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APPLECOMPANYLEADERSHIPCHANGE.edited1.edited xApproachesofCommunicationinChangeManagement.edited1.edited xCOMMUNICATIONSTYLESTHATPROMOTECHANGE.edited1.edited x

Running Head: APPLE COMPANY LEADERSHIP CHANGE 1

APPLE COMPANY LEADERSHIP CHANGE 5

Apple Company Leadership Change.

Students Name:

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1. The reasons and justification for the organizational change;

Apple Inc. is one of the prominent companies whose tremendous and enormous success and achievements have been attributed to well-established leadership, organized workflow as well as its culture that has always guided the employees and the entire apple staff to work toward one common objective (Dudovskiy, 2019). Apple Inc. has been known for its hierarchical organizational structure, which has been portraying easily notable divisional characteristics with a weak functional matrix. The hierarchy in apple Inc. was based on most of its traditional structural traits in all of its business organizations. Divisional characteristics in this respect mean that apple product was based on groupings within the company. These divisional characteristics included mac0s and iOS.

According to research conducted, Apple has been at the top due to its profound organizational structure, more so during the reign of Steve Jobs, who by then firmly held his autocratic leadership. Perhaps at his time in leadership, Steve Jobs, dictatorial leadership style was greatly used over the other fellows (Dudovskiy, 2019). He was in charge of everything ranging from decision making to initiation of any changes he felt was necessary without consulting any of the colleagues. The guy led with power and authority; every person working within the apple company real felt the presence of Steve Jobs. Though he was dictatorial, Steve had impressive ways of executing his duties.

Worth understanding is that Jobs often met his executives almost every Mondays with his executive management team to discuss all the results of the previous suggestions and perhaps review the most crucial and critical areas as well as other projects that were relevant undertaking; he always ensured all the status of the ongoing projects were also reviewed to confirm that they are in line with the projected targets(Dudovskiy, 2019). On Wednesdays, he also held meetings to discuss various issues related to communication and marketing strategies. On Fridays, he also a meeting to discuss design strategies and progress made by the company’s designers.

However productive Steve Job was, his leadership never involved many of the company’s stakeholders nor the key leaders, he never entertained any form of consultation, nor did he borrowed much of the opinions from other colleagues and employees at large. What he had in mind was final. He was always unpredicted and perhaps never relied on any of the conventional consultative models as that BCG Growth-Share Matrix nor the Mckinsey of 7S. he always asked questions during meetings, an aspect that he used to gain much control of the meeting as well as dominating the agendas through his directive questions that directly influenced the type of discussion held.

With reference to the question, it was necessary to make changes more so to the organizational leadership structure. The primary reasons for the Apple changes can be attributed to remedying the initial challenges of the dictatorial leadership of Steve Jobs, as illustrated in the discussions above (Klaiber, 2013). Another key reason why there must be a change of the organization is that Job’s leadership was forceful, and the style of leading generated unnecessary stress and psychological imbalances among most of the employees. Additionally, the existence of unconventional leadership whereby Steve Job never tolerated nor took time to understand the workforce demoralized many workers. This situation has been greatly addressed by the current change of organizational leadership (Klaiber, 2013).

Moreover, the former culture of the organization that was driven by Steve Job’s one-man say vision. The leadership of Steve rallied various stakeholders of the Apple company for his mission and visions, and above that, he demanded performance excellence from his employees. Another good reason why the change is justifiable can be attributed to how the traditions of Steve Job leadership seemed barbaric, as witnessed by many of the staff members; he used to address the staff with arrogance and blunt delivery of criticism. His reign concentered much of the organization’s power to his own hands, dominating every sphere without respecting or considering the existing principles of leadership as well as theories of management (Martinsons, 2017). The leadership constantly challenged the staff whenever they failed to meet the set criteria; the power leadership undiplomatically and blatantly criticized the employees with much of professional approaches.

It is wise to mention that Apple, as an organization and a productive international company, needs to change its organizational leadership because the culture introduced by Steve Job was not all-inclusive in undertaking most of n the company’s projects and developmental strategies. Another reason why the change seems to be reasonable and justifiable. Generally speaking, Steve Job’s power culture leadership disregarded modern management principles and theories. The Apple company depended only on the extraordinary leadership and vision of Steve ob and the two key leaders that is Jonathan Ive and Tim Cook (Martinsons, 2017).

The organization assumed democratic leadership instead of initial autocratic leadership, which never promoted employees’ participatory aspect to facilitate the company’s growth. The reason for the change of leadership by apple company was to encourage an element of inclusion, mutual respect, and participation in all the company’s fraternity with shared goals (Dudovskiy, 2019). With Tim Cook’s managerial style and change of total leadership framework., many employees have perceived him as a charismatic leader whose focus is aimed at fostering apple business, existing products, and the employee’s farewell and relationship as well. It is worth initiating a change of leadership and culture to avoid such kind of autocratic leadership style that vested power and control to only one person; new change has brought limelight on the essence of collaboration, and perhaps emphasized on the advancing cooperation all stakeholders, employees and other Apples’ arsenal of talents. The organizational change is justifiable in the sense that, unlike the former culture power and autocratic leadership, the current democratic leadership has provided anew platform that encourages consensus reasoning and building more so among the top-ranking employees and key stakeholders before decisions are made (Myers, Hulks, & Wiggins, 2012). Above all, the new change of leadership has been found to be more productive than the former because it inspires and motivates the employees and encourages new ideas and innovation, a move that has taken the company to advanced levels of development (MEYER, 2019).

Finally, I also wish to mention that the new apple’s organizational change has tried to balance work, objectives, development, and employee motivation. Unlike the former leadership, the new change has highly recognized employees by providing both good pay, compensation, and incentive among all the workers (Myers, Hulks, & Wiggins, 2012). This has led to the current witnessed productivity and exemplary performance because the employees feel recognized and have developed intrinsic motivation as the company supplements extrinsic motivation. There has been a newly established employee’s welfare department that takes care and perhaps oversees the working staff’s needs. Indeed, change is accepted by the people when they feel that there is societal value as well as concern. Extrinsic motivation as an initiative of the change within apple company was established to address employee’s challenges and serve as the best way employees are motivated to work or perform to affect and effect change. In a nutshell, the new change has facilitated innovation within the company; before the current changes, innovation was focused on Steve Jobs, whose vision and the mission was one man say one man take all, new organizational changes have improved all the Apples’ working plan, and everything is open, and each, member and affiliate of the company can be heard. This idea has brought together various experts whose coordination and contribution have made Apple a more b successful venture than during the reign of sleeve Jobs (Tycontent, 2017).

2. The barriers and drivers to the change initiative. Was there resistance to the change?

As many people say, change is inevitable, and any attempts to implement changes need a skillful professional approach and communication to effect it to them later. Many of the change processes are faced with several challenges more resistance from the existing working staff who fear that change will adversely affect them due to the uncertainty of the proposed change. However, it should be understood that resistance to change must be overcome at all costs to effect change and perhaps make new progress as well as moving the change forward. Therefore, leaders need special skills to deal with such opposing forces to overcome resistance successfully. According to the coach’s resistance to change, initiatives must be recognized and as expected to bring people out of their cocoon or comfort zones (Tycontent, 2017). Therefore, managers who are initiating change need to deploy skills that enlighten resistors on the essence of the anticipated change and how the current situation may not be worth for collaboration and teamwork.

Apple culture, as was seen in the Steve Jobs era, has strongly established a power culture foundation, which led the company for around 14 years. Most of the employees had been used to how the organization worked under Steve Jobs’s autocratic leadership. Therefore, it was hard for most people and staff members to shift their minds on accepting the new organizational changes brought by Tim Cook’s leadership. (Tycontent, 2017) Most employees seemed to fear what be Cook present to the company; therefore, the fear of uncertainty was one of the barriers to accepting change.

Secondly, the most challenging barrier was the culture Steve Jobs had created while in power. The initial apple leadership instilled fear, criticisms, and undiplomatically challenged employees and aspects that negatively affected most of the employees. This effect on itself contributed to the much of resistance witnessed during the time Apple turmoil in introducing a change of leadership.

The drivers for leadership change initiation were triggered by a sharp decline and reduced how apples performed in the international markets (Dudovskiy, 2019). Most democratic managerial leadership advocators rebuked autocratic leadership and power culture. Steve Jobs’s approaches were seen as a barbaric and rather one-person vision that raised a lot of concern even from the key stake holders who sought to initiate changes. There was significant resistance to change since some individuals were already deep-rooted to the previous culture and therefore feel comfortable with Steve’s power culture and autocratic leadership.

Approaches used to mitigate resistance forces internally and external;

The approach deployed involved all key players and sensitizations on the anticipated change’s essence (Tycontent, 2017). The apple organization introduced a change in the humanistic approach with humanistic values, democratic and developmental approaches. The employees through humanistic value approaches were encouraged to openness, honesty, and integrity, as for democratic value they were given their social justice, freedom of choice and contribution, as well as employee’s involvement and finally the democratic approach enhanced the self-growth and self-realization an aspect that positively contributed to the easy acceptance of the change.

3. The approach or strategy adopted to implement the change;

As an organization, Apple used various methods and strategies; one of the main systems deployed to implement the change was the use of top management support for change. Apple’s high levels of management critical showed their full support to the anticipated change. The management demonstrated that they indeed supported the change by communicating and interacting with Apple staff on the essence of the said change. The message sent to Apple staff members was clear and articulated a single vision of change to avoid generating mixed reactions from the employees (Tycontent, 2017). Another strategy that was extensively used is fully staff involvement in the change process. The change efforts at several levels involve the employee’s representatives. This approach aimed to explain the kind of change, effects of change, and perhaps the essence of the said change on both the employees and the organization at large. The employees’ involvement at some level serves as the best option since most of them are closer to the company’s daily activities and process. Their involvement helped provide the limelight of what should be done to improve the organization’s productivity.

Besides that, the company communicates about the change in advance to key members. This was one of the strategies used to reduce the effects of rumors and neutralize all the possibilities of resistance to change. The organization was very proactive in communicating with its staff on many occasions after Steve’s leadership had been abolished to minimize resistance and perhaps make the staff members feel they belong to the organization and are part of the change process. Additionally, the organization worked hard to eliminate all the change barriers during change implementation.

The approach used was a democratic leadership style that allowed all the key members of apple and the employed to participate in the generation of successful ideas implemented through collaborative policy and a conducive working environment (Dudovskiy, 2019).

4. The impact of the change on the most important stakeholders (employees,

shareholders, Board of Directors, customers, media, etc.);

The change has promoted the inclusive participation of both employees and other stakeholders to improve productivity. The change has captivated transparency and teamwork as it offers a leadership style that is approachable and perhaps inspires every individual through an open door policy that provides a collaborative environment at the Apple company. Most of the employees at Apple’s company describe the new leadership as one of the exceptional leaders who know how to handle management, employees, and innovation at the same time. The staff felt motivated and encouraged to continue working hard for the company, unlike during autocratic leadership (Tycontent, 2017). The stakeholders are constantly involved in any pertinent discussion and decision-making process; this has further positively impacted the stakeholders as they feel recognized and part of the Apple company fraternity.

Moreover, the change has helped the employees collectively work together, solve the company’s challenges conjointly, and seek intervention whenever it deems necessary. The change has also helped the employees to get frequent updates about their progress, after which they are provided with progressive support to keep their knowledge and skills up-to-date. Cook’s interrogative nature has inspired and empowered some key leaders to initiate and implement their own solutions on the areas that need much of their attention (Tycontent, 2017).

5. Recommendations and alternative perspectives for future change initiatives;

I feel that that it will be advisable for the company to adopt a variety of leadership styles that are developmentally focused and perhaps include all key stakeholders as well as its employees when imitating changes to avoid situations where some feel rejected or opposing the intended changes. Besides that, it is worth the company to adopt a string corporate control structure that will support the organization’s strong management and control. This will theoretically empower leaders such as Tim Cook to control everything within the organization. By using such a recommended structure, the organization will be able to effectively control business functions and production-based groups (Tycontent, 2017).

Additionally, it will be advisable for the company to induce flexibility or promote unlimited organizational flexibility. As witnessed currently, the company has limited organizational flexibility and aspect that adversely downsides the manner in which some of the issues are responded to. Moreover, limited flexibility has also prevented some of the low levels of the structure from responding to the current business demands and needs within the market and marketing platforms. For example, product-based divisions only depend on the CEO orders to proceed to the implementation of changes. Therefore, it’s wise for the company to reduce such levels of rigidness to facilitate other leaders to execute such a function for easy decision implementation and power-sharing for one common purpose (Tycontent, 2017).

It is also a great need to establish sound collaboration among and between departments and stakeholders to improve ideas generation and organizational flexibility. Apple company is not progressively improving due to its hierarchical leadership structure that needs to be validated at every stage; such kind of leadership and corporate structure need to be revisited to ensure that the system can support rapid changes and perhaps avoid directing everything to the new leader Tim Cook (Tycontent, 2017). It should be known that this kind of leadership disrupts and impair rapid changes since every decision is attributed or must go through the CEO and other top management before they are successfully implemented. Inflexibility is one of the major hindrances to progress and development at large.

6. Your own learning as a graduate student and/or prospective change leader and what

you would have done differently.

In my capacity, I would use the 7Rs of management change to initiate the appropriate changes for the company’s benefit. I would consider several questions based on 7Rs, such as who Raised the anticipated change request? What might be the Reason for the said change? What Returns of the change in question? What might be some of the Risks associated with the requested change (Irwin, 2018)? Who will be Responsible for the creation, testing, and implementing the change? What are some of the Resources that should be deployed for the said change? And finally, what will be the Relationship between the expected change and the other changes? With all this in mind, I will be able to uniquely establish the essence of urgency for the organizational change of leadership and perhaps create a guiding coalition that will advocate for the change to avoid or eliminate any resistance form. I will also develop a change vision bearing in mind on the importance of the 7Rs as well as effectively communicating the intended changing to all relevant stakeholders and inform each of the essence and great need of the change initiative and how beneficial it will than the existing systems of operations (Irwin, 2018). In my position, I also feel that I would have empowered broad-based actions and as well generating short term wins, which will spearhead the changes intended to improve general organizational functionality and team collaboration (Irwin, 2018).

It was worth it for the organization to conduct a situational analysis. Since the organizational culture had been doing well initially, I would have provided continuous leadership training to improve the organizational culture rather than changing leadership style (Klaiber, 2013).

References

Dudovskiy, J. (2019, April 3). Apple Leadership: a brief overview – Research-Methodology. Retrieved from https://research-methodology.net/apple-leadership-and-apple-organizational-structure/

Irwin, D. (2018, September 19). 7 Rs of Change Management. Seven Rs of Change Management is a… | by Daniel Irwin | Medium. Retrieved from https://medium.com/@marketing_99371/7-rs-of-change-management-7c5cde17c36a

Klaiber, B. (2013). Anatomy of an Apple – The Lessons Steve Taught Us. Pennsauken: BookBaby.

Martinsons, M. (2017, January 23). What was the organizational model that Apple used to follow at the time of Steve Jobs? Retrieved from https://www.researchgate.net/post/What_was_the_organizational_model_that_Apple_used_to_follow_at_the_time_of_Steve_Jobs

MEYER, P. (2019, 14). Apple Inc.’s Organizational Structure & Its Characteristics (An Analysis) – Panmore Institute. Retrieved from http://panmore.com/apple-inc-organizational-structure-features-pros-cons

Myers, P., Hulks, S., & Wiggins, L. (2012). Organizational Change: Perspectives on Theory and Practice. New York: Oxford University Press.

Tycontent. (2017, March). Ty Content – Apple, Inc.: Motivation and Organizational Change. Retrieved from https://sites.google.com/view/tycontent/topics/business-strategy/apple-inc-motivation-and-organizational-change

RunningHead: APPROACHES OF COMMUNICATION IN CHANGE MANAGEMENT 1

APPROACHES OF COMMUNICATION IN CHANGE MANAGEMENT 4

Approaches to Communication in Change Management.

Students Name:

Professors Name:

Date.

Summary.

Chapter seven of the book has been clearly highlighted and deeply explained in various change communication strategies. Key components and elements in change have been quoted, and perhaps more insights have been provided on how gender, power, and emotions affect the change communication process (Whatfix, 2019). Language has been highlighted as the most valuable ingredient used to influence how people respond to change; it should be known that use of positive language that is captivating positivity, motivation, and encouragement, employees will be likely to accept any suggested change without much resistance, unlike when vulgar and negative language is used to initiate change as it creates self-resistance forces within individuals before even the change itself is introduced.

Change communication is the major component of the information under the change management used as the strategy that facilitates proper understanding of the meaning of change, reasons for change as well as how the said change may impact an organization. The features included communicating through the right people to establish advocates who will help champion the said change (Whatfix, 2019). This will, by extension, involve disseminating information about the change to multiple advocates such as managers and supervisors with an organization that will, in turn, help spread the message to their teams. Worth knowing is that whenever managers and supervisors are fed with the right information about intended change and its purpose, they will definitely face other team members with confidence to champion and rally for the change in question, unlike when they are working with rumors which are known to be a stumbling block for change acceptance due to lack of knowledge about it (Schorn, 2016).

Also, using multiple channels is another crucial feature that provides various strengths that perhaps facilitate change implementation (Whatfix, 2019). Besides, that wide network communication will facilitate change by providing highlights and more insights about the change, raising the probability of implementing the change in question (Whatfix, 2019). Another important feature for effective communication in change management is being specific and also ensuring that communication is always made early and often and perhaps provide details on who be affected, how they will be impacted, what is the change, where and when the change will happen and why the changed may be necessary.

Perhaps the best change management model will serve as the best way of communicating change by keeping all the aspects of change in harmony. I will also wise to constantly communicate about change. As mentioned earlier, communication is one of the single ways change is facilitated. More importantly, the use of open and transparent communication means will effectively drive the change needed to be implemented. The essence of frequent communication will explain why change, impacts, essences tasks are required, and expected outcomes. All this aspect will make the employees feel recognized and perhaps the most crucial instrumental factors which are part and parcel of the organization (Özbebek Tunç & Aslan, 2019).

References

Schorn, M. N. (2016). Management of the Third Stage of Labor: Implementing Best Practices. Best Practices in Midwifery. doi:10.1891/9780826131799.0024

Whatfix. (2019). 7 Best Practices in Change Management Communication. Retrieved from https://academy.whatfix.com/best-practices-change-management-communication/

Özbebek Tunç, A., & Aslan, P. (2019). Business Management and Communication Perspectives in Industry 4.0. Hershey: IGI Global.

Running Head: COMMUNICATION STYLES THAT PROMOTE CHANGE 1

COMMUNICATION STYLES THAT PROMOTE CHANGE 3

Communication Styles that Promote Change.

Students Name:

Professors Name:

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Some of the critical communication styles every leader should aspire to use include coaching, in which case a leader takes the initiative of advising the employees on the best way to approach situations of the handle a particular task (IRVING, 2014). I will use such a type to help my staff develop a broad set of skills and technical know-how on what I tend to change, and by so doing, it will be easy to initiate changes with full support from the staff members. Secondly, I will use teaching as a type of communication to help staff members who seem to be struggling with a particular task or skill. This will lay out a foundation for steps to be followed and explain how and why the teaching is beneficial for future change in how things are done (Pfähler, 2017).

Perhaps the use of directing as a type and style of communication will also help me specify the steps that need to be observed to enable the project to move forward. It should be noted that directing is not the same as dictating; therefore, in every case, leaders use this communication style; they should ensure they are in real sense directing and not dictating their followers. However, if need be, dictation may be sued sparingly when followers perhaps fail to follow the directives given. Besides that, the use of advice will also boost future change since I will be able to clearly spell out and clarify the specific situation to eliminate any form of misconception and misunderstanding to promote intended change.

Finally, by motivating the staff members and listening to them will help me know more about my staff, their preferences as well as knowing them better together with their preferences. This type of communication will facilitate collaboration as a way to lay the foundation for change acceptance and implementation (Prossack, 2018).

References

IRVING, J. (2014, July 31). 5 Types of Leadership Communication | Purpose in Leadership. Retrieved from https://purposeinleadership.com/2014/07/31/5-types-of-leadership-communication/

Pfähler, P. (2017). Leadership Style and Communication. The Example of Larry Page. Munich, Germany: GRIN Verlag.

Prossack, A. (2018, July 31). These 6 Communication Styles Should Be In Every Leader’s Toolbox. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/ashiraprossack1/2018/07/31/these-6-communication-styles-should-be-in-every-leaders-toolbox/#714163525fd7