Question

Take an example of one leader in the world (corporate or otherwise) that played a key role in managing a change effort. Explain in detail How did the leader play his / her role in the different phases of the change project? Use the discussion and learning from the course to answer this question thoughtfully and completely.

Note: The answer should be minimum of 15 lines.

Answer 1

I have selected Ursula Burns as the leader of choice in order to explain the situation for Xerox.

Xerox was once considered to be the pioneer in their field of technology and innovation but with time and the stagnating success and advancements brought by Xerox created a company that was essentially what we would call a shell of its former self. The revenues were unjustifiable, the company was losing money and the main problem was with the structure that was being maintained in the company which did not focus on change and innovation rather, they focused more on sustaining their current technologies to the point that they forgot to innovate in the market. Then came Ursula Burns and it all changed for the company. She realized the need to bring about a change in the way that the company worked. We can easily say that she had realized the real reason why Xerox wasn’t doing as well as they once used to. Market competition was always present, the prices were always the same, the only factor that wasn't constant was that the company had stopped to innovate. She realized it and therefore introduced a change in both structural and functional aspect of the company’s processes as well as what the company needed to do in order to regain their former place. She spent most of the company’s budget in R&D in order to come up with better technology, better product offering as well as worked on the factors of change for the company's workforce as well. She created the feeling of necessity in the minds of the employees in order to bring forward a new wave of creativity both in terms of skill and requirements and as a result, the company showed one of the best examples of how a change management process could be utilized in order to maintain company's function or to expand it, in order to become useful for the future.