MAN 4150 Module 2 Diagnosis and Resistance Written Assignment Example

Diagnosing a Newsroom Before Changing It: Type of Change, a Seven-Element Diagnosis and a Second Look at Resistance

Student Name

Bachelor of Science in Organizational Leadership, Thomas Edison State University

MAN-4150: Change Management

Mentor Name

Month Day, Year

Diagnosing a Newsroom Before Changing It: Type of Change, a Seven-Element Diagnosis and a Second Look at Resistance

This second assignment continues with the Delaware Valley Courier, the newspaper introduced in my first written assignment, as it prepares to cut print to three days a week and move its newsroom to a digital-first schedule. The questions ask what kind of change this is, how the organization should be diagnosed before the change goes further and how its leaders should understand the resistance they are meeting.

Question 1: What Type of Change Is This?

Palmer et al. (2017) distinguish changes by scale and depth: first-order changes adjust how an organization does what it already does, while second-order changes alter its basic assumptions, structures and identity. They also distinguish incremental change, made in steps, from transformational change, which reshapes the whole organization.

The Courier's change contains both. Cutting print days and renegotiating delivery contracts is a large but first-order operational change: the paper still produces news, on a different schedule. Moving to digital-first is second-order and transformational, because it changes what the newsroom believes its product is. For generations, success meant the next morning's front page; now it means stories that readers find, read and pay for online at the moment they need them. That shift touches deadlines, story forms, how success is measured and how journalists see their professional identity. Treating the whole program as an operational schedule change, as the first announcement did, underestimates the part that will be hardest.

Question 2: How Should the Newsroom Be Diagnosed?

The textbook presents several diagnostic models that help leaders see an organization as a system before changing it (Palmer et al., 2017). The seven-element framework associated with McKinsey consultants, which looks at seven connected parts of an organization, from its strategy and structure to its people and their skills, suits the Courier because its central insight is that the elements must fit one another.

The diagnosis shows that strategy has moved ahead of everything else. The structure, systems and decision style still serve the printed paper, so reporters receive one message from the strategy and a contrary one from the daily routine. Change efforts should therefore start with systems and style, for example by publishing stories online as soon as they are ready and moving the main news meeting to the morning, so that daily work begins to reinforce the strategy instead of contradicting it.

Question 3: How Should Leaders Understand Resistance?

The usual view treats resistance as an obstacle located in employees. Two articles suggest a more useful view. Piderit (2000) argued that employees' responses to change are often ambivalent, combining positive and negative thoughts, feelings and intentions, and that labeling all reservations as resistance can silence useful dissent. Ford et al. (2008) made the case that the people leading a change often help produce the resistance they complain about, including broken agreements, failures of communication and resistance to employees' objections, and that resistance can even help change by surfacing problems.

Both views fit the Courier. Many reporters accept that digital publishing is necessary but object to being judged by page views; that is ambivalence, not opposition. And some resistance followed management's own missteps: the first announcement contradicted an earlier promise that no reporting jobs would be cut, and questions at the staff meeting were deferred to a later date that never came. Treating these reactions as information, by restoring trust on the job promise and holding a real question-and-answer session, would do more than pressing harder.

Ambivalence also points to where leaders can gain support cheaply. Reporters who accept the goal but distrust the metrics may embrace a measurement system they help design. The Courier could invite three reporters to work with the audience analyst on which measures should appear in the newsroom's weekly report, turning a source of resistance into a source of ownership.

Personal Reflection

As features editor I recognize ambivalence in my own reactions, as I described in the first assignment. Reading Ford et al. made me uncomfortable in a useful way: when I explained the change to my own writers, I deferred their questions about measurement because I did not know the answers, and that probably increased their suspicion. Next time I will say what I do not know and promise a date for an answer, then keep it.

Conclusion

The Courier is undertaking a transformational change dressed as a scheduling decision. A seven-element diagnosis shows that its strategy has outrun its structure, systems and style, and a more careful reading of resistance suggests that many objections are ambivalence or responses to management's own missteps. Aligning daily systems with the strategy and treating resistance as information are the next steps.

References

Ford, J. D., Ford, L. W., & D'Amelio, A. (2008). Resistance to change: The rest of the story. Academy of Management Review, 33(2), 362-377. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2008.31193235

Palmer, I., Dunford, R., & Akin, G. (2017). Managing organizational change: A multiple perspectives approach (3rd ed.). McGraw-Hill Education.

Piderit, S. K. (2000). Rethinking resistance and recognizing ambivalence: A multidimensional view of attitudes toward an organizational change. Academy of Management Review, 25(4), 783-794. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2000.3707722