Explain The Guiding Force Behind The Change

Table of Contents

Executive Summary................................................................................................ 2

Section 1: Description of the change.......................................................................3 Section 2: Guiding force behind the change............................................................3 Section 3: Strategies Employed ..............................................................................4 Section 4: Barriers ...................................................................................................5

Section 5: Results of the change .............................................................................6 Section 6: Change agent’s role................................................................................6

We were a team of 15 people who were trained on a certain platform, called Citrix. The training for this platform was very intensive. It included formal training for about a month and you had to pass a certain series of tests, in order to officially complete the training. You were then placed under a subject matter expert, who reviewed each and every case you resolved. He/she then had to rate you. Any error during the process could not only get you cited but could also have an impact on your bonus. We were just getting eased to the process when we were suddenly told that my team was needed someplace else and we would now be trained on an another platform, called legacy. This meant going through the exhausting process all over again. The change was sudden and my team had not expected this.

Guiding force behind the change

American Express was undergoing some changes. There was a sudden rise in customer dispute cases that required the use of the legacy platform and there was a shortage of staff that was skilled in the same. Since our team was relatively new but was performing remarkably, the process manager along with senior management thought that taking our team off the old platform and training us on the new platform would be an easy transition.

Strategies

Becoming a dispute analyst was a long and tedious process. Our team had just gotten used to the whole process when we were told that we would need to be retrained on something entirely different. Everyone was angry and frustrated. Our process manager had not even thought that this would be a problem and that people would not be accepting of this change. He had not taken any measures to ease people into this change because for him there were not going to be any barriers to change. We were expected to readily accept the change.

Another major barrier to change was the lack of effective communication and support. We were just casually told that there has to be a change. There was no support provided for when our team wanted to talk about the change or had any complaints. It was almost like an order.

Another barrier to change was that everything happened so fast. The change of platforms happened within a week. There wasn’t enough time given to process the change. It was a sudden switch instead of a smooth