Addressing Organizational Culture and creating a leadership development plan
Organizational Culture
Part 1
Leaders have several strategies that they can use to create a culture of change in an organization. Leaders can utilize the mechanisms identified by Schein to educate current and prospective staff about the organization’s culture and how to maintain that cultural awareness.
Evaluate the primary embedding mechanisms and the secondary articulation and reinforcement mechanisms discussed in Ch. 9: Challenges of Change on p. 229 of the Leadership for Health Professionals textbook.
- Click the Presentation tab for a link to the textbook.
Create a 700-word leadership development plan explaining how you would address each weakness. Consider combining several theories and models for developing your plan.
Include the following in your plan:
- The organization’s mission and vision
- Weaknesses that prevent the organization from achieving its mission and vision
- Potential threats if weaknesses are not addressed
- How you can use the strengths identified in your personal SWOT analysis as an opportunity to help the organization improve in this area
- Competencies (managerial and leadership) you possess and can use to address the issue
- The leadership theory that is appropriate to address the organization’s weaknesses
- The primary mechanisms that can be used within the organization to refine, maintain, or change the organization’s culture
- The secondary mechanisms that can be used to reinforce the primary embedding mechanisms
- The affect the organization’s culture has on the ability of a leader to drive change
Provide APA-formatted in-text citations and references for all sources.
Ledlow, G. R. & Stephens, J. R. (2018). Leadership for health professionals: Theory, skills, and applications (3rd ed.). Burlington, MA: Jones & Bartlett Learning
PRIMARY EMBEDDDED MECH.
Health leaders have a set of powerful tools, behaviors, and mechanisms at their disposal with which to develop, refine, maintain, or change organizational culture. The importance of these mechanisms cannot be overstated. The primary embedding mechanisms are as follows:
What leaders pay attention to, measure, and control
Leader reactions to critical incidents and organizational crises
Deliberate role modeling, teaching, and coaching by leaders
Criteria for allocation of rewards and status
Criteria for recruitment, selection, promotion, retirement, and excommunication
Schein strongly states that leaders communicate both explicitly and implicitly the assumptions they really hold. If they are conflicted, their conflicts and inconsistencies are also communicated and become part of the culture. Consistency is the key; health leaders must predetermine where and how to guide the organization and stay on task. The secondary set of mechanisms (profiled next) support the primary set.
Secondary Articulation and Reinforcement Mechanisms79
The secondary articulation and reinforcement mechanisms reinforce the primary embedding mechanisms. The following are of the greatest importance:
The organization’s design and structure
Organizational systems and procedures
Design of physical space, facades, and buildings
Stories, legends, myths, and parables about important events and people
Formal statements of organizational philosophy, creeds, and charters
Schein calls these mechanisms “secondary” because they work only if they are consistent with the primary mechanisms. They are less powerful, more ambiguous, and more difficult to control than the primary mechanisms, yet they can be powerful reinforcements of the primary messages if the leader is able to control them. The important point is that all of these mechanisms communicate culture content to newcomers and current staff.
