Fluent Essays

due in 24 hours attached Productive Failure ·        You are required to respond to at least two of your peers’ initial posts with a substantial response. You are graded on your participation, though I will not reduce your grade if you have done what is required. o      Responses to peers should be at least two paragraphs and be substantive in nature. Substantive means that you should add something to the discussion, referring to the original post. Referring to any reading or other scholarship is always a plus. o      Respond to two different peers’ initial posts, other than yourself. That is required and you will lose points if you do not participate to this minimum extent. Guided Response: Respond to at least two of your classmates’ posts and discuss their productive failure example. DYANI’S POST: Failure is not necessarily negative, but rather a fundamental component of success. Productive failure is when failures provide important opportunities for growth. According to Palmer et al. (2021), when an organization has the ability to add the lessons learned from failures and use it for future knowledge then it is considered valuable.  Changes that fail can be useful in discouraging such trials in the future and exposing what modifications may be required to make the next effort effective. A mentality that allows training companies to determine the value of constructive failure versus unproductive success is at the heart of any successful organizational effectiveness. A productive failure is one that leads to insight, understanding, and hence to a contribution to the organization's collective expertise (Nadler, 1989). My current organization has implemented several change initiatives over the years with successes and failures. The change process that is most familiar and stands out is the implementation of timecards. Colleagues where expected to clock in and clock out regardless of their status meaning exempt or non-exempt. This created a huge debacle along with resistance which caused the organization to reevaluate the entire process.  Employees complained that the practice was an unnecessary waste of time. The end result was no one was tracking their time and leadership was squandering resources pleading with employees to submit their timesheets. I believe the change process was not successful because the company failed to communicate the value and purpose of the timecard system. When people do not grasp why change is required, they become apprehensive, skeptical, and resistant (Watkins, 2020). The process was later revised that required only non-exempt colleagues to complete a timecard. As there may be a compelling logical justification for change, people will want to know what it means to them and how it will affect them. The assumption of failure is that every organization will fail several times throughout its lifecycle, and the successful ones will use failure as a catapult rather than an obstruction. Organizations fail and are unable to recover simply by not accepting the failure and learning from it. References: Nadler, D. (1989, April 23). Business forum: Making Corporations Smarter; Failures Can Be Productive. NYTimes. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/1989/04/23/business/business-forum-making-corporations-smarter-failures-can-be-productive.html Palmer, I., Dunford, R., & Buchanan, D. (2022). Managing organizational change: A multiple perspectives approach (4th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education. Watkins, M. (2020). 10 reasons why organizational change fails. IMD. Retrieved from https://www.imd.org/research-knowledge/articles/10-reasons-why-organizational-change-fails/ MARGUERITE’S POST: Define and discuss the concept of productive failure and discuss a personal example of a failed change iniative that resulted in an overall positive learning outcome:      Every situation in life has the potential contain elements of positive learning, even experiences that initially seemed to be colored by nothing but hardship and despair, can present a silver lining. The key to extracting a positive learning outcome from an otherwise negative occurrence, is to first adjust one’s perspective and attitude towards the experience. The old adage “how one perceives reality is also the way that they experience reality” holds some weight in the arena of overcoming workplace obstacles and becoming teachable enough to learn from failure. A commonly held mindset among high performing groups, is that success is characterized by how quickly the accurate answer is arrived at, when in truth there is much to be learned from the winding journey of failure. In order to understand productive failure, teams must become willing to accept that short term success is not the only kind of success, long term learning is a form of success in itself. A teacher reflecting on the value of productive failure proposed that it is important at times to withhold the right answer or strategy from the student, letting them struggle, and search in all the wrong places (Kageyama, 2020). Productive failure is an undesirable outcome that incidentally illuminates the right course by forcing an experience of the wrong one.      The situation of productive failure that I personally experienced actually occurred as a result of my arrival on a dysfunctional team. Prior to me starting in my previous role with the Firm, I had come from a well functioning team with impeccable communication skills and an excellent performance record, in short I was not accustomed to lag created by a team that does not function cohesively. I started and went about my work the way I always had, full-steam ahead. Well my presence caused even more upheaval amongst an already weak team and after six months the office was practically falling apart, people were fighting with each other, role clarity was lost, and the team vision became blurred. The internal collapse of the team lead to the necessity of a complete rebuilding, new roles were created, responsibilities were reassigned and ultimately the team gained a fresh and revived sense of purpose. The reason that this occurred was because each team member was willing to take responsibilty for their own shortcomings, become teachable and ready to learn, and the team refused to give up. Turning a failure into an opportunity for ongoing learning is how it become productive.   References:   Kageyama, N. (August 5th, 2020). Productive Failure: A Teaching Method Which Leads to Short Term Failure, but Lon Term Success. BulletProofMusicisan.com. https://bulletproofmusician.com/productive-failure-how-strategic-failure-in-the-short-term-can-lead-to-greater-success-and-learning-down-the-road/ (Links to an external site.)   Making Change Stick You are required to respond to at least two of your peers’ initial posts with a substantial response. You are graded on your participation, though I will not reduce your grade if you have done what is required. o      Responses to peers should be at least two paragraphs and be substantive in nature. Substantive means that you should add something to the discussion, referring to the original post. Referring to any reading or other scholarship is always a plus. o      Respond to two different peers’ initial posts, other than yourself. That is required and you will lose points if you do not participate to this minimum extent. Guided Response: Respond to at least two of your classmates in a substantive manner by sharing your thoughts about the points they made regarding sustaining change. TISHA’S POST: The company culture needs to adjust for a change to be successfully implemented and sustainable over time. It is imperative that those initiating the change stay the course to see it through and ensure it has a solid footing and the structure to sustain over time. Change is initiated within organizations for progression and is expected to become the new standard. Continuous oversight, direction, and contingency plans for further pivoting are vital to organizational change. Enlisting the expertise of a project manager to oversee the change will also allow for continuous involvement should there be a shift in personnel. Palmer et al. (2022) continue to state that any one of the various barriers previously mentioned can interfere with the progression of the change initiative at any given time (p. 359). Ensuring the change's success depends upon all parties involved and their commitment to sustaining the given change. Implementation of the Lean Daily Management (LDM) tool provides a solid foundation for ensuring change is adequately executed and followed up throughout the progression. Change occurs regularly at my current organization in an attempt to improve efficiencies for successful longevity. The LDM methodology allows for a management committee to approve and oversee the initiative. All departments hold each other accountable for the initiative, whether linear or needed to apply contingencies. Regular meetings are held to measure the effectiveness of various metrics, and actions plans are put into place should change need to be implemented or adjusted. LDM is a very stringent yet powerful tool for organizations to ensure change sticks.   Palmer, I., Dunford, R., & Buchanan, D. (2022).  Managing organizational change: A multiple perspectives approach (4th ed.). McGraw-Hill Education. SCARLETT’S POST: Change is inevitable, and it is often no easy task for an organization. More often than not, change initiatives fail, and organizations are left to try again. In the small percentage of change initiatives that are successful, it is critical that the organization find a way to sustain the change otherwise, the success will have been for nothing. As with any change management process, there is no one proven way that guarantees success. However, some actions can be taken by organizations to ensure that the change is sustainable. The most effective way to create sustainability is to embed it throughout the change process and have it in mind at every step. Eight suggested actions can help to build sustainability into the change process early on: redesigning roles, redesigning reward systems, linking selection to organizational objectives, modeling change acceptance from the top, encouraging all levels of employees’ volunteer to initiate change, measuring progress, celebrating wins along the way, and fine-tuning what needs to be modified after the change is implemented (Palmer et al., 2021).  In my personal experience with organizational change, I believe that all the actions proposed in the text can be helpful in creating ongoing and sustained buy-in and change. As I mentioned in my previous post, I went through a failed acquisition early in my career, and part of the reason for failure was that roles and rewards were not changed after the merger. This created a lot of frustration, and ultimately, the change was not a success. In addition to considering the impact on those employees working day-to-day, I think it is critical to continually measure progress and ensure the change is sustained and fine-tuning any process that might be lagging or contributing to the decay of the change initiative.  References Palmer, I., Dunford, R., & Buchanan, D. (2021). Managing organizational change: A multiple perspectives approach (4th ed.) [E-book]. McGraw-Hill Education.