Organizational Change in the United States Air Force

Organizational Change in the United States Air Force
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Introduction
Change is the most important variable that leaders can count on today to be successful. Organizational change can come in the form of incorporating new technology into the organization, cost reductions, compliance with a newly introduced directive or regulation or just an organization change for the sake of change. The leaders must be ready for change since the future is very dynamic. They need to develop useful strategies and execute relevant plans that generate fundamental and long-lasting organizational change to deal with the challenges effectively. Leaders should take into consideration important steps that will help their strategies of organizational change and plans to affect the important parts of their company to produce a useful and lasting change (Weiss, 2016). One important aspect of most successful organizations is that they have discovered a new way of having all the company employees on board with the organizational changes. As easy it may sound, many organizations have failed to incorporate the seemingly easy task. According to Lewis (2011), close to 70% of the initiative to change often fail. The success of organizational changes could increase if the companies utilized the Kotter's 8 Step Model. The paper will discuss the organizational change in the United States Air Force using the Kotter's 8 Step Model.
Company Overview
The United States Air Force has gone through many organizational changes over the past several years. The changes have taken many forms and have been applied to both the inside the Air Force service and the outside. Examples of the organizational changes generated by the Air Force include execution of the Objective Wing structure of organization, consolidation and realignment of the specialty codes of the Air Force and the change of the design of the dress code uniform of the service (Lewis, 2011). Organizational changes that have been incorporated from the outside service of the Air Force include the personnel and fiscal reductions, introduction of new laws and regulations and a dynamic threat environment. The United States Air Force over the last ten years has downsized its military service members by about 36 percent. It has also altered its business operations to take into consideration the environmental affairs early during the procurement procedure. The Air Force has closed down and even consolidated most of its service facilities and bases in the United States and overseas. The Air Force has also adopted the Total Quality Management principles. The effectiveness of the organizational change, however, is still open to debate.
The environment on which the United States operates is always changing. The organization needs to have a strong ability to transform itself quickly to conform and fit the changes for an effective service delivery. The senior leaders must give the troops the freedom to choose on their portions of the service so long as they remain consistent with the guidance of the leaders. Proper communication strategies should be utilized during command updates, mission, orders, plans and strategies for practical assignments. The communication challenges that...