Lakeland Wonders: An In-Depth Analysis of Organizational Change Initiatives and Their Implications

Lakeland Wonders organisational change project analysis

Todnem (2005) has observed that the primary impetus of organisational change is the vision of the organisational executives, which is critical for successful business dissertation help. However, the problem could arise when any effective sense of urgency could not be instilled within the existing managerial personnel to accommodate the expansive vision of organisational executives such as Cheryl Hailstrom. The intended change of establishment of offshore manufacturing facilities to meet the pricing requirements of the valued customer Bull’s Eye Stores has been tumultuous enough, from the perspective of overcoming the barriers which have been encountered by Cheryl from the employees and managers of the Lakeland Wonders while she had been effectively attempting lead the change process in the similar manner to which she had, in her capacity as the COO, previously managed Kids&Company which had been the largest customer of the Lakeland Wonders . The objective of such change implementation at the company under consideration has been to meet the market growth targets specified by the company management. To this effect, Walter Swensen IV had appointed Cheryl as the new CEO of the company prior to his retirement as the chief executive. From an operational perspective, the intended change has been an overarching one which involved multiple levels of sub-procedural changes such as changing the local design firm utilised by Barry Quince, chief design director of Lakeland Wonders and sourcing of private label products from offshore sources such as China. Apart from these, various sub-procedural changes included setting of ambitious deadlines for new projects, management of demanding schedules to visit the customers and improvement of production cycle times amongst others. To this effect, the attempted change initiation has been considered to be justified by (Diefenbach, 2007). The emphasis was on the launching of a midmarket product line at comparatively lower prices and simultaneously, not to jeopardise the existing product base to support the intended product line. In this context, Graetz, Rimmer, Lawrence & Smith (2006) have observed that, the Enquiry Action framework (EA), is the most significant change management framework which could be applied to determine the key areas of operational practice which Cheryl has attempted to implement since the individual choices available with every category have defined the options available to Cheryl. Regarding the questioning and understanding of the change context, Cheryl had obtained the context of change from her predecessor, Walter Swensen IV. This has been indicative of her diagnostic stage of change in the framework structure (Svetlik et al. 2007). However, it had been her personal prerogative to develop the content and procedural repertoire of change as she kept on encountering significant resistance in implementing her initiatives. The focal area of explaining through enquiry could be observed in the case study through the meetings of Cheryl with Mark Dawson, the senior vice president of operations at Lakeland Wonders and through her meeting with the board members. The enacting segment has been reflected through the decision of recruitment of Cecil from her previous employer Kids&Company to manage outsourcing and Pat Sampsen to utilise the services of Sampsen Design to replace the local design firm utilised by the company due to the incapacity of such a firm to meet the design standard requirements.

Assessment and explanation of the appropriateness of organisational change processes adopted at Lakeland Wonders

The research of Lozano, Nummert & Ceulemans (2016) has highlighted that there are two perspectives through which the change implementation process initiated at the Lakeland Wonders could be characterised. The first one has been the fact that the midmarket growth plan envisioned by Cheryl has been effectively corroborated and attested to be effective by all of the performance indicators. This involves the factors that the customer accounts of Lakeland are extensive and she has to manage such a contingency through urgency based measures, the contracts from the Bull’s Eye could become the pivotal instrument for the company to meet midterm growth objectives and it is thus necessary to ship the products in time for the holiday season, the time available for developing product designs and marketing messages to answer the issues with branding are only a few months and the price exclusivity clause of the probable client Bull’s Eye is a difficult proposition for the Lakeland design apparatus to maintain and launch the products in the markets accordingly.

On the other hand, the second perspective is discerned as the apparent operational impasse formulated by the managerial personnel of the organisation who are interested greater in clinging to the operational procedures to which they and the other employees have been familiar. Mitra, Gaur, & Giacosa (2019) have opined that such obstacles have been formulated by the increased pace of changes without taking into confidence the majority of the senior managers as well as the board of directors to convince and persuade them to cast their votes in favour of the proposals, including the offshore outsourcing of material for the company. The fundamental drawback of any change introduction procedure within any extensively established company such as the Lakeland, could be identified as the clash of perspectives in between the company hierarchical and managerial personnel which could arise off the factor of absence of any effective groundwork for effective change implementation through deliberately communicating the sense of urgency about the required change. This could be interpreted from the perspective of hierarchical imposition in terms of the multiplicity of changes envisioned by Cheryl as the Chief Executive Officer in the form of mono-directional transfer of information and instructions. The resistance which was generated by the communication style of Cheryl could as well be considered in the measure of exploration of relationships at the various managerial levels. Shaw (2017) has involved the large scale transformational framework for organisational change propagated by Bernard Burnes. In case of Lakeland Wonders, the rapidity of changes intended by Cheryl could be categorised into three different segments involving the levels of change, the focal point of change and the change approach. In case of Lakeland Wonders, the change level has been associated with the organisational manufacturing and production levels, the focus of change has been on the work processes and structures of the company and the change approach has been based on enacting radical decisions such as initiation of manufacturing outsourcing from China. According to Ragsdell (2000), such initiatives and aspects of change introduced turbulence within the previously stable environment of Lakeland Wonders. The impact could be determined effectively on the individual as well as group levels of tasks and production management which involved aggressive deadlines management and introduction of greater workload which became the primary point of inflection between the company managerial personnel as well as the other employees and that of Cheryl.

Alternative organisational contextual change approach analysis

Collins (2005) has outlined that planning, executing the planned processes and then responding to the organisational feedback perspectives could be construed to form the overall format of the organisational change process. In case of Lakeland Wonders, Cheryl encountered situations which had been extensively difficult if not outright intractable. Vakola & Ioannis (2017) have contextualised such observations in the context that problems are inherent to any form of change, yet, management intervention, such as that from Walter Swensen does not become the predominant requirement if proper communication and cooperative operational procedures are implemented. In case of Cheryl, the problems had been the divergent perspectives of Cheryl (growth oriented rapidity of change) and the organisational employees (maintaining the status quo in terms of operational pace and manufacturing procedures which had been antithetical to outsourcing) including the managerial personnel and the tension which had emerged as a direct outcome of such divergence of perspectives.

The application of Appreciative Inquiry, in case of the Lakeland Wonders, could involve a three staged process which could be commenced with the constructionist principle of emergence of actions through professional relationships. This involves co-construction of the interactions between the CEO and the Lakeland employees through an intensive process to stimulate new change prospects. This could foment an interest in the change outcome through establishment of the rules of engagement in working together. The objective could be appointing specific personnel to provide guidance to strategies about the midmarket private label development.

Next, the simultaneity principle could be applied in terms of the entire inquest process through which the most clarified operating direction for the company could be charted out. This could involve articulation of the specified operating direction for Lakeland, explaining the methods through which structural, production related as well as behavioural changes could be made consistent with the company norms as well as vision and finally the improvement of performance. This could assuage the concerns of the employees regarding the challenging of comfortable working standards at the company by Cheryl.

The third stage could involve the anticipatory principle application process where Cheryl could guide the reluctant managers along with the employees with a better image of the future. This could be constituted by a particular business profit based expectation horizon which could act as an effective mobilisation agent. The necessity would be to utilise artful and positive imagery of value creation for the business fortune of the company so that the anticipatory reality could be refashioned on a collective basis. The concrete procedures could be oriented towards transformation of the existing perceptions of the company personnel about the impending changes. Cheryl could disseminate the work into multiple teams and charge them with the identification of existing obstacles to implement the change processes. Furthermore, such same personnel could be charged with development of particular recommendations to various new structures, initiatives and systems of rewards through which moving forward in terms of new procedural applications could become possible. Cheryl would need to be cognisant about the involvement of as many employees as could be possible so that the speed of the process could be enhanced.

McKinsey 7s framework based analysis of need for change

The application of McKinsey 7s based framework for analysis of the promotion of the need for change within the Lakeland Wonders could be performed through a sequential process. In terms of Shared Values, it has been required by Cheryl to be completely clear about the organisational vision which she has been attempting to instil in terms of changing the work process to the pre-specified extent. In terms of the change style implementation, the current requirement is the complete disclosure of the agenda of the CEO in the clearest of terms for the purpose to engender mutual respect amongst the managerial personnel and the chief executive. Achievement of goals is required to be communicated on a persistent and relentless manner.

Furthermore, the Strategy measure is indicative of the necessity of establishment of ground rules by the CEO of the change operations implementation and then to address the necessity to take the company to the next level in terms of midmarket growth objective achievement. This could entail the development of the sense that since growth targets have been established by the board, it is not possible to contravene or debate upon them. She has to be assertive enough to specify that duplicity regarding expressions of outward support and then formulation of road blocks by the divisional managers could not be acceptable.

In terms of the Staff segment, it change is required to be managed through the stakeholder management processes which could be applied since the staff are internal stakeholders in this entire change effort. This is a key dimension of diagnosing the necessity of change and Cheryl would have to mend her working relationship with Mark and put across the necessity for his support provision to her vision. This could effectively pertain to develop better processes through which growth goals could be achieved.

In terms of the Skills, the necessity is to enhance the capacity base of the existing employees through intelligence management of existing resources without having to incur cost overheads. The decision of offshore outsourcing of manufactured products is thus a sound one. Furthermore, the proposition of an effective plan by newly recruited Elaine is also a positive one.

In terms of the Structure aspect, the previously discussed three activity framework areas could be observed to have been indicative of a cohesive structural application which is necessitated at Lakeland Wonders. The boundaries are primarily permeable in this process regarding the determination of the focal area. Thus, the three step based structure of change management, involving the Unfreezing, Shifting and Refreezing processes, could be considered to be applicable. This could be effective in terms of fast tracking of decisions in terms of overseas manufacturing outsourcing policies.

Finally, the Systems element could be considered as an enactment of different practices which Cheryl has been attempting to implement. The emphasis would have to be on the diagnostics of change element through such a system. Thus, it would be necessary for Cheryl to implement a pilot study which could expand throughout the entire organisational structure to determine the practices which could be considered for implementation elsewhere in the Lakeland Wonders as well.

Organisational culture analysis

The organisational culture of Lakeland Wonders, which could be observed through the analysis of the change implementation process initiated by the CEO Cheryl Hailstrom, has been indicative of the Fragmented Cultural Typology of any business institution. The most prominent features of this format of organisational culture are the dual aspects of ambiguity in terms of properly putting across the notions behind the change necessity and the emerging disagreement which is characterised by the dearth of proper sync in between Cheryl and her staff such as Mark and other managers. Shaw (2017) has specified another significant feature of this organisational culture as the loose coupling which has not contributed to the strengthening of the Lakeland Wonders at all. This observation has culminated in various forms of challenges for the change implementation process. This further complicates the process of development of communication properly within the organisational set up at the Lakeland Wonders since reaching of agreement on the particular objectives is always a difficulty.

It is necessary for Cheryl Hailstrom to properly read the organisational cultural context which characterises the company of Lakeland Wonders. Cheryl has to put in effort to summarise the organisational culture of Lakeland through capturing the various observations, including the lacklustre approach to change by the organisational managerial personnel as well as the projected resistance by the worker’s union on the unfounded fear of job losses due to manufacturing outsourcing, as the physical, social and symbolic aspects of the particular organisational settings. Various aspects of the organisation could be considered in this context. The first one would be the organisational symbols which could hold meanings beyond the functional purposes which they could serve. The second could be considered to be the structure of power distribution within the organisational working architecture. This could be better explained as the extent to which the individuals, groups and teams could influence various others in both the formal and informal, directive and coercive manner. The meeting between Mark and Walter could be a case in point in this context. The third would be the capturing of roles, authorities and responsibilities in the formal structure of the Lakeland Wonders. The final point of concern is the control systems through which the formal and information mechanisms of behaviour from the employees and staff of the company under consideration could be monitored and controlled effectively.

Reference List

Collins, D. (2005). Organisational change: sociological perspectives. Routledge.

Diefenbach, T. (2007). The managerialistic ideology of organisational change management. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 20(1), 126-144.

Graetz, F., Rimmer, M., Lawrence, A., & Smith, A. (2006). Managing organisational change. John Wiley & Sons.

Lozano, R., Nummert, B., & Ceulemans, K. (2016). Elucidating the relationship between sustainability reporting and organisational change management for sustainability. Journal of cleaner production, 125, 168-188.

Mitra, A., Gaur, S. S., & Giacosa, E. (2019). Combining organizational change management and organizational ambidexterity using data transformation. Management Decision.

Ragsdell, G. (2000). Engineering a paradigm shift? An holistic approach to organisational change management. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 13(2), 104-120.

Shaw, D. (2017). Managing people and learning in organisational change projects. Journal of Organizational Change Management, 30(6), 923-935.

Svetlik, I., Stavrou‐Costea, E., Vakola, M., Soderquist, K. E., & Prastacos, G. P. (2007). Competency management in support of organisational change. International journal of manpower.

Todnem By, R. (2005). Organisational change management: A critical review. Journal of change management, 5(4), 369-380.

Vakola, M., & Ioannis, N. (2017). Organisational Readiness for Change: The Role of Human Resource Management. In The Changing Patterns of Human Resource Management (pp. 270-283). Routledge.

Take a deeper dive into Knowledge Management Information System with our additional resources.