Organizational Change in the United States Air Force

Organizational Change in the United States Air Force
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Introduction
Change is the most important variable that leaders can count on today to be successful. Organizational change can come in the form of incorporating new technology into the organization, cost reductions, compliance with a newly introduced directive or regulation or just an organization change for the sake of change. The leaders must be ready for change since the future is very dynamic. They need to develop useful strategies and execute relevant plans that generate fundamental and long-lasting organizational change to deal with the challenges effectively. Leaders should take into consideration important steps that will help their strategies of organizational change and plans to affect the important parts of their company to produce a useful and lasting change (Weiss, 2016). One important aspect of most successful organizations is that they have discovered a new way of having all the company employees on board with the organizational changes. As easy it may sound, many organizations have failed to incorporate the seemingly easy task. According to Lewis (2011), close to 70% of the initiative to change often fail. The success of organizational changes could increase if the companies utilized the Kotter's 8 Step Model. The paper will discuss the organizational change in the United States Air Force using the Kotter's 8 Step Model.
Company Overview
The United States Air Force has gone through many organizational changes over the past several years. The changes have taken many forms and have been applied to both the inside the Air Force service and the outside. Examples of the organizational changes generated by the Air Force include execution of the Objective Wing structure of organization, consolidation and realignment of the specialty codes of the Air Force and the change of the design of the dress code uniform of the service (Lewis, 2011). Organizational changes that have been incorporated from the outside service of the Air Force include the personnel and fiscal reductions, introduction of new laws and regulations and a dynamic threat environment. The United States Air Force over the last ten years has downsized its military service members by about 36 percent. It has also altered its business operations to take into consideration the environmental affairs early during the procurement procedure. The Air Force has closed down and even consolidated most of its service facilities and bases in the United States and overseas. The Air Force has also adopted the Total Quality Management principles. The effectiveness of the organizational change, however, is still open to debate.
The environment on which the United States operates is always changing. The organization needs to have a strong ability to transform itself quickly to conform and fit the changes for an effective service delivery. The senior leaders must give the troops the freedom to choose on their portions of the service so long as they remain consistent with the guidance of the leaders. Proper communication strategies should be utilized during command updates, mission, orders, plans and strategies for practical assignments. The communication challenges that face the Air Force unit include the lack of proper leadership, lack of guidance when the workforce is not willing and motivated to seek it and dealing with conflicting and overload information. All these challenges should be dealt with efficiently for the Air Force to deliver quality services that the country deserves. This calls for organizational change in the Air Force (Smith, 2013).
Diagnosis
Organizational change can be defined as the transformation of an organization. Change takes place when major sections or business operations of an organization are altered. Before determining the model to be used to change the company, the attitudes of the unwilling persons should be developed and the workforce motivated. Often, people resist change because they do not want to change their habits, the fear of the unknown or feeling threatened by the changing economic factors. Organizations are more likely to accept change by changing the attitudes of the employees. Management needs to help the workforce go through the change. Proper communication is the key driving force for organizational change. The management should communicate openly with the employees about the desired changes lest they feel left in the dark and cause resentment.
Additionally, it is important to develop support and commitment to the workforce. To go through change successfully, emphasis must be put on altering the workforce's attitude. Once the management together with the employees has changed their attitude and are on board with the transition, they can then analyze and decide on a model of change to administer. One of the needs to change the United States Air Force is to create a quality Air Force with a commitment to leadership and style of operation that incorporates teamwork, trust and continuous improvement of the Air Force Service Unit. During the early 1990's, the Chief of the Air Force in the United States, McPeak came up with an organizational change in the service. His vision was to ensure that the Quality Air Force approach become a part of the culture of the service. His goal was to change the shape of the organization culture of civilians and military that range from aircraft and pilot personnel to scientists and doctors. From this organizational change, we can learn how the Air Force set out to execute the change (Smith, 2013).
The root cause of the Quality Air Force change plan dates back to the reign of Ronald Reagan when he decided to implement an order to increase the productiv...