Social Media Revolution Assignment | Homework Help Websites

Week 1

View the Social Media Revolution (Links to an external site.)Links to an external site. video. We have all watched organizations around us change in response to technology, legislation, consumer demand, and other factors.  Provide an example of an organization that has changed for the better and how this transition benefited its customers, employees, and investors.  Review several of your peers’ posts.  Discuss how and why these changes have occurred, with at least two of your peers.

Your initial post should be at least 200 words in length.  Support your claims with examples from required material(s) and/or other scholarly resources, and properly cite any references.

Response 1

Growing up in a small town, our family had a greenhouse and produce business.  Every year they try to grow and make improvements, whether it was repaving the parking lots or adding another building to grow and sell produce in.  With the recent change of technology they have been getting more and more requests for their acceptance of credit cards.  They were cash only so most people had to leave some of their items behind until they came back with cash.  One year they decided it was time to get with the rest of the world and invest in credit card machines.  Within a week those machines paid for themselves, their sales went up 15% that year.  A few years ago they were always getting phone calls about when they were going to open for the season.  One of their kids gave them the idea of creating a website and Facebook account for the business.  They did just that and started posting to it daily up until the business opened back up for the season.  They were always posting how the plants were doing, if the corn was ready for picking.  The customers were always viewing the pages, they didn’t need to drive by anymore to ask anybody or even call the number to see when they were going to open.  The business even posts when they get certain product in or if they are almost out of a certain product.  It worked for their business and it helped them grow that much more.  Social media helps businesses grow and get exposure (Taneja& Toombs, 2014).  They were getting responses and inquiries from people all over the state, even some rival businesses started to message them asking if they are willing to trade products.  Technology has helped this business grow and it has benefited the customers by allowing them to purchase with their credit cards but also by allowing them access to see when they are open.  I wouldn’t be surprised if they decided to expand to another location in the future.

Larry

Reference:

Taneja,Sonia& Toombs, Leslie.   2014.  Putting a Face on Small Businesses: Visibility, Viability, and Sustainability the Impact of Social Media on Small Business Marketing.  

Response 2

I work at T-Mobile and I can definitely say they are a perfect example of a company changing in response to our global environment. In 2012, after a few years of declining sales and a failed merger with AT&T, T-Mobile USA’s parent company Deutsche Telekom brought on John Legere to take the role of CEO. This was the first of many moves that would change the company and it’s trajectory forever.

One of the first things John Legere did was create a new vision. Our “values” were simple and shared with all employees. Some of the values state “Think big. Be bold. Make a difference”, “Play to win and have fun” and “Do it the right way” among others. The communication behind the vision and other changes was thorough and widely accepted across the company because they were realistic and ethical. “Large-scale change efforts that fail either have several plans and programs but no vision or a vision that is overly complicated and “blurry”” (Weiss, 2016).

Shortly after the internal changes were rolled out, the external changes for our customers. We started to call ourselves the “Un-carrier” since we were about to disrupt the wireless industry and solve pain-points for customers. Our “Un-Carrier moves” included the end of plan-contracts, calls to some countries without additional charges, and unlimited data and calls, to name a few. While rolling out all these changes, T-Mobile USA also became a publicly traded company and investors were interested and happy with the changes being made.

Another way T-Mobile adjusted to ensure it stayed up-to-date with the way the world was changing in business was by expanding their presence on social media. In addition to T-Mobile having a huge social media presence and having developed a social media team to respond to any posts on any of the many platforms, John Legere began making a name for himself on social media as well. He has over six-million followers on Twitter and has over one-million views on his “Slow-cooker Sunday” FB Live videos every week. A quote in the video made me think of T-Mobile and John Legere on social media; “We don’t have a choice on whether we DO social media, the question is how well we DO it” (Qualman). Well, I would say they do it well! I may be biased though…

Select one of the following approaches to understanding or implementing organizational change. Summarize this approach and provide an example of how this information could be useful to an organization. Review several of your peers’ posts. Discuss any similar or opposing perspectives you have, with at least two of your peers. Take care to be professional and polite even if your beliefs or viewpoints differ.

Dunphy and Stace’s Four Levels of Change
Balogun and Hailey’s Change Model
Proactive vs. Reactive Changes
Strategic Change versus Tactical Change
Tichy’s 3 Types of Change
Balanced Scorecard
Contingency Alignment Framework
The Stakeholder Approach

Your initial post should be at least 200 words in length. Support your claims with examples from required material(s) and/or other scholarly resources, and properly cite any references.

Response 1.

I chose to summarize Balogun and Hailey’s Change Model because my understanding of this model is that it fits the modern world. It also reminds me of the last company I worked for. The company decided to update/ change their operating system. Evolution is what the company did, they decided to leave the AS400 system behind and upgrade to the SAP system. It took some time (a year and a half) to implement the new system. Once the system was up and running adaption kicks in and the employees must be trained on the new system. The point of the new system was to eliminate some of the employees hence why I say the last company I worked for. The revolution of the new system or the “big bang” as stated in the text was a change in vision and mission; upgraded system didn’t need as many hands to work. The work was automated, and it didn’t need a body to do it, the system could read invoice images and enter it for payment. Which then brings the reconstruction of the department, automated system saves money as companies do not need employees to do the work the computer can do. Balogun and Hailey’s Change Model has four steps; evolution, adaption, revolution, and reconstruction which is one way organizations are implementing change today.

Response 2

The approach I chose was the approach of proactive vs. reactive changes. A proactive change is a change that is looking out for the better of the organization before things go wrong. A plan so to speak. It would be when a leader or organization changes something within the business, so it can benefit in the future from the change. A reactive change is a change in response to something going wrong.

A proactive change could be beneficial to the organization because it creates that plan for the change to be implemented. For example, within the Air Force we create operations orders for all missions that we had when I was previously deployed. These missions would always have some type of proactive change based off our surroundings and the background of the territory and the people. When driving outside the wire and experiencing the people and culture then we would have to implement that proactive change within our operations orders to be ready for everything. A reactive change might occur once something bad happens within an organization. For example, looking back my previous deployment example, if something happened while we were on a mission, we would have to react somehow. To react accordingly, we would have to have some type of reactive change that would occur. Whether it was getting out of the scenario quickly or reacting with a small plan, there would always have to be a reaction to survive.

Both are useful to an organization because reactive change can help to keep you on your feet and proactive can help you at planning better and even at being a better leader. As a leader, it might be the hardest thing to decide which change is needed at which time. Whether a change is proactive or reactive change can depend on a leader’s style in responding to change (Weiss, 2016). This goes to show that all leaders should be able to decide in an instance and be able to know which one to choose.