Abstract
With a strong tradition of service and excellence, the United States Navy is one of the most renowned and potent armed units in the whole world. Even so, the Navy is not exempt from the leadership blunders that may happen in any institution. Navy diving is one instance where these shortcomings have come to light very strongly. Navy divers carry out various crucial jobs, including search and rescue missions, underwater maintenance and repair, and salvage operations. These duties and technical proficiency also call for strong leadership and operational planning abilities. Regrettably, the Navy has had trouble lately giving it’s divers the instruction and assistance they need to hone these abilities. Lack of funding for leadership development and operational planning training has been one of the most significant leadership failures in navy diving. Several Navy divers have felt unprepared for their work difficulties, citing poor leadership, decision-making, and communication training. This lack of exercise can result in ineffective decision-making, greater risk, and decreased efficacy in diving operations. Lack of responsibility for commanders who fail to give their divers proper assistance and training has been another leadership failure in navy diving (Baran et al., 2019). Notwithstanding proof of subpar performance or inability to complete training requirements, leaders have occasionally been permitted to remain in their positions.
Introduction
The absence of accountability can foster a climate of complacency and thwart initiatives to raise the standard of leadership in navy diving. Concerns have also been raised concerning the leadership culture in the military diving community. A lack of respect and trust for their superiors, as well as a feeling of seclusion and separation from the larger Navy community, have been reported by several divers. Navy divers may experience a lack of enthusiasm and involvement due to these cultural concerns, which will make their work more difficult. In conclusion, the Navy and its men are gravely concerned about the leadership shortcomings in military diving. The Navy must invest in operational planning and leadership development, hold leaders accountable for their work, and endeavour to enhance the general leadership culture in Navy diving to meet these difficulties. The investments can be actualized using Lewin’s change agent strategy and John Kotter’s eight-step change model (Baran et al., 2019). The procedures ensure divers have the knowledge, resources, and assistance they need to be successful in this crucial and demanding sector.
Cultural change: Accountability by focusing on the process, not the result.
Navy diving leadership has seen substantial failures, resulting in a lack of investment in leadership development and operations planning training, challenges with accountability, and worries about the leadership culture. In this case, Lewin’s change agent strategy and John Kotter’s eight-step change model are applied to address these issues. The article focuses on leadership methods in Navy diving, considering organizational culture, leadership behaviours, and existing training initiatives. Furthermore, it develops a pathway for transforming the leadership in Navy diving using Kotter’s model once the problems and failures have been recognized. The steps in this paradigm involve developing a feeling of urgency, assembling a steering coalition, putting the change into effect, and maintaining it. The article will use Lewin’s change agent methodology to successfully implement and sustain the transition ( Kotter, 2023). To successfully implement the changes indicated through the Kotter model, the study will use Lewin’s change agent.
The strategy focuses on locating and supporting change agents who can aid in creating momentum and support for change in the Navy. The U.S. Department of Defense divides the Navy into operational and administrative units. The functional team has approximately eleven combatant commands, each with specific operations or exercises. For example, the central, cyber, African, and European base has subsidiary component commands such as fleet forces, pacific fleet, fleet cyber, and naval forces orders. Therefore, to effectively manage the unit’s several tools and approaches for managing change, including communication, engagement, and evaluation tactics, Consultation for Organizational Change will be a crucial resource for comprehending and implementing successful transformation (Kotter, 2023). The strategies offer a thorough approach to revamping Navy diving leadership that may establish a culture of strong leadership and operational planning in its diving operations, better preparing its divers to carry out their vital jobs with assurance and efficacy.
Organizational Change
Lewin’s change agent strategy and John Kotter’s eight-step change model propose an organizational change that emphasizes the process rather than results in the Navy. According to Kotter (2023), the focus on process rather than outcomes is simplified into eight steps. The first step is to generate a sense of urgency within the organization. The Navy’s organizational structure is designed to produce results since the US has been an essential participant in the global war on terrorism for approximately 21 years. Therefore, to ensure success in subsequent inevitable wars, Kotter suggests urgency to inspire purpose and passion in the navy diving recruits. It helps them build momentum, vision, and cohesion to achieve a better future together. Secondly, Kotter suggests building a guiding coalition. The coalition will comprise people within its ranks who can lead, organize and disseminate its operations. As a result, navy divers are exposed to different scenarios and parts of the organization, helping them explore their passions at the workplace.
Thirdly, the organization needs to formulate a strategic vision. The vision should clarify how the future will differ from the past and how the end can be realized once the organization’s initiatives are linked to the image. The fourth step is enlisting a volunteer army. It implies rallying people around shared opportunities to achieve a goal. For example, the United States Navy should address issues collectively raised by trainee sailors. Collective bargaining power actualizes organizational changes faster compared to individual views. Therefore, the navy sailors should discard their individualistic ideas, team up, and join the journey to make their footprints. Fifth, the organization should enable changes by alleviating or removing set barriers. Although the navy sailors may champion organizational changes, the upper-level management is influential in effecting the changes. Lower and mid-level management have limited power to address changes in the policies and structures of any organization ( Kotter, 2023). Therefore, given the company’s scale, the consistency of the enlisted Soldiers, their capacity to implement change across the organization, and their familiarity with it, the top-level management should also participate in organizational change.
The sixth step is to generate short-term wins. Although the organization’s primary goal is to change from result-based to process-based leadership, small wins are essential in tracking progress and energizing the soldiers in their pursuit. Small successes should be communicated, recognized, rewarded, and often collected to motivate the soldiers to champion organizational changes. The seventh step is to devise ways to sustain acceleration toward change. Most changes within governmental entities such as the Navy are riddled with corporate and constitutional restrictions which hinder organizational changes. As a result, they persist with the same structures despite continuously failing. To ensure this is not the case, it is necessary to ensure every step and learning is implemented (Military units: Navy. U.S. Department of Defense). Lastly, soldiers should promote changes within themselves. For instance, they should establish links between new behaviours and organizational performance and encourage them to persist until they are powerful enough to supplant ingrained ones. Make sure management practices support the new behaviours, attitudes, and methods of working you invested in by evaluating systems and processes.
The Change Agent Compass
Plan the change
Kurt Lewin’s Model of Change has three steps altering, unfreezing, and refreezing. According to Kurt Lewin, the change process involves persuading people that a change is necessary, followed by a move toward the desired new level of conduct, and lastly, establishing the new behaviour as the norm. The model is often combined with Kotter’s eight-change model to explain the steps involved in contemporary organizational transformations. The three Kurt Lewin steps include; unfreezing, changing, and refreezing. Unfreezing is the initial step in planning organizational changes. It is infused with Kotter’s urgency, formulating a guiding coalition and developing a strategy and vision. The sense of urgency ensures the Navy’s top-level management produces relevant reports and evidence on the organization’s running (Tracy, 2020). It emphasizes holding the leaders accountable since the great power competition causes people to focus more on the results than the process.
Similarly, creating a guiding coalition increases the chances of making lasting changes. All management levels, from captions, sergeants, support sailors, and warrant officers, must participate in the alliance. Lastly, any organization must develop a specific and achievable vision that promotes creativity and innovation. It should focus on the primary objectives of the business.
Changing
The next step in Lewin’s model change is transitioning. Lewin understood that implementing change requires an organization to transition. The change’s implementation, referred to as transitioning, designates this shifting phase. It is also when most people experience difficulty adjusting to the new reality. The stage is further explained by Kotter’s communicating the vision, enabling actions by minimizing barriers and generating short term-wins. It is the most challenging step in the U.S. Navy since it is a period of uncertainty and worry. The management and soldiers start to learn new habits, procedures, and ways of thinking during this stage. First, communicating the Navy’s vision should be prioritized and implemented through print media, distribution emails, town halls, and administration distribution. Staff must receive the necessary training, communication, support, and time to adjust to the change. Secondly, encouraging a broad-based version is essential due to the decentralized nature of the specialized forces. Change is a process that needs to be well thought out and carried out (Tracy, 2020). Lastly, generating short-term wins among the special forces promotes representations of all groups in the pass-out graduations. Therefore, employees should be reminded of the motivations for the change and how it will benefit them in the long run during this process.
Refreezing
Lewin referred to the last phase of his change model as refreezing to denote the process of bolstering, stabilizing, and consolidating the changed state. The changes made to an organization’s structure, offers, goals, or personnel are recognized as the new status quo or standards and are refrozen. The stage applies Kotter’s sustain acceleration and institute change. Lewin believed that the refreezing step was particularly crucial for preventing individuals from reverting to their pre-change patterns of thinking or doing. The Navy must codify programs for team leadership onboarding and mentoring. To ensure that the change is maintained, efforts must be taken to embed it in the organization’s culture and uphold it as the proper mode of behaviour. Policy letters must also include a codification of the welcome (Tracy, 2020). Because it is assumed that favourably rewarded action would likely be repeated, positive reinforcement techniques like positive incentives and acknowledging individual efforts are frequently utilized to reinforce the new condition.
Reflections
Organizational changes in the specialized forces are prone to challenges. The most probable challenges include; resistance to change and commitment to change. Due to numerous wars involving the United States Navy, any change is likely to face opposition, be subjected to heavy scrutiny, and be rendered naturally suspicious. In addition, some recruits are susceptible to peer pressure implying that they follow their peers’ opinions blindly. Recruits are also easily influenced by their leader’s decisions due to fear of dismissal. The Navy’s leaders have supreme powers and high immunity; hence they easily influence their subordinates, making it hard for organizational changes to be unsustainable. Another reason that the Navy’s leadership and organizational changes are hard is leader transitions. There is no official training for leader changes, so they are stressful (Alfes et al., 2019). The Army often reassigns leaders, but according to the Center for Army Leadership, this critical event has not been institutionalized in the Army’s leadership development process. The change forces the organization to put more emphasis on the outcomes than it did during the previous twenty years. Different leaders have different goals; therefore, the adjustment might be reversed by a subsequent leader. Finally, a change in the corporate mission or any major dispute is a serious potential problem.
Conclusion
Organizational transformations are unpredictable, difficult to foresee, and ambiguous. Diversity in special forces is essential since everyone is unique, yet individuals developed these strategies without the client’s participation. There is no way to forecast where organizational changes will end, even though I will apply planned change models to start the change. However, due to the fluid nature of change, models are only intended as guidelines and do not apply to all companies or circumstances. The plan and vision might go in an entirely different direction since so many individuals are engaged. Therefore, I must maintain flexibility and objectivity without getting too attached to the Kotter and Lewin change strategies. Depending on the manner of execution, this change will have a varied impact on each level of the organization, all the way down to the newest Soldier, though at different times and in various ways. No strategy survives the initial encounter; therefore, the customer and I must rely on our instincts and expertise to steer it generally.
References
Alfes, K., Shantz, A. D., Bailey, C., Conway, E., Monks, K., & Fu, N. (2019). Perceived human resource system strength and employee reactions toward change: Revisiting human resource’s remit as a change agent. Human Resource Management, 58(3), 239-252.
Baran, B. E., Filipkowski, J. N., & Stockwell, R. A. (2019). Organizational change: Perspectives from human resource management. Journal of Change Management, 19(3), 201-219.
Kotter. (2023, March 8). The 8-step process for leading change: Dr John Kotter. Kotter International Inc. Retrieved April 7, 2023, from https://www.kotterinc.com/methodology/8-steps/?gclid=CjwKCAjw_YShBhAiEiwAMomsEM98zhfp71PxTAgXSkn1ObL36wvpwYhLWXfbHpWbtXo6v5QGy_L-aRoCmdQQAvD_BwE
Military units: Navy. U.S. Department of Defense. (n.d.). Retrieved April 7, 2023, from https://www.defense.gov/Multimedia/Experience/Military-Units/navy/#1269.609375
Tracy, J. A. (2020). Be a champion for change by using Lewin’s 3-stage Model of Change. RDH, 40(2), 18-20.
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