Topics and Questions We Can Help You To Answer:
Paper Instructions:

Riverbend City: Planning Organizational Change Using the Four-Stage Change Process
Overview
For this assignment, you will use your Unit 2 readings about organizational change and the characters from the Riverbend City simulation (linked in Resources), to address the creative tension that exists between the Hmong community and medical professionals in Riverbend City.


Instructions
In a paper of 8–10 pages, complete the following:

Introduction
Introduce your four-stage organizational change plan by identifying, summarizing, and diagramming the differences experienced by Riverbend City's medical professionals and the local Hmong community.

Building a Foundation for Change
Address the following:
•    How will you engage the stakeholders?
•    What will you do to help both sides realize their common ground and shared goals?
•    How will you go about building capacity for collaboration?
•    Include a diagram that illustrates the dynamics of the situation and the differences experienced by the medical professionals and the local Hmong community.

o    Note: Examples of diagramming to help stakeholders understand and face current reality can be found in the Stroh text, Systems Thinking for Social Change, Chapters 7 and 8. See Figures 7.12, 7.13, and 8.1.

Facing Current Reality
Build understanding to help the medical professionals and the members of the Hmong community through systems mapping:
•    Identify necessary people to interview about the history of the current situation.
o    Provide a rationale for your selection.
•    List the questions you will ask to gain systemic insights and deepen your understanding of the problem and to ultimately establish a clear goal for which you can arrive at a consensus.
o    Explain how your questions will help in achieving these insights.
Making an Explicit Choice
•    Expose the possible quick fixes for maintaining the status quo.
•    Identify the costs and possible issues for making long-term changes that will improve the situation and change the existing cultures.
•    Suggest a visionary solution that you believe will address the need for change and provide your rationale.


Bridging the Gap
•    Create a plan to increase people's awareness of how the system functions.
•    Describe how you will rewire causal feedback relationships.
•    Suggest some ways in which you might shift mental models.
•    Identify the data you will need to gather to measure positive movement.


Conclusion
Conclude by showing how you have harnessed the power of systems thinking with your plan