Understanding and Leading Change

UNDERSTANDING AND
LEADING CHANGE

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
LO 1.................................................................................................................................................3
P1 Ways in which change affects an organisation’s strategy and operations..............................3
LO 2.................................................................................................................................................6
P2 Impact of External and Internal drivers on individual behaviours, leadership and teams .....6
P3 Ways to Minimize the negative impacts of Change ............................................................12
LO 3...............................................................................................................................................15
P4 Ways in which barriers to change influence leadership decision-making............................15
LO 4...............................................................................................................................................18
P5 Application of leadership approaches to a change initiative................................................18
CONCLUSION..............................................................................................................................20
REFERENCES..............................................................................................................................21

INTRODUCTION
Leading change in organisations encompasses creation of experiences for employees which
reveal new possibilities and unite them to strategize in order to harness resources to work
efficiently in the marketplace. It requires optimization of culture while investing for business
growth. The project will compare ways in which change affects the strategies and operations of
National Rail and NATS UK. National Rail is the trading name used by the Rail delivery group
with memberships of passenger train operating companies of Scotland, Wales and England.
NATS is the primary air navigation service provider in the UK and undertakes the traffic control
services of 14 airports. The influences of drivers of change on these organisations will be
evaluated and determination of impact of barriers in influencing leadership decision making. The
change initiative will be assessed using various leadership approaches.
LO 1
P1 Ways in which change affects an organisation’s strategy and operations
Any organisation in today's fast-moving business environment has to change with
changing times. Change is a constant requirement as the demographics are dynamic, customer
trends are changing, as well as technology and economy (Ebongkeng, 2018). Businesses which
fail to upgrade themselves as per the requirements of the market can become unable to compete
under current trading conditions and perish sooner than later. Position and perception can
influence the change as positive or negative. Employee attitudes and perceptions directly affect
the bottom line. Unfavourable perceptions regarding decisions can spread within the organization
among workers, negatively affecting morale and impacting productivity (Zingoni and Byron,
2017).
Types of organisational change: -
Strategic: Changes in the strategic operations of organisations to achieve the goals in response
to external environment is necessary. Adjusting the strategy involves a change in the
fundamental approaches in business operations such as target markets, product differentiation,
selling and marketing techniques, global activities, partnerships, joint and overall strategic
orientation (Greenwood and Hinings, 2017).
Structural: Redesigning the organisational structure such as hierarchical authority,
administrative procedures and management systems. National rail has increased punctuality of its
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services for customer satisfaction and aims at ethical policies of operations. NATS, recognises its
needs to attract new skills to support the organisational growth as the overall demographic
evolves with time. These changes have impacted the organisations positively with clarity in
operations.
People: Changing people-centric processes involves communication, motivation, leadership and
team interaction. NATS recognises the need for improvements in training and leadership styles
and invests heavily in imparting all employees with essential skills for the success of
organisation. National Railway uses its vision and mission values in underpinning its training
programme. High quality training, like apprenticeships to Master’s level, ensuring business has
the best engineers and leaders. It recruits and retains efficient employees for a variety of job roles
and has undertaken very ambitious and challenging engineering projects in Europe. These
changes have led to higher employee motivation and retention in both the organisations.
Processes: Reengineering of processes to achieve optimum productivity such as production
process, assembly, delivery of services etc. National Railway has introduced on-the-job training
which helps trainees in fixing signalling issues and maintenance of track, electrification, signals
networks and overhead lines. NATS is innovating easy delivery of Air Traffic Management
services in future and has shifted its model of air traffic management into new ways of working.
The changes in processes have led to increased operation efficiency and customer satisfaction for
both the organisations.
Drivers of Change: SWOT highlights of NATS and National Railway
NATS
Strengths: Technological industry leader in air traffic control, high safety standards of
operations, innovative changes through research and development. The innovations helped in
better management, customer satisfaction and improving goodwill for the company
Weaknesses: Selection and screening procedure of ATCO candidates or Air traffic controllers,
mobile grade job, which implies a need for change in the employment process.
Opportunities: Digital remote towers, Modernisation of airspace, Implementation of TBS
technology which can be used for driving changes in technological infrastructure (Hughes,
2019).
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Threats: UK’s internal and external political uncertainties like Brexit which impact internal
operations.
National Railway
Strengths: Large network of tracks of 20,000 miles in place, commute by trains in key locations
established, transportation is not impacted by road traffic congestion. This has led to customer
satisfaction.
Weaknesses: Political pressures, changes in demand of consumer induces increment of capacity,
Civil work operations impacted by short possessions on bank holidays or nights, workforce
engagement of 80,000 in contrast to employed strength of 35,500. Change in workforce
management is needed for effective operations.
Opportunities: Use of new technologies for identification of faults and new safety measures for
avoiding accidents. Providing training opportunities in remote areas of UK using online
technology. These changes if adopted could help in error management and increase efficiency in
processes.
Threats: Delays/ Cancellations caused by TOC, minimal intervention from DoT or Network Rail,
Companies like Green Line, National Express etc. can take over key routes (Belu, 2018).
Strategies for change: Bohner and Arnold Change Impact Analysis.
Impact Analysis is a quantitative study to analyse the impacts of errors on the other parts
or processes of a configuration. It involves identification of the potential consequences of an
implemented change in an organisation (Cai and Santelices, 2016). The outcomes can improve
predefined requirements. As per Bohner and Arnold, there are three types of IA, namely
traceability, dependence and experiential.
Traceability: The traceability in impact analysis establishes relations between specifications,
tests, requirements, design elements. The scope of change can be monitored. Traceability allows
changes for clarity of process and people. Understanding the effects of change enables
employees and groups to respond more quickly and accurately to change requests. For example,
National railway can implement quality management techniques like just in time and work study
to know the source of error and need for change.
Dependence: In this impact analysis, the links between various process, variants, modules
determine the need and consequences to initiate change and is more extensive than traceability.
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The processes of various departments like HR, operations and management can be linked and
impact of any change will be assessed in context of these and how one change impacts other
departments. For example, a change in HR management can impact the operational efficiency of
NATS.
Experiential: This focuses upon the relation between experience of expert workers on impact of
changes. The pre-existing knowledge and experience gained by workers can help in proper
implementation and suitability of any changes in the organisation. It can help in determining
consequences according to past implications and outcomes (Gupta and Gupta, 2018).
LO 2
P2 Impact of External and Internal drivers on individual behaviours, leadership and teams
Organizational behaviour is highly impacted by some of the forces from outside it whereas
some within it. On the basis of their origin, Forces are divided into 2 main categories- Internal
and External (Oreg and Berson, 2019). Following description shows the impact of these drivers
on two well-known Organizations NATS and Network rails, providing different services in UK.
Every organization needs a change and its effective implementation. It has to update itself time
to time in order to transform its strategies and policies according to the changing needs of the
emerging markets and industry. They must also regularly monitor the forces which affects those
changes and impacts the overall behaviour of the organization.
External
These factors help the organization to examine its inner working and determining its
shape. These are not in our control but affects the working of the organization and create
boundaries in every operation. These also have its impact on the individuals, teams and the
leaders of the organization in performing their tasks.
Political factors
These factors influence the culture of an organization. The government creates many
regulations and laws that can bring operational changes in the companies. The laws restrict the
company to follow them whether they agree or disagree to it (Raza, Khan and Mujtaba, 2018).
NATS is bringing change by being partners with the shareholders and the government. NATS
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