-
QUESTION
Title:
Create an Innovation
Paper Details
Create an Innovation (Benchmark Assignment)
Details:
Evaluate the internal processes or strategies within an organization in which you are involved, such as your (my workplace is school), church, or community group, in order to identify a problem that provides an opportunity for innovation. Then, determine an innovative solution for addressing that problem. Examples of potential solutions are entering a new market, implementing a new practice or process, or even changing management structures. The ultimate goal of your solution should be to increase the diffusion of innovation within the organization and contribute to a culture that appreciates innovation as a key to competitive advantage and organizational success.
You should research and select a model for evaluating both the feasibility of your idea and the implementation plan.
- Describe the problem your innovation targets. What is the scope of the problem and which stakeholders, both within the organization and without, does it impact?
- Describe your innovation and explain how it addresses the problem. How will it meet the needs of the organization and all stakeholders involved?
- How does the innovation contribute to the organization’s competitive advantage?
- Develop an implementation plan for effectively diffusing the innovation within the organization. Make sure the plan addresses potential resistance and obstacles, including people and processes.
- Identify an appropriate method that could be used for measuring the impact of the innovation on the organization. Explain why you think this is a relevant measure.
- Finally, assume your innovation is adopted by the organization. Make recommendations for additional improvements within in this organization (in processes, practices, structures, etc.) that could create and sustain momentum for innovation.
Include at least eight in-text citations from at least five secondary resources from your research.
Prepare this assignment according to the guidelines found in the APA Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center. An abstract is not required.
Subject | Business | Pages | 4 | Style | APA |
---|
Answer
Leadership Problems in Schools
Today's education system incorporates ingrained practices and tents, taking into account the policy and decade-old methods, which have been a significant challenge to educational institutions that seek to move to competence-based models. Schools today face a substantive number of challenges, especially with the advent of globalization. To sustain and survive, there have been numerous intricacies that have faced the leadership as they seek to combat some difficulties. Besides that, the management has also tried to confront challenges that are pertinent to their organizational structures. To this respect, a good number of educational institutions have incepted multivariate leadership approaches. However, according to Hackman and Johnson, (2013), the negative side outcome of the changes within the educational sector have brought about immense corrosion corporate legitimacy, loss of trust in the partnerships and directors, as well as the inherent deterioration of the social capital. To solve this, CSR as well as change in management structures and norms has been delineated as a motivation method.
Innovation Strategy (Breaking Down the Silos)
Leaders in such an organization have to continuously keep themselves abased to learning and discovering new ideas, processes, things that are aimed at bettering the entity (Goetsch and Davis, 2014). To this effect, there is a need for the leadership to be both foresight and far sight, always focusing on the interests of the entity on a going concern basis. The leadership, can, in their own entirety become competitive by gaining advantage over their competitors. They must synchronize themselves in learning mode all the time, and by so doing, they are creating a learning framework within the organization. Leadership concerning the learning organization has become imperative to the overall success of an educational set up such as a school, because management tools may not be ideal all the time (Purvanova and Bono, 2009). It is important that the silos are broke down. This means that there is a need for the inception of utmost transparent communication and bring forth a boundary-less organization whose only culture is mainly focused on the betterment of the institution.
Organization's Competitive Advantage
For a savvy entity such as a school, knowledge on the need for organizational agility is profound –one that is driven from the ground up and that the prevalence of better communication channels eradicate language silos in school and precipitates the time that is needed to attain a competitive advantage over the rest (Men, 2014). By so doing, skilled staff can be precisely identified within the global talent pool and attached to diverse and dynamic areas of the entity. For instance, an educational instructor with computer and IT skills could be easily transferred to a different department within the school, provided he or she has the necessary pre-requisites. Such personnel who work in specific areas of competence and are impeccable instructors could be empowered with clear and concise communication channels (Shockley-Zalabak, 2014). This does not only accord them with professional satisfaction but also allows them to be elevated to a level where their inherent knowledge becomes leveraged throughout the entity.
Implementation Plan
To avert such problems that arise as a result of leadership problems, the organization with the aim of implementing a structured approach to internal communications could have in place a communication strategist –an individual who will have thorough knowledge and in-depth understanding of the enterprise, its systems, and people. In the event that rapid, clear and precise information is required, they are tasked with the responsibility of providing the management team with strategic advantage techniques (Terek et al., 2015). The communications manager could collect all the relevant contact information form the employees as well as pertinent key resources. While coming up with an effective communications plan, the contingency and crisis plans should be incorporated so as to avoid or greatly avert the necessary crisis.
Measuring the Impact of Innovation
It is important to take note that employee awareness that emanated from the internal communication is deemed to be one of the easiest to measure (Fairhurst, 2008). To begin with, it is important to measure the institutions reach through diverse communication channels. For example through assessing how many employees can be reached via email, how many are subscribed to the firm's blog and access to the website, etc. Also, it is imperative to measure employees' level of interest. Metrics such as how many of the employees were reached through emails and how many clicks or views were portrayed on the blogs could be a clear indication. Consequently, carrying out employee surveys to gauge awareness, engagement and interest could also be used. The survey, as explored by (Kahai et al., 2015) is depicted to be the most prevalent used measurement tool for internal communications.
Recommendations
In order to avert problems that may arise due to poor communication, it is prudent to use multiple channels of communication. This ensures that the entire employment workforce receives your messages across multiple channels. Some of them include, but not limited to; face-to-face talks, meetings, emails, telephone calls and messages. Additionally, it is important that messages that are deemed crucial and important should be repeated over the channels named above.
References
Fairhurst, G. T. (2008). Discursive leadership: A communication alternative to leadership psychology. Management Communication Quarterly, 21(4), 510-521. Goetsch, D. L., & Davis, S. B. (2014). Quality management for organizational excellence. Upper Saddle River, NJ: pearson. Hackman, M. Z., & Johnson, C. E. (2013). Leadership: A communication perspective. Waveland Press. Kahai, S. S., Huang, R., & Jestice, R. J. (2012). Interaction effect of leadership and communication media on feedback positivity in virtual teams. Group & Organization Management, 37(6), 716-751. Men, L. R. (2014). Why leadership matters to internal communication: Linking transformational leadership, symmetrical communication, and employee outcomes. Journal of Public Relations Research, 26(3), 256-279. Purvanova, R. K., & Bono, J. E. (2009). Transformational leadership in context: Face-to-face and virtual teams. The Leadership Quarterly, 20(3), 343-357. Shockley-Zalabak, P. (2014). Fundamentals of organizational communication. Pearson. Terek, E., Glušac, D., Nikolic, M., Tasic, I., & Gligorovic, B. (2015). The Impact of Leadership on the Communication Satisfaction of Primary School Teachers in Serbia. Educational Sciences: Theory and Practice, 15(1), 73-84.
|