Simulation Reflection
The simulation was very interesting in that my partner and I were given an opportunity to think critically about how to approach to influence different managers and workers with different characteristics. By running the simulation twice, it allowed us to find out what actions have worked and what did not during the first run, and then second run allowed us to apply what we learned to complete the second simulation in a much more efficient and timely manner.
There are three stages in the simulation, including mobilization, movement, and sustain phases. The simulation begins in the mobilization phase, and in this phase it was important to get everyone aware of the new change we wish to initiate in the company. The key factor in the beginning was to introduce the new project to each person on a personal level, using personal interviews, skill building, and getting consultant’s support. All of these involve personal contact and were effective in making people both aware and interested to the change.
The second stage was movement phase, and the key factors that lead to success in this stages was maintaining high credibility. We could gain credibility through getting consultant’s support and getting CEO’s public support. As majority individuals got into interest and trial stages we were able to use town hall meetings and walk the talk, which attracted more workers to be in interest and trial stages. Again, maintaining high credibility was important throughout the stages because low credibility meant low chance with people would buy in to the initiative.
Lastly, in the sustain phase, having personal contact with each individual using private interview was an extremely powerful tool for making individuals in trial stages to move up to adoption stage. Moreover, recognizing an adopter, walk the talk , and holding town hall meeting were also effective tools in this stage. Recognizing an adopter was very effective tool in this stage because workers who are in adoption stage could spread positive word of mouth to their co-workers, which lead to the positive changes in simulation .
Although many actions worked as effective tools, some of the actions resulted in demotivating workers and reducing credibility. For example, issuing e-mail notice and building a coalition of support in the beginning of the simulation did not work because people were reluctant to take risks without having enough knowledge and interest on the project. Moreover, after running the first trial, we decided not to use certain tools including announcement of goals and deadlines, revising reward system, restructuring organization, and posting progress report. We decided not to use these tools in the second trial because these tools could upset many employees who were not ready to adopt changes and held high risk of reducing credibility. Throughout the simulation, we also learned the importance of timing and analyzing each individuals. One of the examples was failure of telling success stories because even though this worked very effectively to lower level workers in the beginning of the simulation, it was not effective at all to upper level managers and toward the end of the simulation. Overall, this simulation was an opportunity to learn about when and how to implement each lever, how to earn credibility among co-workers, and according effects of lever in each stage of movements. In fact, in the beginning, we assumed that persuasion via mass-media such as emails would be effective at first to provide glimpse of the implementing plan. Then approaching individually through personalized interviews and skill-building sessions would convince employees to become advocates of the plan. Now that we have completed the simulation, we realized that we would rather want to conduct private means of persuasions in precedent to more public ones. In other words, we understood that embarking our crews on a same boat comes before guiding all of our crews to focus on the same direction.