Reflective Essay on Leading and Managing Change: Subway Automation

This reflective essay explores the experience and learning gained from a change management role play simulating the automation of the Paris subway's Line 1. The essay details the role play scenario, where participants debated the proposed change, highlighting concerns about technical challenges and job disruptions. It interprets the events through the lens of leadership and change management concepts, emphasizing the importance of effective communication, resistance management, and training development. The author reflects on how this experience will inform their future leadership approach, emphasizing the need to address concerns, foster understanding, and ensure that change implementation is inclusive and supportive. The essay concludes that successful change management relies on proactive communication, mitigating resistance, and addressing stakeholders' concerns to ensure a smooth and beneficial transition.

UNIT:
NAME:
DATE:

Reflective Essay
Leading change management requires effective preparation, support and helping of
teams, individuals and the organization to make an organizational change. The following essay is
a reflection on the role play about a Paris subway automation case scenario. The reflection
examines my experience and learning while in the role play for change management as a
technical team leader. The Paris subway trains on line 1 needed to change from manual driving
to full automation that needed negotiations and professional presentation from members and
effective communication to institute change. The essay will describe the experience in the role
play, interpret the events, evaluates the effectiveness and usefulness of the experience and how
the information I have learn in the role play and the subject will be useful in my future career
when instituting a change in an organization.
The role play had four participants namely Arshdeep Singh, Venesaa Boys, Michelle
Hodgkiss and Harneet Sahota. I, Arshdeep took the role Er Arsh the technical team manager,
Ness role played as Mr Serge Lagrange Head of the Paris Subways, Michelle role played as Mr
Jones the workers’ representative Delegues du Personnel and Harneet role played Mr Phillip
Mancone the Manager Transportation Services and former driver. The role play was the final
meeting held formally to discuss the proposed change to automate line 1 of the Paris subway and
agree on a decisions on how to proceed. Er Arsh and Mr Jones were against the proposed change
while Mr Serge and Mr Phillip were proposing the change to make the subway driverless. Ness,
the head of Paris Subway started the meeting by stating the objective of the meeting which was
to conclude on how to progress with the automation change in the organization. Ness began the
change discussion by reiterating the vision and the innovative development of Paris subway line
1. This followed a PowerPoint presentation detailing all the changes that will be made to make
the train line 1 driverless and Arsh was given the first priority to give feedback. Arch highlighted
al the technical challenges and concerns that needed to be addressed before the trains in Line 1
are made fully automatic. Arch was answered by Harneet who admitted that the concerns raised
by Arsh needed to be addressed before the change is implemented. Harneet acknowledged that
upgrading the current systems and adopting latest innovation would have more benefits than the
current system. Michelle, representing the workers, raised concerns about the workers who are

intolerant of change because of disruption and loss of jobs. Mechelle is concerned about the 219
employees who work in Line 1 who are likely to be downsized from the organization. Ness
agrees to Mechelle concerns and communicates that the change was not to disadvantage anyone
but instead get them another position at the same compensation within the organization.
Harneet added that the training plan will be revised and refurbished to match the current job
needs for all employees. Ness and Harneet outline the performance benefits that the change will
bring to the organization and the people served by the organization. Both Arsh and Mechelle
agreed that the change was good and were ready to support it implementation.
The meeting had two groups with one group against and the other one proposing. The
technical team manager and workers’ representative were resisting change while the head of
Paris subway and transportation services managers were proposing for the change. The
resistance was as a result of unsettled concerns that needed to be addressed before the change is
implemented. The technical team manager had issue with the infrastructure that needed to be
upgraded while the workers’ representative was concerned about the jobs disruption that would
happen if change was to be implemented. The head of subways and manger for transportation
services communicated the plan to address on the issues raised about the infrastructure and
employees disruption of jobs to avoid strikes. The top management also communicated the
benefits of the change and how it would positively impact the organization and the public. The
team that was against change understood the objectives and benefits of change and ended up
supporting the implementation of the change plan. I felt fascinated by how two groups one
against and the other proposing change were able to come to an agreement and progress with
change implementation. The disagreement that existed before the meeting was because there
was no change plan communication on its benefits and how issues of concern would be
addressed. Therefore people are against change because they do not understand it benefits and
have concerns that they need to know how they have been addressed in the change plan and feel
secure about their job position.
The role play of the change meeting discussion and reactions are connected to leadership
and change management concepts. First, effective communication of the vision and change plan
is an important aspect to implementing change in an organization. The head of Paris subways
starts by reiterating the vision of the change and the innovative developments to be undertaken.

Georgalis, Samaratunge, Kimberley, and Lu, (2015) found that leaders need to over
communicate for a successful change management. Effective internal communication removes
uncertainty and negativity among employees (Butt, Naaranoja, & Savolainen, 2016). Secondly,
the role play had resistance and the top management had to undertake resistance management.
Resistance to change is a normal human reaction and can be voided or mitigated to enhance the
effectiveness of the change implementation (Kotler, Dingena, & Pfoertsch, 2016). Resistance
was managed by taking feedback from the technical manger and workers’ representative who
outlined issues of concern. Identifying the causes of resistance and addressing it mitigate
resistance in the change management process. According to Hornstein (2015) people are
resistance to change because they lack awareness about the change, its impact on their current
job, past performance, fear of losing a job and lack of commitment and support from their
mangers. Thirdly, there was need for training development to build capacity to handle the
proposed change. Employees job positions are affected by change and their skillset can fail to fit
in their new roles in the organization (Rafferty, & Restubog, 2017). The training plan needs to be
refurbished and revised to meet current organization needs (Burnes, Hughes, & By, 2018).
Another important aspect of change management was involvement of different stakeholder for
engagement. This involved employees, middle level and top level management that broaden
feedback perspective enhancing the effectiveness of the implementation of change plan.
The role play provided a learning experience on change management. I was able to
internalize what it is to have a change plan meeting. The management has a role to manage
resistance, effectively communicate the objective of the change plan, take employees feedback,
and address training development needs to meet new organizational needs (Doppelt, 2017). In
my career as a leader, I will appreciate the existence of a group of employees being against the
proposed change. For effective implementation of the change plan, I will allow employers and
managers to provide their feedback and concerns that I can address for them to accept and
understand the change plan.
Organizational change is attained by effective preparation and support of teams and
individuals by addressing all issues of concern. Feedbacks enable top management to understand
challenges and concerns that make employees and junior managers to resist change. Effective
communication of the change plan and the vision of the change make it easy for employees and

managers to understand and support the change implementation process. Therefore, leading
change management can be achieved by effective communication, mitigation of resistance,
taking feedback and negotiating concerns raised to ensure no one is disadvantaged in the change
plan implementation.

References
Burnes, B., Hughes, M., & By, R. T. (2018). Reimagining organisational change
leadership. Leadership, 14(2), 141-158.
Butt, A., Naaranoja, M., & Savolainen, J. (2016). Project change stakeholder
communication. International Journal of Project Management, 34(8), 1579-1595.
Doppelt, B. (2017). Leading change toward sustainability: A change-management guide for
business, government and civil society. Routledge.
Georgalis, J., Samaratunge, R., Kimberley, N., & Lu, Y. (2015). Change process characteristics
and resistance to organisational change: The role of employee perceptions of
justice. Australian Journal of Management, 40(1), 89-113.
Hornstein, H. A. (2015). The integration of project management and organizational change
management is now a necessity. International Journal of Project Management, 33(2),
291-298.
Kotler, P., Dingena, M., & Pfoertsch, W. (2016). Enabling Internal Transformation.
In Transformational Sales (pp. 101-119). Springer, Cham.
Rafferty, A. E., & Restubog, S. L. (2017). Why do employees’ perceptions of their organization's
change history matter? The role of change appraisals. Human Resource
Management, 56(3), 533-550.