Vision Change Analysis Paper
I chose to do my change analysis paper on the Case Study from our text titled, “Role of Vision at Mentor Graphics. This company was formed in the early 1980s. Their main focus is designing a computer-aided engineering workstation product. As time has gone on this company has changed their vision. In the beginning it started out with “Build Something That People Will Buy (Palmer).” In the early 1980’s this vision was changed to “Beat Daisy (Palmer)”, due to the fact that this was a competitor that they were trying to beat out with sales. In 1985 they had accomplished this vision and needed to find a new one.
At this point they needed to find a new vision. They chose “Six Boxes (Palmer),” this was because that would represent the six different businesses that they wanted to become leaders in. In the late 1980’s one of the businesses that was included in the vision was no longer a part of Mentor Graphics. This vision however caused them to not be able to make the proper decisions that were needed. This is when they decided to change the vision yet again. This time it was changed to “ 10X Imperative ( Palmer).”
In 1989 yet another vision was decided upon. This one, “Changing the Way the World Designs Together (Palmer),” the problem with this vision was that it did not make since with what the company was doing at the time. As they realized that this vision was distracting from what the company was trying to do they chose yet another vision, “Our current short,-medium-, and long term vision is to build things people will buy (Palmer).” The problem with this vision is that it makes one feel that this is a company that is not really sure what they are doing and where they are heading. This is where a vision needs to be decided upon that represents what Mentor Graphics is trying to accomplish.
A clear vision is something that enables everyone to understand the who, what, where, and whens of a company. It also helps board members to determine if there are gaps between the vision and the way that a company is currently performing (Palmer). They also help employees to feel that they are part of an organization and are then motivated to achieve objectives of the company and their own.
In order for change to take place a new vision needs to be set in place. In this company their where many times that changes were needed. The best way to do that is to change the vision so that you may produce the desired image of the change. If you are using the wrong vision as this company has in the past, one can see how it can cause the change to not work in the right direction. There is no guidance to the change without the vision that they are aiming for.
When deciding upon a vision what Mentor Graphics should have done was to decide upon the correct components. They first need a cognitive component, which means that the focus on outcomes and how to achieve them (Palmer). They also need an affective component, this helps to motivate people and gain their commitment to it (Palmer). A vision must be clear, desirable, challenging, feasible, and easy to communicate in order for it to be a good vision.
As when deciding on change, there are three main things that you must look at, why does the company need the change, what is it that we plan to accomplish with this change.
I have learned through this case study that just changing a vision is not going to fix a problem. It goes hand in hand with so many other things when it comes to a change needing to be made. I also learned that sometimes the vision itself can be most of the problem. Without a clear vision the change is not going to end up being what one wants.
A good example of this was the different visions that Mentor Graphics changed to. In the beginning I think that the first vision was a good one. From then on it seemed that they were not assessing what they were really trying to accomplish by changing the vision. I think that a practicing manager could look at this case study and see how having a bad vision can cause major damage to a company. I believe that I would have fixed the situation by assessing what needed to be assessed and deciding on a vision that made sense for the company.

References
Palmer, I., Dunford, R., and Akin, G. (2006). Managing Organizational Change: A Multiple Perspective Approach, Pages 18-21, New York: NY, McGraw-Hill.