Introduction
Telstra Corporation is Australia’s largest company that operates in global technology and telecommunications, providing Internet services and telephones, mobile communications, and cable television services. It faces a significant challenge in the introduction of smartphones into its line of production. This report thus concentrates on this issue, the application of a suitable diagnosis model, the development of improvement suggestions, and diagnostic tools in the first part. The second part discusses the change strategy and translates the change strategy into an implementation plan, adopting the identified change tools to assess and develop change plans. The third part delves into the leadership tasks and styles, a suitable leadership approach and discusses various high-performance management interventions. The fourth part outlines vital improvement areas for a change agent. The report concludes by highlighting recommendations to Telstra on the introduction of smartphones.
The Identified Change Issue
The related change and issue identified for the company in assignment one is the introduction of smartphones. By introducing its smartphones, the company will be required to implement new or different management, manufacturing, budget planning, and advertising strategies. Change has been driven by external factors, for instance, global trends, competition, modern technologies, and the acquisition of a broader market segment. Thus, it is paramount to venture into the center of it all, manufacturing smartphones to attain the latter.
The introduction of the manufacturing of smartphones requires utmost planning, formulation, implementation of new strategies, and acquisition of resources. As per ACMA (2021, p. 3), “overall consumer use of communication services has increased over the years, with the effects of the pandemic continuing to encourage a shift towards online services.” Any knowledgeable audience can decipher that a medium is required to provide online services successfully. A wise entrepreneur needs to take advantage of this opportunity. And this is where Telstra will come in. As a result, the company shall gain 20% of the Australian market from the current 75% (Tomás, 2022). Telstra will gain an added competitive advantage by providing network services and 5G speed and supplying smartphones to its acquired market segments. Alongside the diagnostic tools to be discussed later in this report, Telstra should embody the VRIO framework to critically evaluate its capabilities and resources.
The VRIO framework concentrates on organization, value, imitability, and rarity. First, the human resources department should list every intangible or tangible item owned by the company. These might range from cost advantages, materials, skilled personnel, financial resources, machinery, or patents (Chatzoglou et al., 2018). Ultimately, intangible resources yield a highly sustainable competitive advantage; this should be analyzed critically. To apply the VRIO framework, the company should ascertain if the resources offered add value to the consumers. Secondly, is there control over scarce capabilities or resources? Thirdly, will it be impossible to find a substitute for the item, or will it be expensive for competitors to duplicate the identified ability or resource? Lastly, does Telstra have organized management processes, culture, systems, and structures to capitalize on capabilities and resources? If the response to the above is yes, then the company can go ahead and produce smartphones.
Three organizational diagnostic tools are utilized for measuring cultural change drivers, corporate culture, and culture outcomes. These are organizational culture inventory (OCI), customer service survey (CSS), and organizational effectiveness inventory (OEI). On the one hand, corporate culture inventory mirrors the organizational operating culture. It highlights or cultivates the code of conduct at the workplace, thereby determining the organizational capacity to perform effectively, adapt to changing situations, and solve challenges (Coruzzi, 2020, pp. 420-436). On the other hand, the customer service styles survey gives detailed insight into the conditions, elaborating on the service quality provided to external or internal clientele by evaluating service styles. It helps the organization understand how service providers interact with its consumers and address their work. Lastly, organizational effectiveness inventory entails the assessment of outcomes at the corporate, individual, and group levels, systems, and internal processes that are casually affiliated with these outcomes and culture (Coruzzi, 2020, pp. 420-436). The OEI is most applicable for data-based amendment programs configured to promote employee engagement and organizational effectiveness.
For this scenario, adopting the organizational culture inventory diagnostic tool is imperative. As outlined earlier, it mends a corporate code of conduct or behavioral norms that aid in the organizational capacity to perform effectively, solve challenges, and adapt to changes. Remember, at the moment, Telstra is facing the issue of introducing its smartphones. Therefore, it is crucial to approach this step meticulously to avoid financial losses, negative organizational reputation, and production errors. Additionally, this tool will help the workforce understand what is required of them during the transition period and how this expectation will affect their job satisfaction, performance, and motivation (Coruzzi, 2020, pp. 420-436). Ultimately, organizational culture inventory provides a solid foundation for sustainable and prosperous cultural change. The OCI should be implemented in two parts: OCI-current and OCI-ideal.
The organizational culture inventory will measure the current or existing corporate culture. It will mirror the employees’ behavioral norms, enabling them to fit in and succeed at the workplace. Secondly, the organizational culture ideal will give a deep insight into the company’s ideal culture. It will attain the latter by measuring the behaviors of the corporate employees and leaders that should be anticipated to maximize organizational effectiveness (Coruzzi, 2020, pp. 420-436). As a result, the company will have a picture of its ideal culture established from the shared beliefs and values of the organizational teams and leaders. Henceforth, the company should benchmark the distinctive culture against the current culture to identify gaps and develop change targets. By successfully adopting the organizational culture inventory, Telstra will benefit from assessing and measuring its contemporary culture, building a concrete vision for its ideal culture, and gauging its enthusiasm for change.
Other benefits include facilitating strategic alliances, acquisitions, and mergers. Moreover, Telstra shall identify and address the barriers to and enablers of change and evaluate various change impacts (Krauss & Vanhove, 2022). Having an organizational culture inventory will necessitate having an effective diagnostic model in place. In this case, developing one that will work effectively with the diagnostic tool in place is crucial. Therefore, benchmarking suits this criterion. Other diagnostic models include business process reengineering, balanced scorecard, total quality management, cultural change, quality management, knowledge management, MBO (management by objectives), learning organization, program evaluation, outcome-based evaluation, and strategic planning (Sabir, 2018, pp. 34-38). Moreover, there are systems-based models for diagnosing non-profit companies and systems-based models for diagnosing for-profit companies.
Benchmarking entails using standard measurements in an industry or service to compare other firms to achieve a solid perspective on the company’s performance. Benchmarking is the best diagnostic tool because it entirely focuses on quality improvement. The most important metric for embracing change is if it results in improved quality (Collier et al., 2018, pp. 2731-2754). Consequently, Telstra should benchmark the production of smartphones in competitive firms to evaluate the value accrued. Moreover, by benchmarking its ideal culture against the current culture, the company will be presented with a clear picture of its future direction.
On the other hand, embracing employee engagement during the benchmarking activity makes the employees feel valued and worthy, thereby boosting their overall organizational performance. The recommendations concerning this include meticulous planning, corporate transparency, telling the truth, effective and timely communication, a roadmap, provision of training, inviting participation, and lowering expectations because the implementation cannot be attained overnight. Others include monitoring and, measuring and demonstrating strong organizational leadership.
The Workplace Challenge and a Change Strategy
The adoption of change strategies dates back to 1900. According to Hayes (2018, chapter 16), the history of change strategies is interpreted in three eras. These are from 1900 to 1950 (autocratic, top-down focusing on techno-structural challenges), 1950 to 1970 (recognizing involvement and participation value resulted in the development of organizational development strategies), and 1970s onward (adoption of transformational change strategies). Hayes (2018, chapter 16) summarizes three change approaches: organizational development, economic strategy, and a combination of organizational development and financial strategies. Corporate development strategies emphasize creating capabilities to achieve high performance and a sustainable competitive advantage. Economic strategies drive economic value through result-oriented, top-down, and brutal actions. Financial plans entail layoffs, restructuring, efficiency drive, and reengineering to attain the effectiveness of the company.
The organization’s development strategies include teamwork and coordination, learning, trust, commitment, constructive disputes, open communications, and competencies. Telstra should adopt the organization’s development strategies so every employee and leader shall be involved during the introduction of smartphones, thereby minimizing the likelihood of failure. Moreover, this change strategy paves an easy way from planning to implementation. By allowing learning, teamwork, and coordination, it will be easy to train every employee and acquaint them with what is required during the implementation phase. For the effective introduction of smartphones, Telstra will need to evaluate its support level, stakes and urgency involved, value alignment, and stability of the macro business environment.
In the first part, the change recommendations were monitoring, measuring, and demonstrating strong organizational leadership. Other elements include careful preparation, openness to the company, honesty, prompt and efficient communication, developing a roadmap, offering training, encouraging involvement, and decreasing expectations. As a result, Telstra ought to choose a transition manager, outline the aims or objectives of the shift, decide what has to be done, create an implementation strategy, and pinpoint several, consistent leverage points. Further, it should schedule activities, provide vital resources, award transition behaviors, and develop feedback mechanisms (Hayes, 2018, chapter 17). The change tools will include proposing incentives, redefining cultural values, exercising authority, shifting the burden, and recruiting change champions. The first step in the implementation plan is electing a transition manager to lead the other workforce into the introduction of smartphones.
Secondly, an end state should be specified. Specifying the end state will guide the line of action, estimate timelines, and outline milestones. Thirdly, Telstra should identify the line of action using the Awakishi or fishbone diagram. The fishbone diagram will state tasks and what needs to be done to attain a given goal. Afterward, an implementation plan will be shaped to capitalize on the engagement of stakeholders. Any successful change should factor in stakeholders’ perceptions of change (Hayes, 2018, chapter 17), such as change desirability. The next step is using consistent and multiple leverage points such as skills, strategy, skills, processes, and structure to avoid the realignment of all organizational elements. Activities in the implementation plan should then be scheduled to specify critical paths and mark milestones for monitoring progress.
Resources needed for the change should then be provided. Any change, no matter how small, is associated with a specific cost. Therefore, adequate resources should be allocated for the implementation period. Once resources are provided, the implementation shall take place. Thus, transition behaviors should be awarded. Doing so incentivizes the workforce to continue supporting and participating in the change implementation stage (Hayes, 2018, chapter 17). Lastly, a feedback mechanism should be developed to ensure the effective relay of messages and instructions. If the nine steps in the implementation plan are keenly adhered to, there will be a positive transition. Consequently, the introduction of smartphones shall yield maximum benefits for Telstra. Telstra will enjoy a broader market share and increased sales and profit margins. Ultimately, the goal of winning 95% of the Australian market will be attained.
A Suitable Leadership Approach and Specific High-Performance Management (HPM) Interventions
Leadership entails controlling, directing, organizing, and managing organizational resources to achieve the set targets, objectives, and goals. The core leadership tasks that enhance success are setting organizational goals, vision, and mission statement; supporting, encouraging, and inspiring employees, m; motivating employees; communicating the mission statement, vision, and plans to employees, p; policy-making; and taking initiatives. Every leader performs the latter following a specified leadership style (Gandolfi & Stone, 2018, pp. 261-269). Leadership styles range from democratic, bureaucratic, autocratic, coach, laissez-faire, transactional, strategic, and transformational leadership (Al Khajeh, 2018, pp. 1-10). In this case, Telstra should embrace the transformational leadership style. It aims to improve and transform organizational capabilities and functions. While developing the implementation plan, the sixth step was scheduling activities. Well transformational leadership entails organizing activities and tasks assigned to employees. Such a leader requires the workforce to push its boundaries frequently.
Telstra’s introduction of smartphones will require every employee to give extra effort. This explains why the leader should adopt this leadership style. The leader should consider specific high-performance management interventions despite successfully motivating, inspiring, and encouraging employees to embrace change. These link workforce activities to the company’s objectives (Luiselli, 2021, pp. 100-123). They include conducting continuous management conversations on performance, prioritizing frequent and collaborative goal setting, recognizing employees for their input, giving regular feedback on performance, evaluating performance fairly, and aligning employees to organizational goals. Continuous management conversations on performance ensure performance targets and concerns are communicated in a timely to avoid delays. Most importantly, employees should be recognized for their input. An employee reward system can be implemented by giving promotions, vacations, holidays, and bonuses.
The frequent and collaborative setting of goals should be prioritized. This puts every organizational employee in the decision-making process. Before any plan is set, all administrative levels should be consulted. Once set targets are met, new ones should be placed. Regular feedback should be given on performance. Feedback media such as messages, office calls, internal memos, or electronic mail can be utilized to ensure every player is informed about their desired input. These media can be used to recognize efforts made by various employees and milestones attained (Luiselli, 2021, pp. 100-123). The supervisor needs to evaluate performance fairly. The supervisor should practice leniency on some employees at no given time. Doing so will only jeopardize the overall outcome and quality of the input. Lastly, employees should be aligned with the organizational goals to give them a sense of belonging and direction, boosting their productivity.
How a Change Agent Can Learn From Others’ Experiences
As a change agent, one must be more open to others’ ideas and experiences. Most importantly, one should embrace every available learning opportunity. Doing so makes it easy to analyze, criticize, judge, and make decisive decisions (Seaman et al., 2018). Moreover, knowing when to speak and listen is very important. In this line of work, it is also imperative to remain open-minded, time-conscious, vigilant, honest, innovative, and risk-aversive. Primarily, a change agent focuses on executing new processes and helping employees adjust to a different method of accomplishing tasks. Embracing every available learning opportunity translates to flexibility. It entails tapping into the inventiveness of others and the self by connecting with the external and internal business environment to attain a deeper insight into personalities, perspectives, and experiences. Moreover, it will give room for diversified knowledge, which is essential for spotting new insights and gaining productive insights for growth.
Conclusion and Recommendations
Telstra organization is facing the challenge of the introduction of smartphones. This can be addressed by adopting organization development strategies that embrace teamwork and collaboration. By focusing on the transformational leadership style, Telstra will successfully practice the proposed implementation plan, acquiring a sustainable and dominant competitive advantage. Telstra should elect a transition manager, specify the change goals or objectives, identify actions to be done, silhouette an implementation plan, and identify consistent and multiple leverage points.
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