IMPQI309 – Lead and direct organisational change to sustain improvement in food operations

Overview 

This standard is about the skills and knowledge needed for you to lead and direct organisational change to sustain improvement, to support your organisation's drive to improve food operations. This is important in increasing productivity and success of manufacture, processing and supply within the food supply chain. Leading organisational change is critical in ensuring that an improvement strategy can be successfully delivered and sustained.

You will need to show and understand how you prepare adequately for leading and directing your organisation's change and improvement strategy and objectives. You will need to comply with your company policies for leading change and take responsibility for your actions. You will need to show and understand how to lead the strategy, objectives and timelines for change and improvement, and understand the concerns of colleagues in achieving the change objectives. It involves understanding leadership techniques, the performance of teams, barriers, risks, monitoring, communication and feedback systems.

This standard applies to you if you are a director, manager or consultant who has responsibility for leading and directing an organisation's change and improvement strategy, to sustain improvement in food or drink operations including manufacturing, processing, packing or supply chain activities.

Performance criteria

You must be able to:

Prepare for leading and directing change and improvement

  1. draft and agree the plans for a programme of change and improvement ensuring best fit with the improvement strategy
  2. discuss and confirm the key objectives, scope of the plans and the available resources with relevant personnel and any key stakeholders
  3. make any final changes to plans where this is justified
  4. confirm the final plans and overall programme with the relevant personnel

Lead and direct an organisational change and improvement programme

  1. allocate roles and responsibilities to management and relevant personnel
  2. confirm that sufficient and adequate resources are made available to personnel
  3. make sure the personnel responsible for planning and implementing change and improvement techniques understand their roles and responsibilities
  4. check and confirm the effective application of improvement techniques
  5. encourage personnel involved to actively support the change process and improvement activities
  6. support others to ensure the effective implementation of change and improvement activities
  7. facilitate communication in support of change and improvement activities
  8. monitor progress towards established objectives
  9. identify and deal with obstacles to improvement activities

Obtain and provide feedback on leading a change and improvement programme

  1. evaluate the success of your leadership and direction in sustaining improvement, identifying what lessons can be learned and recognising the contributions of any managers and other personnel
  2. seek feedback on the value of your contribution to leading a change and improvement programme as required by the improvement strategy
  3. check current status of the impact of your contribution to leading a change and improvement programme
  4. provide feedback on your contribution to leading a change and improvement programme for sustaining improvement to the relevant personnel

Knowledge and understanding

You need to know and understand

  1. your organisation's improvement vision, strategy, objectives, the reasons for improvement, the risks and expected benefits
  2. the main models and methods for directing change and improvement effectively, and their advantages and disadvantages
  3. how to devise and agree plans for change and improvement in line with the strategy for improvement
  4. how to assess and manage the risks and benefits associated with implementation of organisational change and improvement
  5. the importance of contingency planning and how to plan effectively
  6. how to make critical decisions
  7. the internal and resource barriers to change, and the techniques that deal with these
  8. stakeholder and line management expectations and how they influence the process
  9. business and operational critical activities and interdependencies associated with improvement
  10. how to make changes to plans and carry out corrective direction as circumstances dictate and the associated management of priorities and rationales for colleagues
  11. the communication channels used to inform, both formal and informal
  12. what the policy and systems are to monitor, control and review progress during management of change and improvement
  13. how to evaluate the success of the implementation of an improvement strategy
  14. the range of information sources available to support improvement
  15. how to give and receive feedback about the implementation of the improvement strategy and specific management of change and improvement issues
  16. why effective planning is essential to organisational change improvement programmes
  17. different leadership styles and behaviours, their strengths and how to use the appropriate style for difference circumstances
  18. different methods of communication and their relevant strengths and weaknesses in various circumstances
  19. why it is important to set specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound (SMART) objectives to achieve improved performance
  20. how to motivate staff and gain their commitment to participate in change and improvement programmes to sustain improvement
  21. how to justify, present and communicate recommendations for a planned programme of change and improvement
  22. how to lead a realistic programme of change and improvement in accordance with the organisation's improvement strategy
  23. how to ensure that changes and improvements are sufficient detailed to ensure sustainability of improvement

Keywords: Food; Operations; Manufacturing; Excellence; Improvement; Change; Sustain; Lead