MANAGEMT 7039NA Management of Change : Transaction Analysis to Communi

Answer:

To: Cheryl Hailstrom, CEO, Lakeland Wonders

From: _____, Change Consultant

Date: 2^nd December, 2018

Subject: Transactional analysis to communicate change in Lakeland Wonders

Lakeland Wonders is well-known for manufacturing high-quality wooden toys. Cheryl, you have been appointed as CEO and you want to expand and achieve new growth targets set by the Board. Your vision is to launch a lower-priced line through outsourcing offshore manufacturing products. Cheryl, you were the first person from outside the Swensen family to hold the top level post and in the previous time, you were general merchandise manager and later you were the COO of Kids&Company. The organisation with intention of market expansion is generally observed to restructure the strategies to focus on the organisational culture and showing the effectiveness of the employees in gaining the change. The purpose of the memo is to show the transactional analysis to analyse the communication of change. In this memo, I am to make recommendations to you on how you could apply the change technique to improve the way you have communicated the change in Lakeland Wonders case.

Lakeland Wonders made their toy products traditionally in the US and the cost of manufacturing the products in the US is higher than in the cheap countries. In order to achieve the target of selling products, Cheryl, you want to make a contract with Bulls-eye to sell the products at lower price. Cheryl, you are facing the issue when Mark does not support your vision and the organisation is going to go through major changes to advance which may not be done without commitment and support of the team.

As stated by Berne (2016), the transactional analysis is a theory of psychoanalytic concept where the social transactions are described and analysed to conceptualise the ego state of the patient in order to understand the behaviour. Eric Berne mainly described how the individuals are structured psychologically (Alvesson & Sveningsson, 2015). There are mainly four life positions which an individual can hold. Cheryl, you need to understand among the four positions of communication, Lakeland Wonders belongs to which position. Transactional analysis is a theory of communication which can be extended to an understanding of systems and organisations. Berne theory can be used in Lakeland Wonders to help you to remain in clear communication at a perfect level in consulting with other members. I personally think that Cheryl, you need to understand the individual psyche and you need to do the analysis of interpersonal transactions based on structural analysis of the person in the transaction. Cheryl, you have undergone several external events and you have also undergone through recordings of internal events associated with the external psyche. Therefore, before making any decision, you need to validate your ideas before stating it to others.

I personally would like to aver that failure to share the common vision with employees and members of Lakeland Wonders and managerial lines created the change problems. It is quite ascertained that employees would be uncomfortable with sudden alterations and disagreements would also ensue among the employees. As explained by (Carnall, 2018), the organisations generally do not share the options as these are not being recognised as the lack of co-operation and communication along with trust and support play important role in the change process. Cheryl, you have overconfidence with support and trust which she has received from her past experiences. Cheryl, you might think that you already got and earned support from investors and colleagues regarding the change process; however, I would like to add that you need to earn the support from your team each day. In work culture or change process, you are actions on plans too fast. Outsourcing of the products from China needs time and it cannot be done in fast and your driving style is not aligned with Lakeland’s work culture. Therefore, you need to understand employee resistance is common in change and you can also face commitment and engagement issue. According to (Beech et al., 2018), managing resistance to change is overt and covert for the management as this can be very disruptive for the organisation.

Van de Ven and Poole's theoretical framework tries to attempt to develop all-encompassing change framework to develop a conceivable process of human organisational set-up. In Life-cycle theory, the core concept is to focus on event progress in sequential along with linear manner. Cheryl, you need to anticipate the change in a logical way with logical constructs. According to Van de Ven & Poole (2017), the core concept of evolution is bringing the change is the best way to make wider backdrop to create the competitive survival to provide the natural selection of events (Cameron & Green, 2015). Core concept of dialectic is to explain that all exist within the organisational change is to shape by conflict and opposition where the contradiction is in a natural state. Finally, teleology shares change which is enacted for the goal-setting mechanism.

Therefore, you want to focus on mid-market, not just to the upscale market to decrease the manufacturing cost and to increase the revenue of the organisation. This particular framework of Van de Ven and Poole framework shares the actions where the future adaptations of Lakeland share the scenario founded on deterministic laws.

I think that you need to involve the team members in the change process so that the team members can get a chance to perform. It is required to involve the team members in the planning process as it would help the organisation to bring the change in a speedy way. In addition, Cheryl, you should enhance the communication with team members as your communication should be clear and articulate. You should have a composed body language and it is required to communicate with major stakeholders and senior managers.

I also think that Cheryl, you can change your leadership style as your team handling style is more of autocratic. You always told that ‘my' vision, I would request you to come up with ‘our' vision. Change your leadership style to be democratic and it will help you to establish the rules of engagement of the working process.  

Lakeland Wonders has been going through in the process of change and Cheryl needs to provide an emphasis on inspiration, persuasion and negotiation which would help the organisation to operate with full disclosure along with mutual respect. The desirable course of action for Cheryl to bring change is to communicate, engage and demonstrate.

Reference:

Alvesson, M., & Sveningsson, S. (2015). Changing organizational culture: Cultural change work in progress. Abingdon: Routledge.

Beech, N., MacIntosh, R., Krust, P., Kannan, S. & Dadich, A. (2018). Managing change: enquiry and action. Australasian Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Berne, E. (2016). Transactional analysis in psychotherapy: A systematic individual and social psychiatry. Pickle Partners Publishing.

Cameron, E., & Green, M. (2015). Making sense of change management: A complete guide to the models, tools and techniques of organizational change. London: Kogan Page Publishers.

Carnall, C. (2018). Managing change. Abingdon: Routledge.

Van de Ven, A. H., & Poole, M. S. (2017). Field research methods. The Blackwell companion to organizations, 867-888.