Change Management – intake 12 – Kuwait
Individual Assignment – 70% of final mark
Step-by-Step Guide to your Reflective Journal
- Step One
This document is your experience of the class – it’s like a personal diary of what you learned. Don’t forget the Bloom’s Taxonomy requirements – knowledge, application, judgement/analysis, creating convincing personal content, and making thoughtful reflections
- Step Two
Ideally, start writing your individual assignment at the end of each day or early the next day before class. If you wait until the end of the class, or near to the deadline after the class has finished, it will be more difficult because you will have forgotten many of your impressions and insights at the time
- Step Three
Make notes. On your computer, phone or by handwriting on a notepad. As we go along in the class-time. Can you think of any examples from your workplace experience which illustrate these points? Either positively or negatively? Perhaps you sharedthese verbally with the class during the class-time. Or talked to your teacher about these instances to check if they were appropriate as examples. In any case, if you think these observations are relevant, write them down at the time – or you probably will forget
- Step Four
Write up your impressions of the Change Management theories – Kotter, Force-field [Kurt Lewin] and the other conceptual material. How relevant is this for you? Especially if you were asked to lead a Change Management initiative in your workplace?
- Step Five
Think about the individual Change Management exercises you did in the class. Analyse and explain your results and way you made the choices you did. Your Force-field example, Change Agent/Consolidator observation, Leadership style, Conflict mode, Team role, Organizational Culture comments. Include personal remarks an examples. Critically appraise your resultsand [as above] think about how useful these tools might be in a real Change Management exercise in your workplace. If you already had many Change initiatives at work in recent times – what was your reaction? Was this positive or negative?
- Step Six
Comment on the group case study exercises during class [usually held just before the break]. These were mostly based on individual company examples, with a short scenario and then a series of questions. Multiple choice and short answer questions. You will have answered as many of the questions as you could in the time available. The answers were made available afterwards.Are these issues in any way similar to your own organisation? In what way are they different? If your organisation faces similar problems – what are they doing about it? Do these stories give you any ideas for coping with change? Diversification? Evolution? Do you personally identify with any of these stories? Why or why not?
- Step 7
What did you think of the cartoon “Who Moved My Cheese?” Did any of the characters remind you of anyone you know? Even yourself? How about “Our Iceberg is Melting”? Impressions on you? Helpful in trying to overcome resistance to change in your own organisation?
- Step 8
What was your impression of the guest speakers in the class? Relevant? Interesting? Useful? Explain how they could give you new ideas to cope with your own challenges in the workplace, or not.
- Step 9
If your CEO/boss etc. suddenly asked you to start a Change Management initiative – how would you go about this? Have you experienced this already? Or observed others trying to cope with this challenge? Reflect on the Bank of the Future or Office of the Future, according to the task you undertook in the class.
- Step 10
As a result of your reading of the article for your group project – and the experience of making a Kahoot and testing your classmates – how can you apply the insights from your article to your own organisation? And the other three articles you read for the final day exercise? Analyse the most useful learning points from these articles. Do you find them convincing? And valuable for you personally? Discuss with detailed examples.
Conclusion
Make a to-do list/SWOT analysis/Action Plan of how you could improve your ability to lead and/or cope with Managing Change in your workplace. It will happen – if it hasn’t already! You would like to put this on your CV/resume – “ability to cope with Change”; “can implement new Change Management initiative”… but how can you justify this?
