Identify factors that can cause change initiatives to fail and the five pillars that can cause them to succeed

Part 1 – Discussion Topic: Organizational change is not always successful. Identify factors that can cause change initiatives to fail and the five pillars that can cause them to succeed. Highlight an organization that failed to adapt and evaluate which of these factors and pillars were demonstrated by this organization.

*Your initial post should be at least 200 words in length. Support your claims with examples from required material(s) and/or other scholarly resources, and properly cite any references. Make sure to use Chapter 4 (attached) and reference: Weiss, J.W. (2016). Organizational Change (2nd ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc.*

Part 2: Review two of your peers’ posts. Discuss any similar or opposing perspectives you have, with at least two of your peers. Take care to be professional and polite even if your beliefs or viewpoints differ.

Peer 1 (MW) Atleast 100 words

Organizational change is not always successful. Identify factors that can cause change initiatives to fail and the five pillars that can cause them to succeed. Highlight an organization that failed to adapt and evaluate which of these factors and pillars were demonstrated by this organization. Review several of your peers’ posts.

According to Weiss, there are many reasons why organizational change movements fail and that the majority of change initiatives in large corporations are not effective. That is an alarming statistic considering some of the change initiative may really be for the betterment of the company and its employees. Some of the factors that are stated as reasons change programs fail are: opposition to the change, the failure for stakeholders to see the need for change, a superficial need for change, failure to implement the change, cultural roadblocks and a failure to sustain the change (Weiss 4.1).

The five pillars that are listed as contributors to the successful change in a business are: leadership, strategy, culture, structure, and systems (Weiss 4.3). I think each one of these pillars is necessary to have successful organizational change.

I feel that Apple Company easily fits into the category of failing to adapt and then through the implementation of the five pillars succeeds. The history of Apple is very well known so it is easy to use this as an example most can relate to. Apple post Jobs the first time was facing a serious decline and losing momentum compared to its competitors. Once Steve Jobs returned to Apple the company became the most innovative of our time. Jobs’ leadership was the first step needed for the five pillars to reignite the success of this company. Through his vision Apple was able to create a strategy for a way ahead. Jobs created a culture at Apple that inspired innovation.

Weiss, J. W. (2016). Organizational Change. (2^nd ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education, Inc.

Peer 2 (KH): Atleast 100 words

For this discussion, looking at companies that failed to adapt was hard, but the one that comes to mind was Betamax. Betamax failed at clearly not communicating with its customers, employees and stakeholders by failing to support what was happening with VHS and Betamax. There was clearly a failed vision of what the market is turning to the go to supported media. Leaders did not understand the change that was happeningin the industry especially when it came to buying movies; Betamax could only hold one hour of video compared to several hours for VHS. Although the technology for Betamax was superior to VHS, the machines were bulky and costly. Betamax was unwilling to change its hardware to a smaller more user-friendly machine. Moreover, this ultimately impacted employees, because no one knew how to market the product even after there were changes to the tapes and machines. Betamax could have been the perfect media if they had changed some things around. There was no clear strategy when it came to what the targeting the audience of the customers. Was it high-end users or everyday mom and pop looking at watching videos in their living room. Clearly, there was no structure or systems in place to make the changes need to keep up with VHS sales and machines. Moreover, lastly the culture was not ready for two machines that do the same thing, but one did not build a culture around watching movies at home at a low price and movie companies adopted VHS as the standard for marketing movies on for rent and sales. Clearly, the war of the video systems could have been won by Betamax if the had effective leaders. Leaders must provide resources, build a support system for change agents, reinforce the development of new skills and behaviors, and stay on course to sustain implemented changes Weiss (2016)

Weiss, J.W. (2016). Organizational Change (2nd ed.). San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint

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Change in organization is very sensitive. The way that it is handled determines whether it will be a success of if it will fail. The first cause of failure is often the process of poor planning. This is something that affects the change process negatively due to disruptions……………………………………

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