Section 3 of your Project Portfolio.

  1. Update staff on change management processes
Make some changes to your Communication and Education Plan based on your own recommendations and inform staff of what these changes are. Changes must be around the communication processes instituted. You can develop a memo or staff email to communicate these changes to staff.

When developing your communication, ensure you apply the feedback received and from your own self-reflection to your leadership style.

Attach your updated Communication and Education Plan and developed staff communication to Section 3 of your Project Portfolio.

Additional information

Preview

Overview

Samson Media is a publisher which specially focuses on upmarket women fashion sector. Recently, its revenue and readership has fallen due to higher competition. Many competitors have shifted to digital platform and also customer base is shifting towards digital contents. Considering this situation, the new CEO, Amir Johnson initiates transformational change of the company to switch to publications being made available in electronic format. There are 3 types of organizational change; development change, transitional change and transformational change. In this scenario, Samson Media need to do transformational change.
Analysis of the company’s organisational objectives
New mission statement of company is that to provide interesting and engaging cutting-edge content to our readers about latest fashion trends and popular culture events in an accessible format to all of our readers.
Mission statement should include the purpose, goal of the company and values. This mission statement is very suitable one for transformation process, however, it should be emphasized the target of getting into electronic format. Therefore, it is recommended to update the mission statement as mentioned below to communicate about main goal of the company to all stakeholders.
“To provide interesting and engaging cutting-edge content to our readers about latest fashion trends and popular culture events in an accessible format to all of our readers through digital platforms”.
Objectives should have consist with SMART quantities specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time bound. Some of current objectives need to be reset with the specific time line. Therefore, it is recommended to reset as below.
• Increase return on capital to 8% within 2 years
• Enact a transformational change of the company that will move to a digital format within 6 months.
• Close the printing and distribution site within 6 months.
• Achieve cost efficiencies through relocating the head office to a smaller office within 6 months.
• Restructure head office staff through moving to a smaller core of permanent staff and more contract staff within 6 months.
Instead of those objectives, customer perspective also need to be added to set of objectives.
• Increase no. of subscription by 30% in second year compared to first year.
• Increase customer satisfaction by 25% in second year compared to first year.

A review of any current policies, procedures and practices against strategic objectives
Considering marketing aspect, current targeted customer segment need to be changed to successfully achieve the objectives. Instead of women in 35 to 55 year age group, it is recommended to target wider customer group of 20 to 55 women via different products. Even though, 98% old Australians use internet according to Australian Communications and Media Authority (2021), middle age and older people generally are not very comfortable with digital media. Similarly, considering speciality and expertise of the brand, it is not wise to change customer segment to younger generation immediately. Thus, choosing 30 to 40 age group as primary segment is more suitable.
In this strategic transformation process, some of the jobs in printing and distribution site and head office has to be terminated. Current termination policy and procedure of Samson Media allows to terminate employees under redundancy and retrenchment. Labour law of Victoria state allows genuine redundancy and retrenchment. However, Samson Media need to have specific guideline to decide correct notice period (or payment in lieu of notice) and any compensation based on the time of employment.
Key stakeholders
Internal stakeholders
• Employees who are included to redundancy and retrenchment plan.
• Other employees.
• Shareholders
• CEO, GM and top management
External stakeholders
• Sponsors
• Customers
• Suppliers
• Technical service providers
• Regulated authorities