MBA 687 Module 3 Milestone One Change Readiness Assessment example

Milestone One: Change Readiness and Cultural Needs Assessment for the Veritane US Platform Consolidation

[Student Name]

Southern New Hampshire University

MBA 687: Leading Organizational Change

Module Three Milestone One

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

The organization, setting and figures below are a composite written as a model document. No real employer, client, colleague or patient is described.

Milestone One: Change Readiness and Cultural Needs Assessment for the Veritane US Platform Consolidation

The Change Being Assessed

Headquartered in Singapore, Veritane sells supply chain software worldwide; its U.S. arm, based in Delaware, employs about 140 people and brings in close to 20 million dollars a year. Headquarters has approved the One Platform program, which will move the branch's 38 enterprise clients from U.S. custom code onto a single global configurable platform over 18 months and reorganize the branch's 52 engineers into product squads shared with Singapore. As the HR consultant engaged for the program, I was asked to assess whether the branch is ready for this change and what cultural needs a change plan must address. The assessment draws on a readiness survey completed by 118 of 140 employees, 22 interviews and a review of the last two years of engagement data and exit interviews.

Readiness Framework

Armenakis et al. (1993) defined readiness as the cognitive precursor to resistance or support: the beliefs, attitudes and intentions employees form about the need for a change and the organization's capacity to make it. Later work identified five beliefs that together make up readiness. Discrepancy is the belief that change is needed. Appropriateness is the belief that this particular change is the right response. Efficacy is confidence that the organization and its people can carry it out. Principal support is the belief that leaders are committed and will see it through. Personal valence is the belief that the change will benefit the individual. Holt et al. (2007) developed and validated a survey instrument measuring readiness through similar dimensions, and the survey used here adapted its items to the branch's situation. Weiner (2009) added that readiness is shared: it depends on whether members collectively value the change and believe they can accomplish it together, which is why results were examined by team as well as overall.

Survey Results

Table 1 shows the percentage of employees agreeing with each readiness statement, overall and by team.

Table 1

Agreement With Readiness Statements by Team

Note. Composite survey, 84% response rate. Percentages combine agree and strongly agree.

What the Results Show

The branch accepts that change is needed but doubts this change and doubts its leaders. Nearly two thirds of employees agree that the current way of working has to change; engineers in particular described the strain of maintaining dozens of client versions. Agreement falls sharply when the question turns to the platform itself and further when it turns to leadership. Only about one employee in four believes leaders will see this change through, and that single figure is the clearest readiness risk in the survey. Interviews explain it directly: most respondents mentioned the customer system rollout that headquarters abandoned two years ago.

The team pattern matters as much as the averages. Implementation and support staff are the least ready on every belief except discrepancy, and only 15 percent expect to benefit personally, which matches the analysis that their build work will largely disappear. Sales staff are skeptical of the platform's appropriateness because they fear losing clients who value tailored features. Engineers are the most ready overall but have the lowest confidence in leadership of any group except implementation. Operations staff are the most positive, largely because the change affects them least.

Broader engagement data support the picture. Engagement stood at 58 percent in the last annual survey, only 41 percent of staff reported trust in senior leadership, and just 29 percent agreed that headquarters listens to ideas from the branch. Voluntary turnover reached 19 percent last year, with 27 departures, and exit interviews frequently cited decisions made in Singapore without U.S. input.

Culture Analysis

Schein and Schein (2017) separate what a visitor can observe in an organization, what its members say they value and the unspoken assumptions that sit underneath both. At the level of artifacts, the branch operates largely apart from headquarters: separate chat channels, few shared meetings and global all-hands calls scheduled late in the U.S. evening. Its espoused value, printed on the office wall, is customer intimacy. The underlying assumption, repeated in interview after interview, is that the branch wins by building whatever a client asks for. That assumption made the branch successful for a decade, and it runs directly against a program designed to standardize the product.

Headquarters holds a different set of assumptions. Its engineering culture values process discipline and a shared product roadmap, and decisions are typically settled among senior leaders and then announced. Meyer (2014) describes how national business cultures differ in communication and decision making, placing the United States among the most explicit, low-context cultures and Singapore further toward high context, where more meaning is conveyed implicitly and hierarchy shapes who decides. U.S. staff read short announcements from Singapore as abrupt and final; headquarters staff read the branch's open debate in meetings as resistance. Neither reading is accurate, but each has hardened into a story about the other side.

The result is a cultural gap on two fronts: a clash between customization and standardization, and a clash between styles of communicating and deciding. A plan that addresses only the first will still fail on the second.

Cultural and Readiness Needs

The findings translate into six needs that the change management plan must meet.

Need 1, credible local sponsorship: the branch needs a visible U.S. sponsor with authority over migration sequencing, and a public commitment from headquarters on timeline and resources, to address low principal support. Need 2, a case made in the branch's terms: the reasons for the platform must be explained through client and employee benefits, including faster updates and fewer late-night fixes, not only global efficiency. Need 3, a future for implementation staff: a defined configuration consultant role, training and career path, announced with the program. Need 4, a client protection plan for sales: agreed standards for which custom features become platform options and a migration order that protects key accounts. Need 5, a bridge between the two cultures: joint squads with overlapping working hours, shared rituals, and explicit agreements about how decisions are made and communicated between Singapore and the branch. Need 6, capability building: platform training for engineers and consultants before their first migrations, to raise efficacy.

Taken together, the needs point to a change approach that combines headquarters' direction with genuine participation by branch employees in how the change is carried out.

Limitations

Survey responses were collected shortly after rumors of the program began circulating, which may have depressed results. Team sizes are small, so differences of a few percentage points should not be overinterpreted. The survey also measured beliefs, not behavior; readiness should be reassessed after the first client migrations to see whether confidence rises with experience.

References

Armenakis, A. A., Harris, S. G., & Mossholder, K. W. (1993). Creating readiness for organizational change. Human Relations, 46(6), 681-703. https://doi.org/10.1177/001872679304600601

Holt, D. T., Armenakis, A. A., Feild, H. S., & Harris, S. G. (2007). Readiness for organizational change: The systematic development of a scale. Journal of Applied Behavioral Science, 43(2), 232-255. https://doi.org/10.1177/0021886306295295

Meyer, E. (2014). The culture map: Breaking through the invisible boundaries of global business. PublicAffairs.

Schein, E. H., & Schein, P. A. (2017). Organizational culture and leadership (5th ed.). Wiley.

Weiner, B. J. (2009). A theory of organizational readiness for change. Implementation Science, 4, Article 67. https://doi.org/10.1186/1748-5908-4-67