Faslane Submarine Base Shifts to Private Ownership

The HM Naval Base Clyde (Faslane) submarine base transitioned from being under the direct control of the MOD (Ministry of Defence) to a private company called Babcock International. With these substantial transitions, it was necessary for Babcock to perform change management in order to smooth over the transition, as well as improve performance, which was lacklustre enough to demand the change in leadership. Both supervisors employed different change styles and levers of change in their revamping of the operations of Faslane, to rousing success.

1) In relation to sections 14. 2. 1 and 14. 5, the types of changes that are being pursued at Faslane are adaption change, incremental change, and transformational change. Adaption change is a change that can be accommodated within the current culture and occur incrementally. It is the most common form of change in organisations, Incremental change is a process that adds new functionality and new properties to software. It's an essential part of software processes such as maintenance, evolution, iterative development and enhancements, and agile development.

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Because of that, it plays an important role in practical software engineering, and by transformational change, we mean a change that is not merely an extension or improvement over the past, but a state change. For example, in the case study we could see that the adaption change has two connections where one is national of the change and the change has taken for a five year period time, so again the five year period is the big bang change as big bang change that refers maybe overnight, so it is incremental change and another dimension is the extent of the change and from the case study we know that the law have changed the casual i.

e. operational change. So, it is knowledge transformational change which is relying on the change, so we match the two dimensions and jump into conclusion. 2) The change of style that John Howie has is direction change as direction change is the action of changing something. So, for example, in the case study we could see that John is making cost cutting changes where he signed a contract initially for a five year period to deliver i?? 76(i?? 83; $114) million of cost savings without affecting the service provided to the Navy.

A percentage of that saving would come to us as profit; the bulk would go to the customer as cost reduction. However, a public sector manager who`s got wide ranging responsibilities and a fairly large budget has no incentive to reduce costs. They don`t share in any benefits and were brought up in a system where, if they hadn`t spent their budget, next year it would be cut. So they believed that a big opportunity might come from changing the mind set: to see their job as to deliver with the minimum possible spend, so this was the direction taken.

The change style of Craig Lockhart is collaboration change which in other word means resist changes. Leaders often react to the resistance with frustration and intolerance which does little to inspire employees to embrace change. For example, if we look at the case study we could see that everyone down to team leaders has become acutely aware that business performance is not something to be hidden. It has to be transparent, so if it was good news we would tell them its good news but it was always honest news.

However, if there was bad news we would tell them it was bad news and people might react to that in a negative way because they have given broad objectives from a company point of view and they may have been given limited time, so they may find it difficult to resist changes to fulfil the broad objectives that had been given to them within the time period. 3) The levers of change that are being used are: ; The conflict of interest between MOD (Ministry of Defence) and Faslane Management. The conflict is initiated and driving certain amount of change forcing organisation to do something.

For example, Faslane believed that a big opportunity might come from changing the mindset: to see their job as to deliver with the minimum possible spend. However, the profits that MOD`s had made was entirely a share of the savings, so no cost reduction, no profit; but the contract made sure we couldn`t do that by prejudicing service levels. Cost as by the year 2000 the MOD (Ministry of Defence) had decided they needed to significantly reduce the cost and improve operational effectiveness of their naval bases and that in-house.

For example, in the case study we could see that there was cost cutting changes where if a public sector manager who`s got wide ranging responsibilities and a fairly large budget has no incentive to reduce costs. They don`t share in any benefits and were brought up in a system where, if they hadn`t spent their budget, next year it would be cut. So the people at the public sector saw that a big opportunity might come from changing the mindset: to see their job as to deliver with the minimum possible spend.

Challenging the taken for granted, for example, in the case study we could see that the focus was from the waterfront inward rather than looking outwards to the ships and submarines. John thought that was because the people who looked after the site were often civilians who had been here much longer than the Navy people who looked after the ships and submarines and generally moved on after 2-3 years. So the challenge was to become focused on delivering services to the customer, the Navy.

Customer requirement, for example, there was a process that required any change to be documented and passed through a series of review points. After all, in a nuclear naval base you have to be sure that changing something fundamental to safety can be done without unacceptable risk. At each stage of the process people were given 14 days to review it, and of course everyone looked at it on day thirteen. So the overall process took about 56 days. With 2,000 people you get access to a whole raft of ideas and change initiatives that John would never have thought of because he had never worked in this environment.

4) So, from the case study it could be seen that Faslane overall has been successful because the service provided to the Navy and the other one was resistance to change where if there was good news it might had influenced the behaviours of people in a positive way , so for that reason they were successful as the commodore`s management team did partnering as there were a mix of people who either believed change was necessary and were willing to give partnering a try or people who were likely to be personally disadvantaged by partnering and were less supportive, so that they could give the good news to the people and avoid giving bad news to the people without affecting people being resistant to change. The adaptive change that had been affected has been successful because at each stage of the process people were given 14 days to review it; and of course everyone looked at it on day thirteen. So the overall process took about 56 days.

It also became clear that a number of the review points weren`t adding value; it was: I am letting you look at this because you might be interested, not because involvement was critical. By taking those stages Faslane was able to free up people`s bureaucratic burden. The incremental change that had been affected has been successful because people looked carefully at structures and processes to figure out how they operated and ask how that could be done differently. For example, there was a process that required any change to be documented and passed through a series of review points. After all, in a nuclear naval base you have to be sure that changing something fundamental to safety can be done without unacceptable risk, so they managed to do that without falling into any unacceptable risk.

The transformational change that had been affected has been successful because Faslane had different skill sets to change the structure and for having different skill sets Faslane delivered a strategy of being the best, most profitable organisation supporting the UK submarine fleet. The direction change that had been affected has been successful because the directions that John Howie took which was cost cutting without affecting the services provided to the Navy which he successfully did. The collaboration change that had been affected has been successful because Craig Lockhart always gave good news to the people and didn`t give bad news to the people, so for that reason people did not resist changes and were able to do their work properly.

The conflict of interest between MOD and Faslane that has been affected has been successful as by forcing their people they were able to achieve their goals. Challenging the taken for granted where John was able to keep focus on delivering good services to the customers who were the Navy and for that reason he was successful as he was able to deliver the proper services to the customer, the Navy. Customer requirement where the customers wanted better service, have a better attitude, have a good communication, and have a responsiveness better, so that is why they were successful as Faslane gave the customers better service, created a better attitude towards the people, communicated well with the customers, and also they gave a good response by seeing the Faslane.

Conclusion Both John Howie and Craig Lockhart utilized uniquely collaborative and consultative change styles in the change management of Faslane. By facilitating communication plans and other levers of change (accountability, relationships), open communication and transparency was encouraged, thereby allowing the best ideas from workers on all levels to be heard. Hearing the workers' demands, Lockhart and Howie managed to make changes that improved service, collaboration with customers, and faith in the company. Given the opportunities that Faslane has been offered in the next few years, it is safe to say that these efforts were a rousing success.