3. Radical Change Method (RCM)
The radical change method consists of dissonant leadership styles. These are in nature dictator-leadership methods that have little room for consultations from lower-level management or employee-worker levels. These methods do not take into account for decisions human factors for change, time issues, and whether processes or technology acquired fits people’s needs and culture. Decisions are being made alone from top management and are announced after the fact.
The culture and process steps are put in place and the people’s needs and interaction with processes and with other teams revolve around the technology and the decision being dictated from top management. Radical change does not disseminate information with time allowing for adaptation or getting used to it. In radical change there are no stakeholders considered. The only interested parties included in decisions are those that have a direct interest on profitability and return on investment.
1.1. Short-term strategy in Radical Change
Radical change is in nature stressful, allowing little time to plan, think, and include organizational stakeholders, and all those that may be affected by the change. The change decision is made usually by one or a small group of people and little information is being disseminated, either purposely or by mistake due to poor communication methods and channels in the organization. The end result of radical change is an environment in which people are surprised even to the extent of being shocked.
Usually in radical change situations, affected people are unprepared. In unprepared and unplanned situations wrong decisions can be made easier than in situations where time is available to inquire about more feedback and receive appropriate directions. In a panic mode, communication is being skipped and necessary process steps are being left out.
Incomplete processes, uninformed personnel, and poor and hectic stressful communication styles with teams, cross-departmentally and with customers create friction, and lead to poor quality outputs. The customers are likely unsatisfied and will probably start looking for new suppliers. Long-term, this radical change strategy will hurt an organization. Therefore it is a strategy that is focusing only on what is happening in the immediate future, without much regards to how decisions are affecting the organization long-term.
1.2. High turnover
Where radical change methods are applied, the turnover of employees usually is higher than with methodologies applied that promote job satisfaction, allow for learning, coaching, and address human needs. Radical change happens from one moment to the other wherein people are little-to-not at all informed. The change happens so to speak with information dissemination on a need-to-know-basis only. Employees come to work in the morning to either be unemployed, their job place taken over by someone else, or they have a new boss, perhaps even a new owner. And if they are not fired, they quit because of an insecure-feeling environment.
In real-life situations, employees were unable to operate due to broken equipment, loss of databases, breach of security, death, theft, etc. (Kendra and Taplin, 2004; and Ki-Jin Jang, 2003; and King and Aisthorpe, 2000). The result may often be stress and according to Goodmann and Truss (2004), during stressful times communication is poor. And when communication is poor and stress is high, people start looking for a more secure environment (Gappmaier, 1997).
1.3. Learning Curve Shock
In figure 2 under dissonant leadership styles or radical change methodologies, the participants or stakeholders, or in other words, all those affected by the change, need to update their knowledge of processes and technology systems. They are given little to no time and much pressure for compliance is made. People are usually frustrated not having enough time already to adapt to new processes.
Participants are being given contradicting directions such as complete all old and now new tasks in addition and overtime is not permitted. In that environment people might even often take work related learning materials home to compensate for the time not available at work to learn the latest processes. While it is suggested this to be coercive and perhaps even illegal, employees might feel motivated to take that rout because of fear for loosing their job if they do not know the processes during their work hours (Gunasekaran and Kobu, 2002).
It is a Learning Curve Shock because employees are used to a work routine that has now been derailed through the introduction of new processes and not allowing or providing sufficient training time. From one day to the other they either do not understand their work description any longer, it is becoming unclear, and directions are fuzzy while managers are looking over their shoulders and complaining about unfinished work.
The Learning Curve Shock is also there because the organization may not have provided work-time relief for instance through short-time employees or giving bonuses for extra overtime. Companies run into project-time scheduling conflicts because of lack of change project budget allocation and improper planning for likely occurring challenges for which they should consider contingencies Kendra and Taplin (2004).