WE WRITE CUSTOM ACADEMIC PAPERS

100% Original, Plagiarism Free, Tailored to your instructions

Order Now!

Causes of Leaving Job at Ministry of Housing

Assignment Requirements
 
 
Guide to Part A of the Assignment
Introduction
The single assignment for this Unit has two elements. The first element is in two parts, A and B. Part
A is a business report. In Part A, you are asked to act as a consultant. You must examine a
business problem in your organisation, and recommend solutions. In other words, you are asked to
recommend change: this is what consultants do. This guide has been written to help you tackle this
part of your assignment. There will be further guides for Part B and the second element of your
assignment, the reflective account.
This guide is intended to help you act as a consultant. Firstly, it will examine the nature of business
and organisational problems, and then examine approaches you can use to solve them.
Work problems
You have probably noticed in your work that most of the problems you face are day to day ones.
You take little decisions all day long. After a while, they become automatic, and you take them with
almost no thought.. However, you probably notice that there are other problems, bigger ones, that
occur only occasionally, and need thought and planning to solve. These bigger, one–off decisions
involve change, and they are the subject of this guide.
Figure 1 — Achieving a more desirable state for your part of the organisation
You have also probably noticed that some of these one–off problems are easier to solve than
others. You may have thought about this and decided that the easier problems to solve are those
1 where you know what you want to do and how to do it. You can probably summarize this in Figure 1
above. In this case, it is clear what the change needs to be.
However, on some occasions, the situation may be more like Figure 2, where there are influences
and pressures for change acting on the situation, but no clear idea of exactly what the change
needs to be and therefore even less idea of how to go about implementing it.
Figure 2 — Wondering whether there might be a more desirable state
Both these situations are ‘problems’ even though they may be different in their complexity and
difficulty. We want to look at these types of problem more carefully.
We use this idea of ‘problems’ to separate change situations from the rest of your work. It can be
used to illuminate the types of change that you encounter. Some problems are relatively
straightforward, and can be tackled using well understood techniques to arrive at a solution. Other
types of problem are not straightforward, and require a different approach.
Hard and soft problems
It would be very easy to define the two problem types as quantifiable or ‘hard’ problems which have
single solutions, and the more intractable or ‘soft’ problems as those which have no single solution.
However, that would be misleading as that is not the way we use these words in the management
literature. We can better understand the difference in Figures 3 and 4: Figure 3 represents a hard
problem from the point of view that there is a straightforward method of getting from the present
state to the agreed future state, whilst Figure 4 represents a soft problem where the desirable
destination is still to be discovered. In practical situations the distinction between the two is not
always crystal clear, but in general the more difficult change problems are at the ‘soft’ end of the
Amongst the softest problems are those relating to the culture of an organisation as far as its
members are concerned. Think about your organisation for a moment and imagine how difficult it is
to change its culture. For example, it may be bureaucratic at the moment, but the new CEO wants it
to be entrepreneurial. How is that change going to happen?
2 3
As a simple exercise, look at the list of changes below, and decide which are ‘hard’ problems and
which are ‘soft’.
• Renewing drilling equipment at the oilfield.
• Reorganising a company car allocation system.
• Launching a new product of a type you already sell.
• Opening a new retail outlet within a chain.
• Launching a new product of a type you have never marketed before.
• Appointing a new Director of HR.
Of these six changes, three probably fall into the ‘hard’ category. Renewing conventional machine
tools, launching a new product of a type you already sell, and opening a new retail outlet within a
chain are all quite well defined.
The other three have ‘softer’ implications. Consider the car allocation system — who is to gain, to
lose? What are the wider consequences? Will losing a company car, or receiving only a small one
cause some people to be dissatisfied and possibly leave the company? Similarly, appointing a new
HR director may bring about major related changes, the results of which are not readily understood;
(s)he may have big ideas for the future! Trying to break into new markets is speculative, given that
most new products fail.
There are, then, important differences between hard and soft problems, which affect the ways they
can be managed.
One of the ways used to describe ‘soft’ problems is ‘messy’. It describes the central features of this
type of change and we need to look at it a little more closely.
Change as a messy problem
We think of change problems as something outside our day–to–day routine. ‘Messy’ is a good word
to use, because we are never sure about the type of change, what it entails, who it is likely to affect,
and even what you are hoping to achieve. Dealing with such change is particularly difficult — the
techniques required are not obvious, and the process requires concentrated effort. Most people
would understand you if you called this a mess. It is also a technical expression, coined by R A
Ackoff, to describe this complex type of problem solution.
Messy situations are not at all like problems such as Sudoku or tic–tac–toe. It is difficult to get a
quick idea of what messy problems are concerned with, what is the appropriate way to tackle them,
and what the boundaries of the problem are. Figure 3 illustrates the characteristics of a bounded,
well–defined problem, and Figure 4 reviews the characteristics of a mess. bounded
limited
timescale priorities
clear
limited
applications
can be treated
as a separate
matter
limited number
of people
involved
know what
needs to be
known
know what
the problem
is
know what
would be a
solution
Figure 3 — Characteristics of a bounded problem
unbounded
longer, uncertain
timescale
priorities called
into question
uncertain, but
greater implications:
worrying
can’t be
disentangled
from its context
more people
involved
don’t know
what needs
to be known
not sure
what the
problem is
no ‘solutions’
Figure 4 — Characteristics of an unbounded problem or ‘mess’
In the previous paragraph we suggested that one of the features of messy changes is that they have
no clear boundary and their effects affect your normal working life. Thus, instead of being able to
isolate the change ‘problem’ from the rest of your work, which lets you continue to manage your day
job in your usual way, the problem boundary becomes less clear and you find yourself in a situation
like that illustrated in Figure 4.
Identifying messes
Asking a series of questions about a proposed change may help to identify a potential mess.
Questions such as these may be helpful:
• Can the current situation be described in an unambiguous way?
• How many people are involved in the change?
4 5
• Are any of them threatened by the change?
• Do they know one another?
• Is there any history of animosity if they do?
• Am I clear in my mind about how I propose to carry out the change?
• Do I have a clear view of what the situation is going to be after the change has been
implemented?
• Have adequate resources been allocated to allow the change to be introduced?
Approaches to problem solving
We have described problems as ‘hard’ and ‘soft’. This is too easy: problems include ‘hard’ and ‘soft’
elements. In this section, we describe two approaches to solving these change problems, and they
make use of these ideas, as we shall see. Both of these approaches share some features in
common. The two approaches are frameworks within which change processes can be designed and
managed. Here we will be looking at the Hard Systems Approach and the Soft Systems Approach.
Hard systems are so–called because they focus on ‘things’, whereas soft approaches focus on
people. In each case we will be asking you to learn enough of these frameworks to tackle your
assignments. We have shown one way of representing the scope of these two approaches in Figure
5 below.
In the diagram, change management is shown as an activity which spans a considerable part of the
space between ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ extremes; that is, a dimension on which the problems and issues
range from those dominated by physical and technical concerns to those dominated by individuals
and their psychological needs.
An example of the first might be the design and construction of an office block, whereas for the
second we might take the reorganisation of a work group as our example. Figure 5 — the scope of change management approaches
We now look at the two approaches in a little more detail.
6 The Hard Systems Approach
The stages of the hard systems approach are illustrated in figure 6 and simplified in figure 7. The
stages ‘problem/opportunity’ and ‘implementation’ are shown in the top boxes because they occur in
the real world. The other stages are in numbered boxes to indicate that they are thought processes.
Figure 6 — The stages of the hard systems approach
For the sake of diagrammatic simplicity two features of the hard systems approach are missing from
figure 6. The stages of the approach are numbered and shown occurring in a sequence and this
orderliness is the essence of the methodology. Jumping from one stage to another in a haphazard
sequence is to be avoided. But there is always the possibility, and in some cases the necessity, of
referring back to an earlier stage and then repeating subsequent steps. This iteration can occur for
two reasons:
• subsequent work has uncovered a mistake in earlier reasoning or an area of uncertainty
7 • something happens in the environment of the investigation that makes previous
assumptions invalid.
Figure 7 — The hard systems approach simplified
The second feature missing from the diagram is agreement. After each state it is essential that all
people agree:
• that the work has been carried out correctly
• with the aims, content, time–scale and people involved in the next stage.
We will now describe each stage briefly.
Stage 1: Problem definition (What is the problem?)
The aim of the first stage is to identify and describe the problem or opportunity. While each stage
depends on the success of the previous stage it is the initial stages of a project that set the direction
for the work as a whole. For this reason a clear definition and firm agreement on the problem or
opportunity are essential.
8 9
Problems and opportunities are like two sides of a coin: one of them can always be formulated in
terms of the other. The best way to distinguish between them is to think of:
• A problem as an unwelcome deviation from a standard or expected state of affairs — its
solution involves the restoration of the existing, satisfactory state of affairs.
• An opportunity as a chance to improve on the existing state of affairs.
Stage 2: Analysis of the existing situation (Where are we now?)
Having defined and agreed on the problem it is necessary to decide on the system in which you
consider it plays a part. In practice the two stages are closely linked and the analysis of the existing
system nearly always means a redefinition of the problem or opportunity. Identifying and defining the
problem and the system or systems that relate to it are critical for the access of subsequent
Stage 3: Identification of objectives and constraints (Where would we like to be?)
This stage forces the project team to make explicit the objectives and constraints associated with
the problem or opportunity. This is valuable for several reasons:
• It forces everyone concerned to clarify what they hope to achieve.
• The need to agree objectives and constraints can bring into the open disagreements that
otherwise might emerge only at a later stage of the approach.
The process of defining. Elaborating and agreeing objectives and constraints helps to maintain
commitment to the project.
• It lays the foundation for subsequent activities, since once the objectives and constraints
have been defined it is possible to decide what is needed to achieve or avoid them.
• Objectives and constraints can be quantitative (quantifiable) or qualitative (non–
quantifiable).
Stage 4: Generation of routes to objectives (How could we get there?)
This stage explores the different ways of achieving the defined objectives. It is the most imaginative
and freethinking stage of the approach. The idea is initially to generate as many ideas as possible,
then to whittle the list down to two or three ‘definite possibilities’ that can b carried further in the
development stage.
Stage 5: Formulating measures of performance (How will we know when we have
arrived?)
The hard systems approach emphasises the need to have measurable means of assessing the
efficacy of any potential solution or design, but recognises that this may not always be possible.
Stage 6: Developing the options (What would the options be like?) 10
The objective here is to develop the routes to objectives generated in Stage 4 to the position where
they could be implemented, if the decision to go ahead were given. This involves doing sufficient
work on each option to define technical and other details, and for costs and benefits to be assessed
and a sound decision taken, while at the same time minimising the time and resources devoted to
the task.
Stage 7: Option testing (How well will they work?)
While the identified objectives and constraints have been referred to constantly during the
development stage, the testing stage of the approach is a more formal analysis of each option. Its
objective is to determine whether:
• The option will meet to operational objectives
• It is technically feasible
• It is organisationally feasible
• It will meet the financial objectives.
For example, the original objective may have required that work be finished by 31 December 1998.
Option 1, for all its virtue, will not be completed until August 1999, whereas all other options will be
completed on time.
An effective way to compare options and objectives is to use a matrix, as shown below.
Stage 8: Choice (OK, Let’s Go!)
You might imagine that after all that has gone before, the decision about whether to go ahead or not
would be automatic — but this is rarely the case. There will still be a lot of discussion and ‘fine
tuning’ necessary to ensure that the proposal is acceptable. It is at this stage that any qualitative
measures of performance are brought into play.
Implementation
Implementation involves all the detailed design and development tasks required to get the agreed
proposal operating. The easiest way to think of implementation is as another problem to be solved.
The team can then use the problem–solving model again. 11
The Soft Systems Approach
Various ‘softer’ approaches to problem–solving have been proposed. The one that I shall
concentrate on is based on (although not exactly the same as) the methodology developed by
Professor Checkland and his collaborators at the University of Lancaster. This has been applied to
problems in a number of projects.
The soft systems approach is based on a number of key tenets:
• Problems do not have an existence that is independent of the people who perceive them.
• Solutions are what people perceive to be solutions.
• People perceive problems or situations differently because they have different beliefs about
what the situation is and what it should be.
• Problems are often linked into what Ackoff has called ‘systems of problems’ or messes.
• The analyst, researcher, consultant or manager trying to solve the problem is an integral
part of it!
The stages of the soft systems approach are illustrated in figure 8. Part A of the assignment is a
business report, not an academic report, so you have a great deal of freedom to use material from a
wide range of sources. If you Google “soft system approach”, you will find an extraordinary amount
of material, most of it diagrams and pictures. You are encouraged to look at these visual elements
and learn from them. Use them to describe your problem, define your system and root definitions,
and your CATWOE. Yes, there is such a thing as a CATWOE. It’s interesting.
Stage 1: The problem situation unstructured
The approach begins with a situation in which someone, or a number of people, perceives there to
be a problem. It will not be possible to define the problem, or its setting, with any precision, and in
any event the different people involved will have different ideas.
Stage 2: The situation analysed
The first step is to develop a picture (called in soft systems terminology a rich picture) that
encapsulates all the elements that people think are involved in the problem. Once the rich picture
has been drawn, the analyst will attempt to extract ‘issues’ and key tasks.
Issues are areas of contention within the problem situation. Key tasks are the essential jobs that
must be undertaken within the problem situation. Figure 8 — The stages of the soft systems approach
Stage 3: Relevant systems and root definitions
The issues and key tasks extracted from the rich picture become the basis for defining what are
called the ‘relevant systems’. For example, suppose the problem situation is a deteriorating
performance in the Fluorescent Fittings Assembly Department. One of the issues might be the
(high) turnover of production operators/ This might lead (dependent on the point of view taken) to an
idea of the assembly department as ‘an employment–providing system’ or an ‘entertainment
system’. There is no reason to restrict relevant systems to one an issue, or key task. Further
analysis of more than one relevant system might provide valuable insights into different
perspectives on the situation.
The initial idea of the relevant system is then expanded into a root definition. The root definition of
the ‘entertainment system’ might be: ‘A system to ensure that production operators find their jobs as
interesting as possible and that the social and physical production environments are stimulating.’
Stage 4: Conceptual model
The conceptual (or activity) model contains all the activities that the relevant system would have to
perform. The model is usually drawn as a block diagram.
12 13
Stage 5: Comparison of stages 2 and 4
The objective of the comparison stage is to relate the conceptual model to the problem situation as
depicted in the rich picture. The idea is to decide how far the implementation of the system would
resolve the issues identified.
Stage 6: Debate on feasible and desirable changes
The comparison undertaken in the previous stage can have two results:
1 It can cause opinions to change on the problem situation and the issues arising from it.
2 It can provide an agenda for change.
In either case (though both may result) the objective of this stage is to debate, with all concerned,
the changes proposed to ensure that they are both desirable and feasible.
Stage 7: Implement changes
Finally, the agreed changes are implemented.
Like the hard systems approach, soft systems methodology is not seen as a ‘one pass’ procedure
but as a learning process. Iteration is a feature of the methodology’s application.
System Techniques
The two systems methodologies provide a framework for the application of problem–solving,
analysis and design techniques. These fall into three groups:
1 Diagramming: ranging from single systems maps to complex flow charts, diagrams of one
sort or another provide a method of analysis, design and communication.
2 Modelling: simulation is used extensively to analyse the dynamics of an existing system and
to predict the behaviour of a proposed one. Financial models are created to justify
3 Creativity: solving problems, large or small, requires creative thought and various creativity
techniques are commonly used in systems work.
Is the systems approach just for the ‘experts’?
There is a great temptation to ‘leave it to the experts’. Does the manager really need to know about
the systems approach? The answer is emphatically ‘yes’. The manager, as ‘owner’ of the problem,
is also responsible for the solution. He or she should be in a position actively to manage the process
of change. Unless the manager understands the methodology for managing change this will not be  possible.
 
 
 
 
Order Now
https://thecustomwritings.com/order/
YOU CAN ALSO PLACE OTHER SIMILAR ORDERS ON OUR WEBSITE AND GET AMAZING DISCOUNTS!!!

Our Service Charter

  1. Excellent Quality / 100% Plagiarism-Free

    We employ a number of measures to ensure top quality essays. The papers go through a system of quality control prior to delivery. We run plagiarism checks on each paper to ensure that they will be 100% plagiarism-free. So, only clean copies hit customers’ emails. We also never resell the papers completed by our writers. So, once it is checked using a plagiarism checker, the paper will be unique. Speaking of the academic writing standards, we will stick to the assignment brief given by the customer and assign the perfect writer. By saying “the perfect writer” we mean the one having an academic degree in the customer’s study field and positive feedback from other customers.
  2. Free Revisions

    We keep the quality bar of all papers high. But in case you need some extra brilliance to the paper, here’s what to do. First of all, you can choose a top writer. It means that we will assign an expert with a degree in your subject. And secondly, you can rely on our editing services. Our editors will revise your papers, checking whether or not they comply with high standards of academic writing. In addition, editing entails adjusting content if it’s off the topic, adding more sources, refining the language style, and making sure the referencing style is followed.
  3. Confidentiality / 100% No Disclosure

    We make sure that clients’ personal data remains confidential and is not exploited for any purposes beyond those related to our services. We only ask you to provide us with the information that is required to produce the paper according to your writing needs. Please note that the payment info is protected as well. Feel free to refer to the support team for more information about our payment methods. The fact that you used our service is kept secret due to the advanced security standards. So, you can be sure that no one will find out that you got a paper from our writing service.
  4. Money Back Guarantee

    If the writer doesn’t address all the questions on your assignment brief or the delivered paper appears to be off the topic, you can ask for a refund. Or, if it is applicable, you can opt in for free revision within 14-30 days, depending on your paper’s length. The revision or refund request should be sent within 14 days after delivery. The customer gets 100% money-back in case they haven't downloaded the paper. All approved refunds will be returned to the customer’s credit card or Bonus Balance in a form of store credit. Take a note that we will send an extra compensation if the customers goes with a store credit.
  5. 24/7 Customer Support

    We have a support team working 24/7 ready to give your issue concerning the order their immediate attention. If you have any questions about the ordering process, communication with the writer, payment options, feel free to join live chat. Be sure to get a fast response. They can also give you the exact price quote, taking into account the timing, desired academic level of the paper, and the number of pages.

Excellent Quality
Zero Plagiarism
Expert Writers

Instant Quote

Subject:
Type:
Pages/Words:
Single spaced
approx 275 words per page
Urgency (Less urgent, less costly):
Level:
Currency:
Total Cost: NaN

Get 10% Off on your 1st order!