Guided coalitions are necessary for effective and seamless organizational change. There are four main features needed to build a functionally guided coalition. First, an organization must ensure that there are enough key players to initiate change. This is known as position power, and without it, those excluded may obstruct progress. Second, expertise is needed to enact any meaningful organizational changes. Expertise refers to the work experience, discipline, and abilities of the members of the coalition. Third, an effective guiding coalition must have credibility, which refers to the good reputation necessary to make changes. Finally, the guiding coalition should have good leaders who can steer the change process. Strong leadership is critical to the success of a guiding coalition.
Facebook Inc. is the parent company of social media platforms such as Whatsapp, Instagram, and Facebook. The company rebranded to Meta Platforms Inc. in October 2021 (Stokel-Walker, 2021). When making this change, the company displayed various strengths and weaknesses. Facebook had enough position power to make the change since the process was driven by the CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, among other leaders. One weakness is that the leaders did not involve the employees in making this change. The organization’s name change felt rushed and excluded key members of the company. Due to under-communication on the need for change, there has been a lot of contention surrounding the rebrand.
The company has good managers who are poor leaders, which makes change a difficult process. There should have been more internal communication before making the name change. The organization may have failed to take this approach to prevent speculations before the rebrand. Some people, such as author Taina Bucher, think that the company changed its name to distance itself from the bad press associated with Facebook (Stokel-Walker, 2021). Hence, the organization may have failed to communicate its intentions with all relevant stakeholders to prevent such claims from spreading.
Reference
Stokel-Walker, C. (2021). Why has Facebook changed its name to Meta and what is the metaverse? NewScientist. Web.