WMBA 6020 Week 7 Culture Change Proposal Example

A Proposal to the Chief Executive: Give New Ideas a Path, a Fair Hearing and a Safe Exit, for About $310,000 in Year One, With Owners, a Twelve-Month Sequence and Five Measures

Student Name

Walden University

WMBA 6020: Fostering a Culture of Innovation

Instructor Name

Month Day, Year

A Proposal to the Chief Executive: Give New Ideas a Path, a Fair Hearing and a Safe Exit, for About $310,000 in Year One, With Owners, a Twelve-Month Sequence and Five Measures

Request

This proposal asks the chief executive of Ashgrove, the course's fictional title and closing company, to approve a twelve-month program to change how the company treats new ideas. The program has five parts: an idea pipeline with three gates, a change to how underwriting counsel answers proposals, learning reviews after large claims, credit for exploration in annual reviews and an opening question at every regional director's branch visit. Its first-year cost is about $310,000, most of it pilot funding that would be spent only if ideas reach that stage. Approval is requested at the next executive meeting so that the first two parts can begin in the following quarter.

What the Culture Does to New Ideas Today

Ashgrove is very good at what it already does. Thirty-eight offices issue policies that mean the same thing everywhere, examiners are trained to a high standard and branch targets are clear. These strengths come from a culture that prizes consistency. The Week 2 assessment, built on the four culture traits of Denison and Mishra (1995), rated the company high on every consistency measure and low on creating change and on learning.

The same culture stops new ideas. In three years Ashgrove has made six notable changes, all improvements to current services or modest extensions of them. The one genuinely new product proposed in that period, a homeowner alert for fraudulent deed filings, stopped at a single review by underwriting counsel and never reached a pilot. The manager who led it saw her review rating fall, and the two examiners who helped her have proposed nothing since. People throughout the company know this story. It teaches them more about how ideas are received than any statement from leadership.

The cost of this pattern is not visible on a balance sheet, which is why it persists. It appears as products competitors launch first, as capable people who stop proposing and as errors that are paid as claims but never studied.

The Program

Table 1

Program Parts, Owners and Year-One Cost

Costs are estimates for a composite company; staff time is priced at loaded hourly rates.

The parts work together. The pipeline follows Cooper (1990): each stretch of work ends at a checkpoint where a small panel applies criteria fixed beforehand. It gives ideas a path; the opening question fills it; conditional answers and learning reviews change the two places where ideas and errors now disappear; and exploration credit removes the career penalty that taught people to stay quiet.

Why These Parts and Not Others

Three alternatives were considered and set aside. An innovation lab separate from the branches was rejected because Ashgrove's best ideas have come from branch staff who see customers' problems, and a separate lab would add distance between those people and the decision. A company-wide innovation contest was rejected because contests generate many ideas once and then stop, leaving people more cynical when few are funded. Removing counsel from the review was rejected outright: for a title insurer, uninsured liability is a real danger, and the problem is the form of counsel's answer, not counsel's presence.

Sequence

In the first quarter the regional directors begin the opening question, counsel begins conditional answers and the coordinator is appointed. In the second quarter the pipeline opens and the first learning reviews are held. The exploration item is added to the review form in time for the annual cycle in the third quarter. Pilots begin as ideas reach the second gate, likely from the third quarter onward. A full review of the program comes at month twelve.

This order puts the cheapest and most visible changes first, so employees see a difference before the larger parts take effect.

Measures

Table 2

Measures, Current Level and Twelve-Month Target

Current levels are estimates from company records.

The last measure matters most. If people whose ideas stop are willing to try again, the culture has changed where it counts.

Risks

The program could fail in three ways. Panels could turn cautious and reproduce the old veto; panel members' reviews should therefore credit pilots launched as well as problems avoided. Branch targets could crowd out exploration if managers are not convinced the central budget is real; the first pilots funded will be the test. And leaders could lose interest if early pilots fail. Lee et al. (2004) found that mixed signals about experimentation discouraged it most among people under evaluative pressure, which describes Ashgrove's branch managers. If the executive team praises the program and then reacts badly to the first stopped pilot, the program will teach the same lesson the deed fraud alert taught.

Decision Requested

Approve the program and its year-one budget of about $310,000, appoint the chief operating officer as the executive owner and set the month-twelve review date. Approval of the first quarter's parts alone, at a cost of about $90,000, would also be a meaningful start.

References

Cooper, R. G. (1990). Stage-gate systems: A new tool for managing new products. Business Horizons, 33(3), 44-54. https://doi.org/10.1016/0007-6813(90)90040-I

Denison, D. R., & Mishra, A. K. (1995). Toward a theory of organizational culture and effectiveness. Organization Science, 6(2), 204-223. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.6.2.204

Lee, F., Edmondson, A. C., Thomke, S., & Worline, M. (2004). The mixed effects of inconsistency on experimentation in organizations. Organization Science, 15(3), 310-326. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.1040.0076