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I choose to use the Cummings and Worley’s five dimensions of change. The five dimensions include motivating change, creating a vision, developing political support, managing the transition, and sustaining momentum. Motivating change in an organization is the first step in this process and it is essential for leaders to create readiness and overcome resistance to change. In order for any leader to motivate individuals they need to have great communication skills as well as good delivery skills. If you want someone to be acceptable to your vision of change the delivery needs to be tactful. Communication is an important tool for encouraging and establishing organizational goals. The second dimension is creating a vision, Leaders in the organization must articulate a clear vision that describes what the change effort is striving to accomplish. This is a good time to brainstorm within the organization to come up with a plan together. By doing this everyone gets input on what direction the vision of change should be going. The vision should be a guideline of how the success of the change will improve the organization. The third dimension is developing political support. In this dimension it is important for leaders to start utilizing resources to influence other regarding the change. During this phase it is important for leaders to take advantage of the credibility it as gained in the past. The fourth dimension is managing the transition. This is a very important dimension for leaders because if not done correctly the vision could fall apart. In the transition phase leaders should be analyzing how the change is doing, checking to see if it is working for the good of the organization or opposite. If it is working in the opposite the vision may need to be adjusted. The last Dimension is to sustain momentum, during this time it is important for leaders to monitor any resistance from members of the organization. Also avoiding any departures of key leaders within the organization. All of these dimension work of off each other to ensure change is implemented successfully.

References

Weiss, J. W. (2016). Orgazational Change. San Diego: Bridepoint Education Inc.

The bottom line is that the success of any organizational change depends in large degree on implementation”. Weiss, J. W. (2016)

The three components of change are intent, people, and delivery. Intent would involve the creating and sharing of the new vision and what the end result will be. This step is very important to be done at in the beginning of any change because it will help with keeping everyone motivated and committed to the upcoming change.

People, this stage refers to the people that are involved in the change, who it will affect and how. In this stage a leader will have to help develop the employees build on their commitment to want to change, attempt to reduce any resistance as well as creating a culture within the organization that welcomes the upcoming change.

Delivery, this stage will be the setting up of how to capture the changes taking place. By providing reports of progress, assigning needed resources and posturizing what need to be done and when.

A leader would use these stages when they are wanting to make change as easy as possible. To me this would be the best way to approach upcoming changes because there are fewer stages and the impact of them is direct and informative. Once you deliver your intent for the change, the people involved will likely commit to the change as well as become motivated to help the change take place because they are aware of the “how” and the “why” of the change. The delivery would be easier after the first two stages are up and running smoothly the data collected will also show the impact of the changes and keeping them motivated to continue them.

References

Weiss, J. W. (2016). Orgazational Change. San Diego: Bridepoint Education Inc.

Steve Jobs was an energetic and charismatic leader of a very well know technology company and he had some great innovative products that propelled Apple into the future, Tim Cook stepped into some very big shoes when he became CEO.  Cook has continued to produce next generation iPhones and even though “iPad sales have been decreasing for the past seven quarters it has been able to maintain its leading market share” (Jones, 2015).  Cook has, for the most part, maintained the products and the technology that customers have come to expect from Apple.  Under Cook’s leadership the culture “seems to be more collaborative and less confrontational” (Jones, 2015).  Primary stakeholders are looking at how “Tim Cook is not a Wall Street-friendly CEO and does not and can not impress Wall Street” (Somaney, 2015) and that “Executive hires may not be one of Cook’s strengths” (Jones, 2015).  Cook has brought in his own leadership style instead of trying to mimic Steve Jobs, which probably would not have gone over very well anyway. 

Steve Jobs and Tim Cook have very different leadership styles and while Apple is still a leader in its industry the change in leadership has changed Apple.  Under Jobs there were no dividends or buying back shares which is now happening under Cook.  This leads to some concern in the fact that the US cash balance is in the negative.  (Jones, 2015).  Jobs’ innovations and new ideas, I feel, gave him a lot of leeway with how he treated those that worked for him, it didn’t hurt that he was also one of the founders of the company, Tim Cook does not have those things to fall back on so he has to be different. 

Resources:

Jones, Chuck.  2015, Nov. 22.  Six Reasons Tim Cook Is Doing A Great Job As Apple’s CEO.  Retrieved from: 

Somaney, Jay.  2015, Nov. 15.  All Excuses Aside, Apple’s Major Problem Is Tim Cook.  Retrieved from: 

Apple products, with the loss of Steve Jobs and promoting Tim Cook to CEO in 2011. As it was the smartest move to be made, Tim Cook had been working for Apple as Chief Operating Officer since 1998, other qualifications also and knowledge of the system. The switch too Cook has been a little bit of a rocky start and not everyone has had faith in him with overpromising and under delivering (Somaney, 2015). But, with him came change to where individuals are working together, not as much confrontation, operations side is stellar (where that was the divisions he was originally over before the keys to the company were given to him), generated 116% up in fiscal year 2015 from previous four years, capital returns are up, better than average on stock prices over multi-year timeframe and doing well against the competition with PC (Jones, 2015). I believe that it takes a lot more than one individual to make a company succeed or fail, but how leadership goes it can have a great effect on the way it transpires and hence they are the ones that get to take credit for the actions. I tend to think that Tim Cook is going off what Steve Jobs had already set up with a couple tweaks in a couple areas. Which the strategy of Apple is aligning to Tim Cook’s even if it seems to be the same as it was under Steve Jobs with minor variables that have changed like culture, roles (removal or addition of individuals), skills, processes and value’s (Weiss, 2016) I believe that every area has been able to improve, some more than others, for Apple with the new CEO.

References

Jones, C. (Nov 22, 2015). Six Reasons Tim Cook Is Doing A Great Job As Apple’s CEO. Forbes.com. Retrieved 30 November 2017, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2015/11/22/six-reasons-tim-cook-is-doing-a-great-job-as-apples-ceo/#22a8bbc142fd

Somaney, J. (Nov 15, 2015). All Excuses Aside, Apple’s Major Problem Is Tim Cook. Forbes.com. Retrieved 30 November 2017, from

Weiss, J.W.  (2016).  Organizational Change.  San Diego: Bridgepoint Education, INC.