Assessment
Although the firm is dealing with organizational psychological issues, there are some problems which arise within the organization. That is why it is necessary to conduct several assessments to determine the origin of these problems. After the causes have been identified, corrective mechanisms will then be put in place to restore the firm to its original status which the management and its stakeholders viewed as desirable.
The first assessment that will be conducted concerns the organization behavior of the employees. This is a crucial component of the bank’s success because it looks at how people influence, communicate and behave towards one another thus contributing towards the overall organizational culture prevalent in the institution. If organizational behavior minimizes communication and people’s influences then that would undermine performance. The DISC personality assessment will be used to determine the organization behavior of the employees. This is because the method has been implemented successfully by several organizations and in several studies that have tried to establish a strong organizational behavior among their employees. In the study conducted by Milla (2008) DISC was used to strengthen the human resource department of several firms by strengthening their professionalism; making the department to be more effective and efficient (p. 241s) The same method can be used in this case to ensure that organizational behavior and culture is instilled to all employees especially the top middle level managers since they are the key decision makers of the organization.
An assessment on organization change has also to be conducted. This will be achieved by using the force field analysis. This assessment method will be used in the organization in order to find out how the company is handling change management. Currently, People’s Bank is dealing with a big change; it is implementing a compliance procedure so it needs to make sure that change management is going well. It will then decide which actions are needed in order to respond to those issues and thus embrace a different dimension of the change process. This assessment emanates from the fact that any workplace will go through certain forces when making changes. Cummings (2005) identified that force field analysis is the best tool to identify factors that are restraining the staff of an organization to accept and embrace change. He also stated that it is the tendency of employees to stick on to past practices hence they cannot meet the present demands of the organization and its stakeholders. The same situation is being experienced in this bank; employees are basing their decisions on outdated techniques. That is why Paul, one of the managers, keeps on stating that that is how they have been doing things and still they got the job done. This method will be efficient in examining these factors thus the heart of the problem will be identified.
Another critical assessment that has to be done is organization development. It is important for a firm to always ensure that their viability and effectiveness is growing with time. Organization development will be assessed using the action research method. The book by Branson and Barke (2005) explored the action research method and found it to be an effective tool of measuring and assessing organization development. The book has several case studies which show the successful application of this method. It will therefore be an essential tool for the assessment of organization development in the bank.
To analyze the organization performance, the balanced scorecard method will be used as in the case of Ittner et al (2003). In their study, they used a subjective balanced scorecard to measure the weighted performance of a major financial institution. The method drew a lot of information from psychological and economical studies to determine the firms organization performance. The success that was seen from the study has made this method to be frequently used to determine organizational performance. The method will therefore suit the current needs of this bank.
Professional Roles
From the observations which I made, this institution is suffering from lack of creative leadership. It also lacked teamwork and cooperation among the different departments of the organization. Each department had its own leadership models, rules, guidelines. The leaders of these departments relied mostly on individual leadership qualities. The overall result of these factors was the poor running and management of operations that was being experienced in the firm.
To solve these problems, I had to formulate several goals and objectives which had to be achieved by the end of the programme. For it to be successful, I had to involve the staff and other professionals in the programme. Each party to the programme will have a unique role to play; roles which will assist in the attaining of the goals and objectives which we had set. Before the project commenced, I ensured that every individual in the firm was aware of the project, why it being conducted, its goals and objectives and the expected outcome.
The goals and objectives that will be achieved in this programme include: to create leaders who can cause followers to change – not just people who get the job done, to increase the level of collaboration between leaders in People’s Bank and to develop leaders who are creative and adaptive not just people who are good at their area of specialty. It should be noted that these goals will not just develop individual leadership capabilities but will also contribute to the overall organizational growth and development.
As a consultant, I will have to develop a plant which will be followed in the execution of the project. Therefore, before the project begins, I will have to select the participants in the program. The people who need this intervention the most are the senior and middle level managers as they are the major drivers and decision makers in the organization. The number of participants will be dependant on the size of the company and the number of managerial job positions.
The next step that I will conduct will be to conduct an organizational analysis. This will ensure that all the operations of the company are well understood. This will show that the leadership initiatives of the company were baseless. This will be done through employee interviews. They will give the consultancy information about their work processes, evaluations, creativity, collaborations and many other components of the work environment. Ultimately, that analysis will be followed by the organizational survey. This will entail data collection on leadership, risk taking, strategy planning, change management, conflict handling, training, recruitment, financial resources and many others. The reason why all this information is necessary is that they will guidelines on areas that need to be changed. Lastly, individual assessments of all the participants will be done. In this process, all the people who work closely with the leaders in the intervention program will be asked to give information about those leaders’ strengths and weaknesses. Eventually, this will be useful in determining the parameters that need altering in these processes.
The training phase will then be the next step. It will involve four components which will all possess components mentioned earlier. First, participants will go through core leadership sessions. Here, there will be one on one coaching sessions with participants; they will also be engaged in presentations and small group discussions. They will also learn about peer feedback through the feedback coach. The latter session will take up about one percent of all the time allocated towards this exercise. Before the close of this session, all the leaders will be expected to submit a report to me that highlights their personal development goals and explain how they are in line with the goals and objectives which they have for their career.
The lack of team spirit was among the problems which I had identified. As a consultant, I will have to work with the employees of this organization, especially the top and middle level management staff to try and install the team spirit back to the firm. It is important for an organization to involve employees its affairs (Quick MBA, 2010). The best approach to do this is through the establishment of teams among the workers (Human Resources, 2011). Different teams will perform different tasks which the organization is involved in. Through teamwork these different groups work together to ensure that the goals and objectives which have been set up by the organization. This gives different teams an opportunity to make decisions concerning their operations increasing their loyalty to the firm and at the same time it fosters ownership. To achieve this, it will be my role to ensure that all participants are engaged in the collaboration and teamwork phase. At this point, they will get an opportunity to sharpen their teamwork skills through a series of models. They will learn about the best decision making approaches in the team, when to allocate projects to individuals or teams, how systems and teams are interrelated and the effectiveness of teams in general. Some practical sessions will go on where participants shall apply their knowledge in real life scenarios. To sum up the exercise, the participants are expected to critically analyze these situations and come up with suggestions which can be used to enhance the team spirit in the organization.
Good leadership is required to sustain the team work spirit of the organization. It is also leadership that determines the organization development, culture and performance. Therefore, to achieve good leadership in the firm, I will ensure that the participants are taught issues related to the creative process and how that affects organizational processes. Strategic leadership will follow this initiative and it will focus on vision and its effect on the future. It will also expect them to alter their strategies in order to reach organizational goals. All the sponsors, partners and support will be offered in order to make change feasible. The intervention program will also contain action learning projects. As the name suggests, all organizational members will be expected to work on certain problems that have been identified within the company. The participants will form a team and will be expected to deal with each one of those issues as they come along. A learning coach will assess the situation critically in order to ensure that deliverables are met and that all of them fully understand these impending challenges. The great thing about such an approach is that it will allow all program members to be involved in practical problems in the firm while continuing to learn about other challenges. After action learning, leaders will be expected to do personal coaching in the middle of the program. Its purpose will be to ascertain that all the individual development plans laid out by the leaders are being adhered to. It will allow them to get focused upon their personal development and be unstuck if this is the case.
To assess the effectiveness of the programme and its impact on the organization, I will have to conduct regular evaluations. Evaluation will be done in a simple and clear cut way so that team members can follow through on the goings on in the intervention. These measurements will be done through three parameters. The first will entail getting feedback from coworkers, subordinates or other people who work closely with participants in the leadership program. Since evaluation at the beginning of this program involves the issuance of this feedback then the same thing should occur at the end of the program. This aspect will be analyzed through the 360 degree feedback and any changes will be noted. The second phase of evaluation will entail an organizational survey that will engage everyone in the company. The third assessment will involve the actual participants in the program. A few of them will give their take on the impact of the program and how it changed their leadership perspectives. All aspects such as innovation, conflict handling, accountability, financial resources and many more will be rated and the ratings will be compared to those ones that had been collected during the commencement of the program.
Therefore, my role as an analyst for the organization will be very wide. In the process of assessing, analyzing, formulating and implementing programmes which aim at improving the status of operations at People’s Bank I will have to team up with experts, employees and many other individuals to ensure that the process is a success. In the process, I will have several roles and responsibilities that I will have to perform. I will have to develop, implement and evaluate several projects that will aim at attaining the goals that the organization wants to achieve. These projects will focus on team building and development, creative leadership and training of staff. In team development, I will emphasize the need for cooperation and working together as a team. This is because the firm lacks this virtue. Every leader and department focuses only on their individual needs rather than the needs of the entire organization. In the process, I will also introduce creative leadership practices which will work on improving the running and management of the firm. This will ensure that the leaders portray desirable leadership qualities hence gain the support of their junior employees. It will therefore be easier for them to achieve their targets once they have the support of the entire staff.
References
Branson, D.L. and Burke, W.W. (2005). Organization Development. San Francisco: Pfeiffer.
Cummings, T. (2005). Organization development and change. Wiley Online Library.
Human Resources. (2011) Team Building and Empowerment; Human Resources. Web.
Ittner, C.D., David F. L. and Marshall W. M. (2003). Subjectivity and the Weighting ofPerformance Measures: Evidence from a Balanced Scorecard. The Accounting Review, 78 (3), p. 725-758.
Milla, L.D. (2008). Australian Management Selection Practices: Closing the Gap between Research Findings and Practice. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, 46, p. 241-252.
Quick MBA. (2010). Marketing research. Marketting Research.