MT497 Unit 9 Pilot Change Management Plan Example

Losses Before Messages: An MT497 Unit 9 Change Management Plan for the Caldwell Run Pilot

[Student Name]

Purdue University Global

MT497: Bachelor's Capstone in Organizational Management

Unit 9 Change Management Plan

[Instructor Name]

[Date]

Caldwell Run, its staff groups, baselines and targets are composite; the sources cited are real.

Purpose

The Unit 8 design asks for three changes: behavior notes in a required software field, a daily huddle that decides when a dog is ready, and a weekly joint review by the two managers. Each changes someone's work. This plan treats resistance as a predictable response to something real being taken away, so it names each group's loss before planning any message. Kotter and Schlesinger (1979) found that resistance most often comes from people expecting to lose something they value, and that the response should fit the reason.

What Each Group Gives Up

Adoption counselors lose sole authority to list a dog. Until now, a counselor could list any dog the kennel had cleared, and several described listing as the part of the job that felt most like their own judgment. Kennel leads gain authority in the huddle but also a daily obligation at 9:30, during the busiest part of the morning. Volunteers who walk and promote dogs fear that a required behavior field will label their favorites as hard to place, so fewer families will meet them. The behavior coordinator gains a formal decision but also a daily meeting and visibility for every delay. The two managers give up a monthly meeting they found useful and take on a weekly review of a number they share and neither controls. The board's lifesaving committee fears that slower, safer listing will lower the placement rate it reports to donors.

Each group's loss is stated in the words its members used in interviews.

Commitment Chart

Beckhard and Harris (1987) proposed charting each group's present commitment and the commitment a change needs, on a scale from no commitment through letting it happen and helping it happen to making it happen.

1. Adoption counselors: present, no commitment; needed, let it happen.

2. Kennel leads and attendants: present, let it happen; needed, make it happen.

3. Behavior coordinator role: present, help it happen; needed, help it happen.

4. Volunteers: present, no commitment; needed, let it happen.

5. Animal care and adoption managers: present, help it happen; needed, make it happen.

6. Board lifesaving committee: present, no commitment; needed, let it happen.

Only two groups must reach active support, the kennel leads and the two managers, because the huddle and the weekly review depend on them. The others need only to allow the change. Keeping the required movement small concentrates effort where the pilot cannot work without it.

Support Shaped by the Losses

Each support measure answers a specific loss. Counselors keep the final say on matching a listed dog with a family, which is the judgment they value most; the huddle decides only whether a dog can be listed. Volunteers get a seat at one huddle each week and a line in the behavior field for positive notes, so the field records what makes a dog appealing as well as what makes it hard. Kennel leads have the huddle's fifteen minutes protected on the schedule, with feeding rotated to cover it. The board's committee receives the evaluation plan before the pilot begins, so it can see that thirty-day returns are measured alongside length of stay.

Communication

The two managers present the pilot together at each shift change in the week before launch, so kennel and adoption staff hear it from both departments at once rather than through their own manager. Each briefing covers the finding, the three changes, what stays the same and the review date. An all-staff session follows only after every shift has been briefed, so that nobody hears about the change second-hand. Volunteers are briefed at their monthly meeting by the volunteer coordinator and the behavior coordinator. The board committee is briefed by the director. After launch, a short written note goes to every shift each Friday with the week's four figures, one example of the huddle working and one problem being fixed. Reporting a problem openly is deliberate: staff who see difficulties acknowledged are more likely to raise new ones than to work around the change quietly.

Evaluation

Four measures are tracked weekly, each with a baseline from the diagnosis and a target at week six. Average length of stay for dogs, baseline 19 days, target 16. Returns within thirty days for behavior, baseline about seven a quarter, target no more than two during the pilot. Dogs listed with the new note field filled in, baseline none, target 95 percent of listings. A one-item pulse survey asking whether staff know who decides when a dog is ready, baseline 38 percent agreeing, target 70 percent. The review falls at the end of week six, when the same four people who launched the pilot judge each change against its figures. Cummings and Worley (2019) stress that evaluation measures should be set before an intervention starts, so that results are not chosen after the fact.

References

Beckhard, R., & Harris, R. T. (1987). Organizational transitions: Managing complex change (2nd ed.). Addison-Wesley.

Cummings, T. G., & Worley, C. G. (2019). Organization development and change (11th ed.). Cengage Learning.

Kotter, J. P., & Schlesinger, L. A. (1979). Choosing strategies for change. Harvard Business Review, 57(2), 106-114.