Collaboration and Personal Development Portfolio: HR Manager at Dodo

This project is a comprehensive portfolio focusing on collaboration and personal development, specifically tailored for an HR Manager at Dodo Exclusive Shoes. The assignment is divided into two parts: Part A involves commenting on student responses regarding change management models (Lewin's model, Kotter's 8 steps), leadership traits, and critical change management theory, with references to support the arguments. Part B focuses on a personal development plan, reflecting on opportunities and threats, stakeholder management, the role of change agents, and the development of transformational leadership skills. The student applies theoretical concepts to a real-world scenario, focusing on the expansion plans of Dodo Exclusive Shoes and the need for effective change management within the organization. The project highlights the importance of communication, stakeholder engagement, and the development of leadership capabilities to drive organizational success. The student aims to develop skills to manage change and contribute to the long-term competitive advantage of the company.

Collaboration and personal development portfolio
Name:
Course:

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Part A
Student 1 comment:
It is important to mention Lewin's change model that describes 3 stages of change; unfreeze,
move the organization from the status quo to a newly desired state in the future and refreeze the
changes. Hospitals are service organizations, in which introducing new practices will be received
by people voluntarily. In the first phase of unfreeze, people will compare the new practice with
the old way of doing things. In this case, it is important to assure to them that they will not lose
their self-esteem or be punished to gain their acceptance, but change will increase their level of
satisfaction and their performance. Phase two involves cognitive restructuring that helps people
to recognize change by gaining the required information. The final stage of refreeze, is also
called stabilization because it witnesses people acceptance for change on a daily basis and
change becomes part of the culture of the organization (Lei, et al., 2018).
It is important to consider the feedback of the patients on their experience of using the offered
health care services because it introduces a vital source of information that should be
incorporated in the change management process. The patient experience represents a quality
indicator of the national health system in England (Raleigh, et al., 2015).
References
Lei, S. et al., 2018. Kurt Lewin’s change model: A critical review of the role of leadership and
employee involvement in organizational change. Journal of Innovation & Knowledge, Volume 3,
p. 123–127.
Raleigh, V. et al., 2015. Patients’ experience of using hospital services: An analysis of trends in
inpatient surveys in NHS acute trusts in England. London: The King’s Fund.

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Student 2 comment:
Leaders who enjoy strong leadership skills are highly eligible to influence and motivate their
followers and implement change management effectively. It is important to consider certain
traits that leaders should have to be able to implement change and achieve the desired results,
these traits, include trust in the leaders by the group members that could improve the overall
performance and organizational commitment. Also, organizational culture cannot only
strengthen trust between employees and leaders but also influences the employees' attitude for
the better. Maintaining continuous learning within the organization by the leaders, encourages
the employees to learn through motivators, like reward and career development. In addition,
leaders should conduct two-way communication in order to encourage employees to innovate
and implement changes by sharing information and opinions (Hao & Yazdanifard, 2015).
Kotter 8 steps model of change could be applied by leaders on the strategic level of the
organization. Leaders should be involved in the process of creating a strong organizational vision
and to subsequently implement organizational transformation. The 8 steps are to develop a sense
of urgency, create a guiding team, vision development, communicating the vision, empowering
actions, developing quick wins, supporting the change and enforce the change (Rajan &
Ganesan, 2017).
References
Hao, M. & Yazdanifard, R., 2015. How effective leadership can facilitate change in
organizations through Improvement and Innovation. Global Journal of Management and
Business Research, 15(9), pp. 1-7.

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Rajan, R. & Ganesan, R., 2017. A critical analysis of John P. Kotter‟s change management
framework. Asian Journal of Research in Business Economics and Management, 7(7), pp. 181-
203.
Student 3 comment:
Critical change management theory argues that power involves concepts like leadership,
governance and employees' empowerment. Power focuses on the transformation of ideologies
and cultural aspects to allow people to comply with the existing culture in a way that avoids
conflicts and do not depend on explicit force. The social power can be accepted by creating
identities, shared values and social practices. In this case, employees' resistance is missing
because the dominant power prohibits such practices and incorporates natural employees'
acceptance to change. Resistance is considered an integral aspect of power play (Pieterse, et al.,
2012).
An important aspect of implementing change within organizations is to consider the change
agents. They could be the managers, employees, leaders or CEOs. They are called the change
leaders, champions, master or manager and they could be internal or external agents. They can
provide people with the required information and promote change in a way that facilitates the
process of change communication. Change agents are vital in the case of the existence of
different cultures within the organization. They can fill the culture gap and approach people from
different cultures in appropriate ways because of their capabilities and high skills that support
them in exerting change efforts (Gerwing, 2016).
References
Gerwing, C., 2016. Meaning of change agents within organizational change. Journal of Applied
Leadership and Management, Volume 4, pp. 21 - 40.

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Pieterse, J., Caniels, M. & Homan, T., 2012. Professional discourses and resistance to change.
Journal of Organizational Change Management, 25(6), pp. 798 - 818.
Part B – Personal development portfolio: Reflecting on my personal development plan
 Q1 Answer:
Opportunities arise when the organization can benefit from its environment and the current
context to develop and implement change plans that increase its profitability and market position
and create and sustain a competitive advantage. Threats occur when the conditions of the
external environment weaken the organization profitability and market position (Osita, et al.,
2014). Dodo plans of expansion through developing its platform represents a driver to change
that has an opportunity of increasing its profitability and a threat of changing consumer needs.
Being the HR manager at Dodo Exclusive Shoes, I am willing to develop my leadership skills
and act as a change agent in my company to enhance the overall organizational productivity.
Within the next 3-5 years, I will be assigned to take the role of the change manager, the matter
that requires me to develop a clear and detailed understanding of people and the required change
process, develop the ability to exploit opportunities and avoiding threats and to gain exceptional
communication and collaboration skills.
 Q2 Answer:
Stakeholder management requires to understand relationships among different parties and to
identify the power and interests to be able to effectively manage the stakeholders for
organizational success. Communicating change with the stakeholders could be formal and
documented or it could be informal in order to engage them and gain their acceptance (Shah,
2016).

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Dodo should make significant changes in communicating its change plans with its external
stakeholders. Despite Dodo communicates its strategies to the team members, it has to focus on
its different stakeholders. Employees are internal stakeholders, but the shareholders, suppliers,
distributers and customer are the external stakeholders that should also be involved in the change
management process. Dodo plans of expansion through developing its platform requires the
support of suppliers and shareholders to be able to fulfil its vision of expansion (Dodo's-Rampar
Trading (PTY) LTD., n.d.).
 Q3 Answer:
Change agents play a very important role in the change process, they are people who can initiate,
implement, facilitate and support the process of organizational change from the start to the end.
Change agents should possess certain personality traits and skills that enable them to support the
change process. They should be able to challenge employees to align their targets and identities
with the necessary changes within the organization. Also, they should be able to encourage
people to take the risk, collaborate and take responsibility for the change process through
possessing creativity and problem-solving skills. In addition, they should be capable of helping
organizations to achieve their long-term competitive advantage. They have to share information
on time, understand the peoples' needs and use different ways of communication and
interpretation (Gerwing, 2016). Accordingly, I have to develop my communication skills and
develop capabilities that involve various stakeholders in the decision making process through
different communication channels.
 Q4 Answer:
I will do my best to attain the skills of the transformational leaders by developing the four factors
of influence idealization, inspirational motivation, intellectual stimulation and individualized

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consideration. I have to be more focused on organizational needs, become more relationship
oriented and satisfy people higher needs. The transformational leadership confronts with Kotter’s
model of change. Hence I have to consider the implementation of 8 steps of the model
(Akinbode, 2018).
References
Akinbode, A., 2018. Change management process and leadership style. International Journal of
Social Sciences, 4(2), pp. 609-618.
Dodo's-Rampar Trading (PTY) LTD., n.d.. Company profile, Johannesburg: Dodo's-Rampar
Trading (PTY) LTD..
Osita, I., Idoko, R. & Justina, N., 2014. Organization’s stability and productivity: the role of
SWOT analysis an acronym for strength, weakness, opportunities and threat. International
Journal of Innovative and Applied Research, 2(9), pp. 23- 32.
Shah, I., 2016. Comparison of stakeholder management and change management factors in
managing successful versus unsuccessful it projects, Indiana: Purdue University.