Thesis on "Successful Change Projects"

Quoted Instructions for "Successful Change Projects" Assignment:

The material here is derived directly from: Kotter J P and Cohen D S (2002), The Heart of Change; Real-Life Stories of How People Change Their Organizations, Harvard Business School Press. ISBN: 1-57851-254-9.

Make a list of projects or tasks that you can identify in your organization (or an organization with which you are familiar) that people in the organization could complete. Only list 5 to 7. The project or tasks could be short-term victories. When you have this list document the following:

• For each item on the list, assess:

o When could the project or task realistically get done? How many months?

o How much effort and expense will it take? Use a qualitative assessment of this and then grade them on a 1 to 10 scale where 1 is almost no effort and 10 is a huge effort and expense.

o Assess how unambiguous the success of the project or task (the win) will be? Use a 1 to 10 scale again.

o How visible will the win be (1 to 10)?

o Will it be viewed as meaningful (1 to 10)?

o Who will see it as meaningful? How influential are the people who will see it as meaningful?

• Now using the assessments from the exercise above, which of the items on your list of short-term wins should receive priority?

o Pick the top five.

o What’s number one? How strongly do you feel about this?

ASSIGNMENT CLARIFICATION

First, you might find that chapter twelve is more helpful than chapter 11. Second, assume that is assignment is relative to a change that is going on in your organization. Fundamentally, I believe the assignment is about how to focus tactical plans to help move an organization toward, into, and out of a change effort. So, it is about how to lead people in planning, organizing, and monitoring decisions and actions that will facilitate a change strategy. You want to ask questions such as, if we focus on taking this action, what will be the effect on the various aspects and stakeholders of the organization? Where can we find the effect that we need? If we take a certain action, what will we need to do to support that action? What else would have to shift, or change, or be stopped? What do we need to do more of? Etc..

Note about “Plagiarism”

Occasionally, students make the mistake of 'going too far in the other direction' and they include too many direct quotes in a submission. If the proportion of quotations in a submission exceeds 20%, then the grade would probably be Fail – even if all the copied materials are properly cited.