MMHA 6999 Week 8 Change Announcement Plan Example

Who Hears First, and Why: A Change Plan That Sequences the Announcement of Birth Consolidation at Juniper Valley Health

Student Name

Walden University

MMHA 6999: Strategic Leadership Management

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

Who Hears First, and Why: A Change Plan That Sequences the Announcement of Birth Consolidation at Juniper Valley Health

Purpose

Leaders at Juniper Valley Health, the fictional system followed through this capstone, have decided to consolidate births from Alder Creek at its regional hospital in fifteen months. How the decision is announced will shape whether nurses stay, whether families trust the commitments and whether the community accepts the change. This plan fixes the order in which groups hear the decision, attaches a reason to each position in the sequence and describes what each group needs in order to move from hearing to accepting.

People are more likely to accept change when they understand why it is needed, believe it is the right change, believe the organization can carry it out and see that leaders support it, the elements of readiness described in organizational change research (Armenakis et al., 1993). The sequence below is designed to build those beliefs group by group.

The Sequence

Table 1

Announcement Sequence With Reasons

Within roughly a week, the news moves outward from the people whose work changes most to the general public.

Why Nurses Hear First

The nurses on Alder Creek's unit will lose the work they chose. If they learn from a rumor or a news story, they will reasonably conclude that leaders did not respect them, and some will leave before the transition, which would make the remaining months of the unit less safe. Hearing first, in person, from the chief nursing officer and chief executive, with a written guarantee of a position, gives them both the information and the security to stay. Research on change agents suggests that support from people with strong informal networks in an organization can help or block change (Battilana & Casciaro, 2012). Several Alder Creek nurses are long-standing members of the community whose views will carry; treating them first and fairly matters beyond their own unit.

Why Patients Who Are Pregnant Hear Personally

Pregnant patients receive personal calls before the public announcement because the decision changes their own plans. The nurse navigator will call each one, explain where she will deliver if her due date is after the transition, describe the transport and lodging program and schedule a planning visit. Those due before the transition will be told that their delivery plans do not change. Hearing in a personal call, with a plan, is very different from reading a news story. The plan matters clinically as well as emotionally: in rural counties that lost birth units, more deliveries happened without maternity staff present (Kozhimannil et al., 2018), and a patient who knows her route, her lodging and her navigator's number is less likely to be one of them.

What Each Group Needs to Accept the Change

Table 2

Readiness Messages by Group

Each message addresses the four elements of readiness for the specific group.

Feedback and Adjustment

Each meeting will include a written way to submit questions, and leaders will publish answers within a week. Nurse retention will be tracked monthly. If more than two nurses resign before the transition, the chief nursing officer will review retention measures with staff. Community meetings will be repeated at three months to report progress on the prenatal clinic and emergency readiness, and again after the first births have moved, so that families hear results from the same leaders who announced the change.

Risks

The main risk is a leak before step one, which would reverse the sequence. Leaders will hold the decision to a small group until the nurses' meeting and schedule all steps within one week to limit the window, with a prepared statement ready in case the news breaks early. A second risk is that commissioners publicly oppose the decision; private briefing before the announcement, with the full commitments, reduces that risk but cannot remove it.

Conclusion

The order in which people hear a hard decision shapes how they receive it. This plan begins with those who lose most and can do most to help or harm the change, gives each group what it needs to accept the decision and ends with a public announcement that carries the reasons and commitments together. Every position in the sequence has a reason, so leaders can explain the order if asked.

References

Armenakis, A. A., Harris, S. G., & Mossholder, K. W. (1993). Creating readiness for organizational change. Human Relations, 46(6), 681-703. https://doi.org/10.1177/001872679304600601

Battilana, J., & Casciaro, T. (2012). Change agents, networks, and institutions: A contingency theory of organizational change. Academy of Management Journal, 55(2), 381-398. https://doi.org/10.5465/amj.2009.0891

Kozhimannil, K. B., Hung, P., Henning-Smith, C., Casey, M. M., & Prasad, S. (2018). Association between loss of hospital-based obstetric services and birth outcomes in rural counties in the United States. JAMA, 319(12), 1239-1247. https://doi.org/10.1001/jama.2018.1830