The fundamental aspect of integrating change in any organization is to enhance performance. Over the year, giant corporations which control the upper economy have embraced the need for change. Employees get to gain new skills on how to undertake and solve arising problems. Senior managers agree on the effects that are associated with monotonous activities. A repetitious work denies an individual the ability to be creative.
However, change presents golden opportunities since it overrides the previous weaknesses of an organization (Davila, 2021). The weight-load can be felt by the management when introducing change. Spin masters in an organization try to resist change without knowing that with change, employees tend to be more committed to their specialized tasks. Therefore, for any organization, the key to survival in the competitive market is how fast they adapt and accept change to their daily activities.
United States Postal Service (USPS) was established on 1 July 1971. It was tasked with several functions that include delivering or mails to households, providing post office boxes to a thousand US citizens. The Second Continental Congress initiated the mailing activities on 26 July of the same year of its inception. Over the year, USPS has provided many miscellaneous services, including banking services, preparing and delivering passports, and office stationaries (Davila, 2021). USPS has greatly changed the social life of every American citizen. Also, it recently proved to change and shape the democracy of every citizen by taking part in voting activities. However, the USPS has recently been facing challenges that threaten its closure. Therefore, the service providers should consider change as their survival mechanism.
Originally, USPS was formed with the main aim of binding the nation together. The service provider neglected the fundamental part of being incorporated, to make a profit. Also, it neglected the aspect of strategizing its future sustainability process. Technology is advancing at a supersonic speed; therefore, USPS is unable to thrive in this environment. The company has always specialized in delivering physical mail. However, the fast-changing technological environment has left the company struggling with the old methods of communication as the market shift to the more advanced methods (Tanner, 2021).
The quality of the world-class mail system has, over time, deteriorated. USPS can no longer sustain their daily activities in a market dominated by other express mail service providers. Also, the company has been lately facing political interference whereby some individuals from different political sides criticize USPS management from a political point of view.
Sense of Urgency
USPS’s management should meet with relevant stakeholders to merge with the reasons why change is needed and, of course, why it is required instantly. Deciding to adopt change should be done almost immediately to avoid further losses. Also, this scenario of urgency provides good platform arguments which further develop to decisions. The critical stakeholders will have to agree that there is a need for change when logical reasoning is argued against (Tanner, 2021). In USPS’s case, the management can communicate on the state of their methods of delivery. In case they are outdated, and they need to be replaced with more advanced techniques. They can opt to merge with other Postal service providers who use electron mails. The company can seek to merge with a section of google that is controlling Gmail.
Guiding Coalition
The main focus of this step is to determine a change element. USPS can seek to find relevant information regarding mailing from well-established mailing systems. The company can hire specialized personnel tasked with a mandate of searching the most critical aspect while searching for favorable change (Phu & Viet, 2017). The step of the guiding coalition is preparing employees to expect change. A manager can select a group of employee who is likely to embrace change. They can be attached to the already selected leader of change. The selected group can be used to conduct benchmarking. The US Postal Inspection Service department can send a team to Google to seek enlightenment on digitizing their activities.
Developing a Change Vision and Strategy
After coalitioning the guide, the management should communicate how the USPS should look like should it adopt a digitalized system of providing services. USPS can conduct workshop demonstrations on how to provide mailing systems in real-time. However, there should be a distinction between USPS’s independent setup and the guiding party (Adie, 2017). The workshop simulations should be sensible and easy to administer to the public; they should be practical. After conducting several workshop simulations, USPS is likely to determine the most vulnerable section in the company that needs to be changed. Most like the time and mode of delivery. As witnessed from the previous efforts of other companies that tried to initiate change, half of them get opposition from the employees and the stakeholders. The scenario occurs when the vision and future expectations of change seem undesirable or over-ambitious.
Communicating the Change
USPS should vividly explain to every stakeholder at all costs the change that is likely to be initiated. The step communicates the departments affected by the change and what kind of commitment the involved stakeholders expect. The process of communicating change promotes a strong understanding of the change. In the case of USPS, the Information technology department should take the initiative to teach the affected departments on the likely outcomes of the change and how they should embrace the change.
Empower Board Based Action
In every change initiated, there is a likelihood of resistance, and therefore, this stage is basically adopted to eradicate the obstacles that do not favor the change. However, when the change leader and the guiding body communicate well with the human resource, the resistance to change can be infinitesimal or insignificant to be felt (Adie, 2017). The previously used organization structure should be altered to suit the requirement of the change. Therefore, the change leader should understand how to handle the anticipated USPS future.
Draw the Short-Term Wins
The USPS change leader should creatively structure short-term strategies which will pool up to be long-term. USPS should include a department supporting clients who need their information typed or stored in the cloud server to ensure easy retrieval (Phu & Viet, 2017). The change leader should always point out sections that need to be changed. There may arise a need to adopt the use of a drone to deliver parcels. With time USPS can think of starting their airline company
Integrate Gains and Implement extra change
The step stirs USPS to keep on practicing the new change. The change leader and the guiding party should seek more finance to stir up the change at this step. Adjusting the already adopted change should be mandatory, and also, a small change can as well initiated to complement the overall change. The short-term wins should be fully implemented while complimenting the current organization structure.
Integrate Change in the organization Culture
Once USPS has established a good connection between the change and the human resource, there should be some efforts to integrate the already initiated change into the business environment fully. At this stage, every employee is expected to have known the technology already in place for use (Davila, 2021). The support team should communicate the necessary information to the public, and slowly, the change will be part of the USPS norm.
Conclusion
USPS should seek other alternatives that will guarantee its sustainability. Any company undergoing problems with their management system or in the production like should focus on change as an alternative variable. Therefore, USPS should try and change their general activities. Kotter provides a model which every struggling organization should follow should they seek to adopt change. His model examines different aspects like communication and work relationships in the external environment of the business. Therefore, the organization structure should also be re-engineered to fit the current trends in mail delivery, as in the case of USPS.
References
Adie, D. K. (2017). Monopoly Mail: Privatizing the United States Postal Service. Routledge. Web.
Davila, G. (2021). The Effects of Privatizing the United States Postal Service (Doctoral dissertation, California State University, Northridge). Web.
Phu, H., & Viet, D. D. T. (2017). Cost Control in the United States Postal Service-The Institutional Effects and Implications. VNU Journal of Science: Policy and Management Studies, vol. 33(], no. 2. Web.
Tanner, R., 2021. Kotter’s Eight Step Leading Change Model. Management is a Journey®. Web.