CHANGE MANAGEMENT

“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort” – Paul J Meyer (Become the coach you were meant to be – 2007)

Management and planning are the core ingredients of success to all the major companies across the world. The true productivity of a successful company lies in the management and leadership skills of the employees of the company. Being a Mechanical engineer who worked as a project manager in a leading company for two years, I realised that the technical knowledge of a product or service is not only what makes it a success but the management skills and techniques that the leaders of the company induces towards their colleges.

This outcome propels towards the fact that there is a need for change in management and adapting to Hofstede’s cultural dimensions (Hofstede 2014). Management is getting the required work done through the efforts of other people, while Leadership is the process of facilitating individual and collective efforts to accomplish shared objectives (Mullins, 2016). Hence an upgradation from Managers to Leaders is also essential in a company.

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British exit or Brexit, as its name suggests is the process of Britain’s exit from the European Union which was triggered on the 29^th of March 2017(Brexit) (New York Times – Oct 29,2019). This Major change could possibly affect the cost of living, customers, costs of products, labour costs etc. (The visual journalism team BBC News, 2019). This Blog will discuss the requirement for Change, due to Brexit in the Leading supermarket chain brand known as TESCO along with solutions to overcome the situation for the company.

Brexit’s Impact

Britain imports about half its food and 30% comes from the EU (The guardian 2019)and it has been warned by the British retail consortium that Tesco would face extra time on delivering perishables, which means most of the food products which has an expiry date of about four days would be held under check-up for two days before reaching the customer, giving them lesser shelf time. As mentioned by Tesco’s chief executive Dave Lewis, “Crashing out of the EU would create problems for Tesco, because it would introduce a hard border between the UK and its neighbours.”. The continuity of supply is one of the major factors that Tesco would encounter as Brexit would adversely affect their benefits in the field of price, quality and choice. As a result of the Brexit uncertainty, the value of sterling has dropped 14% as compared to Euro since 2016 (Sean Farrell 2019). In spite of facing pressure and turmoil, there is still hope and a properly designed strategy can help them adapt and conquer the market thereby upholding their name of being the third largest retailer in the world (tescoplc.com).

Business Solution

Brexit is indefinitely going to cause an impact on TESCO’s daily work ethics. The effects of Brexit will be different for each branch depending on the work environment, type of customers, transportation distance etc. To overcome this change TESCO should implement Lewin’s change management model (Hussain 2018) through which they must unfreeze from the existing work strategies, analyse the change, find a suitable strategy, adapt and freeze onto the new strategy and implement it smoothly.

All these changes need to be done in the form of an organizational iceberg (Hellriegel- D.Jackson) so as to keep everything in order, by which the process of changing management should be subtle and invisible to the naked eye. To begin off their management strategy, they should introduce a situational leadership so as to build up the team, make them more effective and help them adapt to the new change (Mullins 2016). Change of leadership style or an upgradation in the leadership style of a company will bring a major outcome in improving its performance, similar to the case of Barclays (the guardian 2013).

The Top managers and leaders should then implement Adair’s action centred leadership style (Adair 1973 – Action centred leadership) by which they will have full command over the three main areas of the action centred plan and control over each of the elements according to the situation (Alan chapman 2000-2012).

Once the leaders have control of the situation, they should diagnose the impact of the change (burnes 2009;337) and adapt to the concept of an emergent change (burnes 2010) for which Tesco has to analyse the five major factors in order to attain a successful change.

LEARNING OUTCOMES

Brexits huge impact will have to be managed perfectly by Tesco in order to overpower the situation. They can start off with Lewin’s change management model through which they would unfreeze from the current strategy and adapt to Adairs action centred plan under a situational leadership style. Once this strategy is implemented, they can analyse and bring together the five major factors of the emergent change thereby bringing a successful change.

REFERENCES

• “Become the coach you were meant to be” – Pual J Meyer (2007)
• The visual journalism team BBC News, 2019
• Understanding organisational cultures – karencacciattolo 2014 (https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e614/a608efa9e37a801962e2cbb70451572e131c.pdf)
• New York Times – Oct 29,2019 – https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/world/europe/what-is-brexit.html
• John Adair action centred leadership concept, Alan chapman review and summary 2000-2012, available at : https://www.businessballs.com/leadership-models/action-centred-leadership-john-adair/
• Adair, J.E. 1973. Action- centred leadership (p 07-084428). New York : McFraw Hill
• Hellriegel- D.Jackson, S E and Slocum, J.W.Jr., Management, Eighth edition, south western publishing(1998),p 6.
• Tescoplc.com – https://www.tescoplc.com/about/our-businesses/
• Sean Farrell (2019) – Tesco has it tough enough already without a no-deal Brexit
• The Guardian – Sept 28,2019 – https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/sep/28/tesco-no-deal-brexit-supermarkets-hard-border-uk-eu
• Hofstede 2014 – http://geert-hostede.com/dimensions.html