Question

Please share any best practices from your experience in regard to leadership and/or change management. Quality is the major concern for this threat of discussions. Choosing the right topic for your input is important. Anonymous please don't respond to this question with your plagiarized response.

Answer 1

With respect to best practices and my personal experience in regard to leadership and change management, I have been inspired by Google globally.

The first thing which relates to both the change and leadership aspect is the vision to facilitate change in the team.

The vision: It is the long-term aspirational goal of the organisation. It is a broad description of the organisational outcomes which a firm strives to achieve and become in future. It helps to bring inspiration, motivation and passion in the organisation culture. The most important factor is that the vision should be short, concise and understood by the entire organisation.

• It is a forward-looking approach defining what the organisation aims to achieve and change in the future.
• It addresses problems like what the organisation is trying to achieve, where the organisation is headed and if the achievement of goals happens what state will be achieved.

Having a clear vision, defining why the company needs the changes and what needs to be done helps to create support for the success of the change process. Since the change management process affects every member of the organisation it is important to have a clearly defined vision, direction & understanding of the need for change. A shared vision makes sure all employees are invested in the process to bring the needed change. People are able to communicate effectively & work with organisational commitment.

Here is the correlation between a leader's role and successful change initiative:

• Change Management Leadership: While the organisation stakeholders and employee needs to embrace change & support the change management process it is important for having leadership in the entire process. It is important because having a leader who has trust and support from its employees needs to take ownership of the process and guide the process to ensure objectives are met. Strong and passionate leadership helps a lot during the process. The ownership of achieving goals of change management must be shared by senior executives of the organisation.
• Clear accountability is another most critical factor in the change management process. After having plans, vision and understanding of the entire process it is important to track the progression at regular intervals. Lack of accountability makes the entire process aimless leading to return to the old habits. Hence it is important to ensure accountability until the process is closed. The accountability across all levels ensures that change is accepted throughout the organisation. Bringing clear accountability is the role of a leader.
• A leader should have the ability to forecast and look into the future, visualise external trends & make thoughtful decisions which are ethical and good for the organisation. The ones who are not able to communicate aspirational goals fail to become effective leaders. Hence this role & vision of a leader brings effective change initiatives.

Google is an organisation which constantly strives to bring changes and innovation. The vision to provide access to world information in one click requires a massive change initiative approach.

• Since it has highly skilled employees it keeps investing in education & research which made the organisation effective in bringing the culture of innovation and change.
• It has challenged the conventional thinking style and work ethics as followed in other companies.
• Google has been able to integrate, develop and re-develop the internal & external skills to build a diverse and highly talented workforce who can adapt to the changing environment.
• It is a fast workplace. It doesn't believe in delaying problems or challenges and addresses them as quickly as possible.
• Another approach to bringing change management has been being people-centric in the entire process. The organisation believe that employees need their creative freedom and it provides that environment to facilitate the same.
• Google is a completely open organisation when it comes to networks and collaborations. Due to the constant exchange of information and knowledge, it has been able to adapt to change and grow faster.
• Google management and leadership body have played a great role to demonstrate the right values, skills, insights to help the organisation forecast the right opportunities and important areas in future.
• Management has shown greater trust in its people. An example of assigning several hundred employees for the Google+ project is evident.
• The organisational culture of transparency and openness has helped to develop trust and faith in its employees.
• Google has focused every year to remove unnecessary processes and bureaucratic features to ensure freedom, faster & effective communication and collaboration across various departments.

In order to bring change, it is important to focus both on productivity and innovation aspect of employees and Google has done that right. The management and leadership model has allowed it to be out of the box and not orthodox bringing change and trust in people.

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Answering the B Part) Yes while leadership & change are important the quality issue needs a lot of focus and I have always believed in total quality management is a key process to address the same issue.

Total quality management is a customer-centric approach that involves the seven basic concepts or principles to ensure effectiveness in business, efficiency in creating product or service and making sure quality is of high standards.

1. Management is responsible to ensure effectiveness in business and lead the total quality management approach: TQM is a change management process which requires time and support from the management. The leaders need to ensure that a TQM behavior is accepted and promoted in the organisation. Management needs to take the lead to build the culture around quality management and efficiency in product or service. Example - The organisation that allows cross-communication and have greater feedback process strive to produce high-quality products for the market. They take the feedback and improve the product further.
2. The second concept is to ensure regular improvement in operations to deliver a quality product: The business needs to ensure that they continuously monitor the quality aspect of the product development and increase the productivity by maintaining focus on total quality management. For example, Apple over the years has not only shown innovation but continuous improvement in product & technology. They listen to customer feedback and bring improvement to the product.
3. The focus on customer and external market is an important basic concept for total quality management. The business needs to ensure that customer inputs are given due consideration during product operations. The customer feedback helps to bring upgrade and innovation to the product. Customer satisfaction leads to an increase in revenue, retention of customers and an increase in the market share. Example: It is Amazon's faster delivery process, offering a wide range of products appealing to diverse customers and quality service that makes it a great organisation.
4. Ensuring proper process management & improvement in operational efficiency is the fourth important concept for TQM. The floor and operational plan having defined processes and clear guidelines help to produce high-quality products. Management and leadership should provide enough training resources and support to its employees so that are equipped to deliver quality products and services. For example - Most popular food joints like KFC and Burger kinds have a defined mission, procedures and operations standards making sure quality is delivered to customers.
5. Providing a work environment that is open to innovation and adaptation of new technologies: It is important for the leadership to ensure the work environment supports challenging each other, open to feedback and working towards improved products. The business should be willing to adopt new technology ensuring the better operational process. Example - Zappos is an organisation which has a belief in open work culture. Employees can challenge the seniors and together they work as a team to come up with quality solutions and upgrade ideas for operations.
6. Long-term focus and strategic planning: It is important for the business to have a long-term thinking approach. Every decision should be carefully analysed using data and other information. The firm should strategically define the future of the company and improve its operational processes. The business should be able to forecast the results of current actions. Example - Google keeps thinking long-term and understands what the future demands of its users will be like. It brings constant changes by carefully analysing its impact in the future.
7. Development of team and ensuring greater business outcomes: TQM depends on the skills of the team implementing it. It becomes important for the leadership team to work towards skill building for its employees. Development of human resource helps to implement changes and leads to continuous improvement in the quality of the product. The business has to ensure results & higher productivity to build the trust of employees towards TQM approach. Example - Sports brands like Nike have created quality products through a lot of development & training of its employees. The business results have given the brand its value and a benchmark of meeting high-quality standards.

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