Currently, leadership and change have become key aspects of the success of every contemporary business. There is a growing need for the organizations to adopt the change in its operations as a way of ensuring that it keeps up with the changing market needs. Also, suitable leadership is essential in making the change. This paper discusses the aspect of change at SpaceX and also explores its leadership. The company was founded by Elon Musk in the year 2002 and has its headquarters in Hawthorne, California. It specializes in the manufacture of aerospace and space transportation. Since its formation, the organization has undergone various changes in its business with the leadership of its CEO, Musk, making it grow and gain a big market share in the industry (Lippert, 2015).
The paper discusses the significance for the change in SpaceX, highlighting key aspects that are impacted by the organization due to change. Also, it explores how the transformational leadership has been embraced at SpaceX by focussing on the role of Elon in change formulation and delivery in the business. Besides, the report brings out the various barriers to change and suggests the effective ways to overcome the issues. Further, the essay provides the strategies and methods to help in planning, implementation and the evaluation of change. Thus, the paper is essential in helping to reveal key information on the change and its management in the business.
Analysis and Discussion
The Significance for Change in Contemporary Organizations
Change has various aspects of significance to the business operation in the current society. Through change, the business companies obtain and sustain the competitive edge in the industry. Failure to continuously embrace change makes the company lose the capability of meeting the needs of the growing customer base, especially in the contemporary business organizations. Unlike the traditional organizations, the contemporary ones give more control to the workers and more flexibility to the organizations that use this system, and thus, promotes the adoption of change. Just like other businesses, SpaceX will have a lot of benefits derived from embracing the change in its business (Gilbert-Bonner, 2017).
Firstly, accepting and incorporating change into the business helps the organization to enjoy the benefits that come about from technology. Technology is a dynamic factor and its characteristics are always changing. This, in turn, demands a high level of flexibility in the company that wishes to enjoy the advantages of technology. Technology provides efficiency, saves time and provides the general competitive power in the sector. Failure to hold it makes the company use operation strategies that are obsolete, thus losing the competitive edge. SpaceX, being a technology driven company, will reap a lot of benefits when it incorporates the change in its way of doing business (Neves & Schyns, 2018). The need specifications for the aeronautics are dynamic, a factor that must be considered for effectiveness in the business. The organization needs to stay on toes at all times to ensure that it takes up any new technology that comes about in line with its business. Thus, embracing change will help SpaceX to adopt the best technology of the time, a factor that will help its business to a large extent.
Secondly, change provides a way to handle the ever-changing customer or market needs. Usually, the provided solution only satisfies the customer at a given point in time. Customer needs evolve and they want some improved elucidation that is always the best at the time (McCalman et al., 2016). Within the same sector, new needs come about while the existing ones evolve to become complex than the initial time. Regarding SpaceX, the needs for space exploration and transport are always coming into place. The customers now want fast means of transport, more intelligent machines to travel in, improved safety and better communication approach with its staffs that move in the space among many others (Rossotto & Bitbol-Saba, 2018). SpaceX will manage to continuously satisfy these changing market needs by staying dynamic in its operations.
Thirdly, change is the best way to manage growth as the economy changes. As the economy of the nation where the business operates change, the business is also forced to change to avoid stress. The business needs to expand over time as it continues to operate in the market. It needs to improve on its economic factors such as increasing profit and better remuneration for the employees among many other factors. Since its establishment in the year 2002, SpaceX continuously makes efforts to grow from one level to the other as a way to increase the revenue and coop with up with the changing economy of the world. Therefore, change will significantly help the business to move with the current economy of the arena (Stringham et al., 2015).
Also, it is clear that change is critical in helping the organizations to get the growth opportunities. It is the best avenue through which the business can realize its underlying opportunities that can be lucrative for its operations. Through change, there are many opportunities related to space operation that SpaceX is likely to get. Thus, change is important is finding business opportunities. Lastly, with a change-oriented mind, companies are likely to challenge their status quo. They tend to think about finding better ways than the existing ones. This spirit is the key driver towards attaining innovation in the business. The nature of business for SpaceX needs innovation and this can be best attained by cultivating a change-oriented spirit that will drive people to always think in a different way.
Transformational Leadership: the Role of Elon Musk in Change Formulation and Delivery
Business leadership is one of the essential factors that drive the business towards the success of every business organization. Every business that has achieved a high level of success has been found to have a great transformational leader (Kramer, 2015). Elon Musk is one of the world’s transformational leaders who drive businesses to the highest level possible. As a desirable leader, Elon has the unique character that is not found in all managers. Firstly, Elon always carries the vision high as much as possible. He always has a vision of achieving high profits. In his company SpaceX, he has come up with a vision to maximize the green energy, explore the space and also build the colonies. He attempts to make the vision simple and easily understandable by many people. Therefore, Elon has taken up the role of coming up with the vision and communicating to the employees, thus, playing a critical role in formulating and delivering change (Smith, 2016).
Secondly, Elon possesses the characteristics of a social architect. He inspires his team and helps them to keep moving towards achieving the visions in the organization. He has the skills to make people understand and accept what he wants in regard to the vision implementation. This role is essential because it has increased the acceptability of his products in the market because he makes all people to clearly understand what he wants to achieve or what he has already achieved (Parry et al., 2015). He communicates to the masses and moves them with the philosophies that promote the products in the market. He managed to convince and change the perception of the ‘mobile people’ towards adopting the new technologies of SpaceX. This role and character are essential for the transformational leaders towards the change formulation, implementation and delivery to the market.
Thirdly, transformational leaders work carefully towards achieving trust. Elon earns trust from the workers through his character. Those who work with him realize that he is predictable and reliable, regardless of the presence of uncertainties or time constraints, financial problems or any other drawback factors. Through this, he wins the trust of others, an aspect that helps him to win many people who want to work with him. Therefore, as a transformational leader, Elon continues to be effective regardless of the presence of a crisis or difficulty. Also, transformational leaders take the role of creative self-deployment. This is important because it provides a force that makes people to be motivated and have trust in working with him (Gilbert-Bonner, 2017).
Usually, through the role of driving the business to a highly desirable level, there are various benefits that come about to both the company and the individual employees. The strategies undertaken by the transformational leader translates to his role of improving the individual growth and development (Anderson, 2016). When these leaders employ all the strategies to make people deliver the results, they tend to realize their potential. Self-realization is always the key to one’s success in their careers. Also, transformational leadership is important in making people perform better. The workers find it comfortable to deliver their best efforts in the organization, a factor that translates into improved profitability for the company. When profit increases, the general performance of the company also goes up (Zhang, 2015).
Besides, the role of the transformational manager leads to the organizational change and development. Elon has managed to significantly move the culture of SpaceX towards the betterment of its corporate culture. The workers have changed the way they think or perceive various situations and also the way through which they handle issues. These leaders have a strong influential force that moves the employees to change their way of conduct. Such a move has a lot of benefits both to the company and to the individuals themselves. Additionally, the transformational leadership is important to the business because it can be applied to various aspects of the business operation (Cohen, 2015). The approach can be applied to every function of the business such as sales, human resource, finance and procurement among many others. Therefore, the approach is critical towards helping to reshape the entire organization.
Barriers to Change and Effective Ways to Overcome Them
Change faces various barriers to its adoption and implementation. It is always important for the business to identify these barriers and device the suitable mechanisms to overcome them. Firstly, there is a barrier that comes about as lack of the employee commitment. When the workers are not involved in the process of change, they tend to resist it. At such a time, the workers face the fear of the unknown which reduces their desire to embrace the new culture (Klonek et al., 2015). As a way to overcome this challenge, it is essential that the workers are involved in every step of implementing change. In such a case, they will have an opportunity to feel that they are part of the change process and thus, they will not fear the uncertainty. SpaceX as a company always involves its workers in every change plan or process that is to be adopted.
Secondly, there exists lack of a good communication strategy as a barrier for change implementation. Many companies fail in implementing change due to the wrong perception that the employees get due to lack of sufficient information. When the communication has not been clearly made to the workers, wrong information tends to circulate, and this significantly affects the change process (Foust, 2016). The best way to effectively handle this barrier is by proper planning and implementation of the most effective communication strategies that will help to continuously pass the right information to all the employees. In most cases, those in the senior positions in the company tend to make the announcements only while ignoring to lay down suitable communication strategies for the change process. Therefore, appropriate communication systems are important in the process of employing change.
Thirdly, change faces the shift planning barrier. In many cases, the planning team tend to concentrate more on the actual aspects that will be implemented in the change process and forget about the planning for a good shifting approach (Ramani, 2016).Usually, change entails modification in the workflows, job roles and responsibilities, leadership structures and the reporting systems among many others. When shifting approach is not well-framed, the change process is likely to face the drawback forces. As a strategy to overcome this challenge, it is important for the change team to come up with the migration plan that details all the affected aspects and their new look. This will reduce and even eliminate any force that comes about from the migration process. SpaceX should ensure that it adopts the best migration plan for effectiveness in change implementation (Marques, 2017).
Fourthly, change faces the barriers from the failure to understand the current state. In most cases, companies start to implement change without a good understanding of their current state. They fail to conduct an assessment both internally or externally to get more information about the business. Change cannot succeed without first understanding the current organizational position. The best approach to overcome this barrier is through preparing the company’s blueprint to reveal the information about the business. The blueprint will provide critical organizational assessment information that will make it easier for the planning and transition process. SpaceX has always been at the frontline to ensure that it comes up with the assessment blueprint of its business before a change. This is important because it has helped it to reach higher levels in business (Thiel, 2015).
Lastly, change faces the barrier of the organizational complexity. In most contemporary organizations, fulfilling change entails the design of the new complex business processes, systems or products and their implementation. The team members find it difficult to design such solutions due to the nature of the business, thus, providing a huge barrier to change (Petrik et al., 2016). As a solution to overcome these challenges, it is essential for the businesses to have skilful approaches that will help to tackle the associated complexity. The effective change management approaches should be used to overcome this barrier. Through the leadership of Elon, SpaceX has managed to break the business complexity in its operations and thus, overcome this barrier.
Strategies and Methods to Ensure the Planning, Implementing, and Evaluating of Change
There are various strategies that have been developed over time to provide a suitable framework to help in planning, implementing the evaluation of change in the business organization. The PDSA provides a four-step framework that is used to provide the steps that can be followed for an effective change process. It starts with the planning for the initiative, implementation of the plan, studies to check the results and the auction process for the improvement process (Marques, 2017).The aspects of the framework are done interactively to provide for all the activities involved in the change process. These steps always guide organizations to come up with a robust output from the change exercise because it balances all the actions. SpaceX has always utilized this approach in the change implementation process (Werner et al., 2016).
Regarding the first aspect of planning, the company selects an initiative for improvement and establishes all the possible information that regards the change process, thus answering questions like how, when, what and who will be involved. At the same time, the change team is established, and a detailed plan for the particular change developed. The second step of doing is the actual improvement process. At this stage, the actual putting of the change developed in the plan is put into practice. Communication is done for effectiveness, while the plan implemented as it states. Also, this stage provides for testing and making corrections where necessary (Setili, 2015).
The third step of study entails checking the results of the exercise to ensure that they work as expected. At this stage, the monitoring of the outcome is conducted and the results evaluated for their fitness in the business. In some cases, the visual reports are made for all people to understand the results. When the team finds that the outcome is not satisfactory, they are reviewed for effectiveness (Wallace, 2015). The last step is the Act step which is the process of doing further improvements. This is the final step where areas that are not fit are reviewed and then improved. Therefore, these four-stage process is essential for effective change process in every business organization. The framework helps to evaluate, test and implement the change process. Additionally, away to improve the change process, is to consider the change implementation critical success factors. When the PSDA and the critical success factors are combined, there is a high likelihood that the change process will be successful.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the success of the business lies in its ability to respond to change and the presence of a transformational leader in the organization. SpaceX as one of the dealers in the aeronautics and space transport has managed to reach high business levels due to its capability to embrace change under the leadership of Elon, one of the greatest transformational leaders on the globe. There are various benefits that the organization has gained from change. It has managed to enjoy the benefits of technology through change and also meet the customer needs that are changing or come about as new. Additionally, it manages to overcome the challenges of the changing economy in the world to the business and thus, produce growth.
Regarding the role of transformational leadership in change, it is vivid that Elon is an exceptional transformational leader who turns things around. He has taken up the role of carrying the vision of the change high yet maintaining them to be attainable. Again, Elon has effectively served in the role of the social architect. He creates social relationships both inside the organization and outside with the members of the society. His attributes have made him manage to build trust with his employees. Through this transformational leadership, it is clear that he indirectly brings change that benefits both the workers individually and the company as a whole.
There are various barriers that reduce the effectiveness of change implementation process. One of the major barriers is the lack of employee commitment which can be overcome by actively involving them in the change process. There is also communication barrier where the junior employees fail to get the right information. The problem can be managed through embracing a good communication strategy in the process. There are also barriers that come about due to the lack of a good migration approach, and this can be managed by developing an effective migration plan. Additionally, there are barriers that come about from the complexity of the process and systems and can be managed by employing suitable skills.
The PSDA provides an appropriate method of planning, implementing, evaluating and testing the change process. The approach provides a framework that guides on how to successfully manage the change process. It is done iteratively to ensure that all the requirements are handled effectively. Space X has made efforts to integrate this aspect into its business to ensure that it reaps the best results from change.
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