Individual Reflection Report Sample
Introduction
Change management in an organization plays a significant role in helping employees get a chance of improving their performance and bringing up new strategic approaches. Especially, while managing different projects in multinational companies change management is very much significant as it allows employees to modify project plans based on present requirements of stakeholders. This study specifically focuses on a reflective analysis of my experience in handling projects in my workplace and with specific reference to issues of change management that I and my team witnessed.
Analyse your own contribution to teamwork and role you played
Gibbs reflective cycle has helped me to analyse my own experience on issues of change management while handling projects by putting it into different stages. These stages have effectively allowed me to critically examine situations I was into and how things could have been improved.
The first stage of Gibbs reflective cycle, description emphasises on my experience and how I have been encountering issues of poor change management (O’Donovan, 2019). After a week‘s training, I was entitled as a leader of a team and the main project we were dealing with was to ensure proper transferring of data from manual data storage to automated technologically advanced devices. This project was very much time consuming as it required a lot of manual work and stakeholders kept on modifying strategies and approaches in planning of this project. With constant shuffling of project plans, execution and getting adapted to recent changes in the project was difficult (Gupta et al. 2018). Most of the employees were freshers and did not have much work experience which made it even more rigid in terms of getting adapted to change. Soon, I experienced internal conflicts due to poor change management and company administration started pressuring me with more workload.
The second stage of Gibbs reflective cycle emphasises on my feelings in the situation along with what I thought could have been done at that moment. When I was constantly pressured by my seniors in terms of executing changes in project plans, I felt very much disappointed, frustrated and stressed as I could not manage employees. Employees were not very efficient in getting adapted to changes and because of constant shuffling; a strategic approach for implementing Change was not possible. As influenced by Durbin and Niederman (2021), it was very much confusing for my team and I did not find enough opportunities and how plan changes can be executed effectively.
The third stage of this reflective cycle has allowed me to analyse the good and bad parts of my experience. My experience was more towards the bad side because in the initial stage, dealing with such complex projects and constantly changing requirements of the project made it difficult. Another bad part of my experience was that I did not have enough experienced employees or team members under me who can easily get adopted to change and take up immediate actions based on stakeholder’s demands. Every change for employees needed to be detailed with manual planning and lengthy meetings which was difficult for me to conduct every time stakeholders change their plans. However, a good part of my experience was that I came across different strategic approaches through which I can easily overcome issues of poor change management. Because of poor change management, many other adjoining issues like lack of communication and internal conflict started rising which affected overall team performance (Thakhathi et al. 2019). I found good approaches for dealing with these interrelated issues and how change management can be easily done with such dynamic requirements.
The fourth stage emphasises on analysis that I can derive from overall experience I have gathered. From the overall experience that I have gathered in the first three weeks of handling this data transferring project, I realise that for making my work effective, I along with my team members always have to be prepared for any changes in project plans. Change management must be first parity for me as a team leader and a project manager and therefore flexibility accordingly needs to be maintained. Other than this, I also understood that my poor time management was also a factor that I could not bring or implement the right change management approach among employees.
The fifth stage of the cycle concludes with a strategy that I could have adopted for the situation. After doing a thorough analysis of my overall experience along with the good and bad parts of it, I realise that I should have emphasised more on time management and must have taken time in sitting with stakeholders for analysing. This could have made it easier for me to bring change. Constantly modification and reshuffling of project plans have made it difficult for team members to understand the pattern through which they are required to accept this change (Loeffler and Bovaird, 2019). In this stage, I also feel that I need to have transparent communication with my stakeholders so that changes can be fixed in one go thereby making it easier for employees to understand.
The sixth and last stage of this cycle emphasises on an action plan that I would take if such a situation arises again. If such a situation arises again, I would specifically hold a prior meeting with my team members and thereby understand the issue is defined in getting adopted to change. Understanding issues they experience, and bringing in change management would be much easier by specifically amending those issues. At the same time, I also need to be specific enough about changes that are taking place in overall project planning rather than coming up with small modifications every time.
Identify where you and team could improve upon this analysis
Based on my experience, I have realised that my team and I needed to focus more on effective planning and our flexibility in terms of performing more effectively. Similar to this context, it can be stated that time management is also an important aspect that can help me in scheduling effective monitoring processes along with making stakeholders constantly updated with changing project modifications. Based on the views of Cameron and Green (2019), time management could have allowed me to undergo strategies that can effectively help me to train my team members on approaches for adopting flexibility. Further, updating stakeholders with regular project progress can allow me to undergo instant changes rather than continuously reshuffling plans from the beginning. Adopting personality developmental activities can be beneficial for me as well as my team members to ensure skills related to flexibility and quack adaptation to change. In order to ensure better change management in my team, I also need to focus more on seeking feedback from my seniors so that their leadership can help me attain specific styles for managing.
Different theoretical approaches
Lewin change model
The Lewin change model is a change management theory that, in simple terms, has helped me to undergo different methods of bringing change in my team and in my pattern of work. The Lewin change model has helped me with three steps of maintaining and implementing change in any strategy, approach or project plan. These three steps include unfreezing, changing and refreezing. In unfreezing change, I had to first stop existing strategies that were pre-domiment. By stopping usage of existing strategies, I can help employees to get accustomed with new approaches. In this stage, I stopped the time consuming working pattern that me and my team followed. Because of this strategy, constant reshuffling of my whole project plan caused intense pressure and delay. Further, in the second stage, I implemented a new strategy of constantly updating my stakeholders about project progress so that any modification from stakeholder’s end can be instantly incorporated without going through a thorough change in plan. Initially, bringing this change was difficult as members had to grow a habit of updating (Rosenbaum et al. 2018). In the third stage, refreezing, this change was settled permanently as a protocol for working that every team member had to follow. Initially, there was an issue in getting accustomed to it, but gradually, I along with my team members have started using this strategy thereby maintaining project quality and completion on time and stakeholder satisfaction.
Mckinsey 7-s change management model proposes 7 dimensions of an organisation for bringing change effectively and equally in every part of businesses. 7 dimensions include strategy, structure, staff, system, style and skills along with shared values (Salvarli and Kayiskan, 2018). These aspects can effectively bring about change in my team where I can implement this regular updating to stakeholders approach to other members in order to bring progressive change. change strategy can be easily implemented in organisational system and staff so as to spread awareness and bring modifications in structure and business styles. This can prominently implement change throughout the organisational process thereby developing the system as a whole and allowing them to meet organisational goals.
Conclusion
This study concludes with the notion of bringing about change management along with issues that I experience in my workplace. I specifically experienced poor change management while dealing with my first project and ineffective time management was an immediate consequence to it. Employee rigidity and lack of time management often makes it difficult for employees to ensure effective change management approaches. Organisation often finds issues in bringing change in organisational pattern especially in employee performance. This study uses Gibbs reflective cycle in analysing my own experience followed by two change management models namely Lewin change model and Mckinsey 7-s change management model.
References
Cameron, E. and Green, M., 2019. Making sense of change management: A complete guide to the models, tools and techniques of organizational change. Kogan Page Publishers.
Durbin, M. and Niederman, F., 2021. Bringing templates to life: overcoming obstacles to the organizational implementation of Agile methods. International Journal of Information Systems and Project Management, 9(3), pp.1-18.
Gupta, S., Misra, S.C., Kock, N. and Roubaud, D., 2018. Organizational, technological and extrinsic factors in the implementation of cloud ERP in SMEs. Journal of Organizational Change Management.
Loeffler, E. and Bovaird, T., 2019. Co-commissioning of public services and outcomes in the UK: Bringing co-production into the strategic commissioning cycle. Public Money & Management, 39(4), pp.241-252.
Rosenbaum, D., More, E. and Steane, P., 2018. Planned organisational change management: Forward to the past? An exploratory literature review. Journal of Organizational Change Management.
Salvarli, M.S. and Kayiskan, D., 2018. An analysis of McKinsey 7-s model and its application on organizational efficiency. Int. J. Sci. Technol. Res, 4, pp.2422-8702.
Thakhathi, A., le Roux, C. and Davis, A., 2019. Sustainability leaders’ influencing strategies for institutionalising organisational change towards corporate sustainability: A strategy-as-practice perspective. Journal of Change Management, 19(4), pp.246-265.
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