Contemporary organizations find it difficult to create change, especially on trends or issues that have been the norm for employees or other stakeholders. These changes may be due to new innovations, globalization, or even the company’s spending priorities. These factors necessitate the leader to involve their members in efforts for planning sustainable goals if the organization hopes to stay afloat. Since these changes may result in stress or anxiety within the workforce, initiating change requires great dexterity they require leaders to show critical competency (L ucidchart, 2019 ). For this reason, managers have had to rely on tried and tested change models, like the Kotter’s 8-step change model to help overcome barriers and create a plan that makes change easy for them and their employees.
Kotter’s model for initiating transition proposes a top-down approach for initiating change. This does not, however, mean that the subordinates are not engaged in the change implementation. This linear model requires the team tasked with the proposed change to enable concurrent cases of Kotter’s process in their organization for the desired effect to be actualized (Pollack, 2019). The present case for change in our organization is informing marketing executives that they will lose some privileges on travel, technology and fitness. These changes were due to the loss of a high producing account.
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Creating a sense of urgency
The first step to be taken, in accordance with Kotter’s process, is to form a sense of urgency. This is the consciousness towards the need for the change in the organization. This step is fundamental since it determines the success of all the following steps and Kotter himself noted that creating urgency is crucial to get all team members to cooperate. This is because of the presence of complacency, which has been identified to be the more prevalent state in organizations and is more present than the urge to change (Pollack, 2019). Complacency causes change initiatives to stagnate since the members are not interested in the effort necessary for the change. Urgency brings the control and reliability necessary to unite the group and initiate transition.
The marketing executives also have to feel this urgency. The loss of a high producing account would require cutback from some organizational procedures before the spending ends up causing unwanted and unwarranted changes elsewhere. There is an urgent need to cut back on the executive privileges. The sense of urgency would be established in the executives through a knowledge program. The focus of this program would be to highlight and explore the risks that would befall the organization due to this shift and also if the executive perks are sustained. The program would show why the change was necessary by raising awareness on the pending move to limit spending and keep the company running.
Creating the guiding coalition
Following creating urgency, the second step in the Kotter process would be to form a group with enough power to initiate and sustain the change. This would mean involving the leaders in several management positions and levels who could back the decision. The primary coalition would involve the executive management and the board of directors, or another significant representation of sponsors, to create a strong guiding coalition. Being the CEO and having executives report to my office would be an advantage for the coalition to provide continuous ongoing strategic direction to the proposed change. However, this step would also involve finding other key stakeholders and leaders to help with the charge. The other members would form a coalition that functions and operates as a team and they would also be charged with implementing the decision. This coalition might include other subordinate members across several departments and levels to increase the potential of the vision from all levels. Consistent analysis would have to be conducted to find and address weaknesses in the coalition. This coalition would be formed at the executive (and their subordinates’) level. This coalition would receive guidance from the executive coalition and would then influence changes through their guidance (Pollack, 2019). Although this is not a complex organizational change, the strong guidance from the coalition is important to ensure harmonization of the vision and create an accountability body.
Develop a vision and strategy
The change strategy was initiated due to a vision of the future of the organization and how the future would require a different approach and lifestyle. This change requires executives to be relieved of certain executive privileges to reduce costs. This vision should be clarified and clearly ingrained in the minds of the executives and all organization employees for the change to be feasible. Our organization recognizes the role of marketing executives and our previous market position enabled us to reward them through the executive benefits they enjoyed. However, change in one of the accounts that enabled this treatment threatens our future financial position if the changes are not acknowledged, and if the organization does not realign itself. The vision for this change would require the company to reduce the executives’ operational expenses for it to continue enjoying its financial position. To facilitate this, the organization would have to go back to its mission and vision statements (to either reiterate or redefine the organization’s core values) and show how the change would lead to the envisioned future ( Lucidchart, 2019 ).
Following the definition of the vision, the next item to be developed would be the strategy. Projects that would be launched would include role redefinition to allow executives to focus on the main aspects of their job description. Additionally, meetings or seminars would be conducted that are centered on the need to let the privileges go and how the executives would transition into similar performance rates without the advantages. Since the strategies and the changes are based on the company’s mission, vision, and values, the values would be redefined if they are not in harmony with the changes in the organization. At the end of this phase, the executives should communicate the vision clearly and comprehensively. To facilitate this, visuals may be developed to show the operations of the organization, what is currently working, and what may not work in the future ( Lucidchart, 2019 ). Alongside creating a clear image, the visual may also help to increase the sense of urgency.
Communicating the change vision
It would be harmful to think that the established vision would succeed in getting through in spite of all the communication that happens in the organization. The initial expression of the vision and the desired changes would not suffice and the vision has to be regularly and consistently communicated. Compromising this would risk stalling the change implementation and as such, this step should not be overlooked or even underestimated. The regular information relaying would have to be more than just repetitive for it to be adamant.
The first step would be developing strategies with the organization’s communication department. This would provide prevalence on the issue in the organization by posting updates and informative articles, like recently concluded seminars on the organization’s intranet (Pollack, 2019). The change team would also hold forums to address concerns and fears from the executives and other affected members publicly and honestly. The forums would also use the visuals to further convince and persuade the need for the changes to match the operations and even morale of the organization according to the vision. The executives may also be tasked with coming up with and expressing parts of the presentations to provide examples and explanations for why certain part of the change program were important.
Removing obstacles
The fifth phase of the Kotter process is empowering broad based change, by changing the structures or arrangements that limit the vision and encouraging innovations to overcome these. To accomplish this, we would find examples of leaders in the industry to show and emphasize the value of the change, paying attention to how they managed with and without the lesser perks. Since most resistance is expected at the executive level, most of this phase’s activity would be centered around them. One alternative that may have to be utilized would be to ensure that pressure to the resistant group comes from all levels of the organization, that is, if the rest of the stakeholders recognize and acknowledge the need for the change. However, success would be realized sooner by taking in those resistant to the proposed change and listening to their whims. To follow up on this, we would address and remove some of their concerns by suggesting and creating solutions around the resistance, where the solutions would not compromise the vision. Furthermore, the executives that respond positively to the change, or any reaction other than negative, would be recognized and assigned leadership roles in furthering the change development amongst other lesser responsive executives.
Create short-term wins
These short-term wins would motivate the responding stakeholders and help to persuade critics to join the movement. Short term wins would help to demonstrate the feasibility of the change in the organization and this helps in building consistency and momentum. These wins need to be visible and unanimously successful in order to support the vision. This phasewuth then involve both the creation of these wins and advertising their successes as well. The removal of the benefits would be initiated in this phase. The seemingly minor privileges like relinquishing communication devices and gym memberships would mark the smaller goals. One way to create awareness and advertising the progress of the goals would be to take surveys and display their results within the intranet, but only if they match the goals of the change. The surveys would look at the number of executives who have successfully relieved themselves of the perks in their organizational and personal lives. The survey would also highlight the effect of this move on the executives’ quality of professional and personal lives. Since stories have also been scientifically proven to be a more suitable means of relaying information, they would also be used in this phase (Pollack, 2019). Explaining the challenges of surviving without extra benefits and also which alternatives were used to augment for the needs would also help to strengthen the executives who feel the change was too hard to sustain.
Consolidating and building on the change
By the seventh phase of the initiative, the program should have gained momentum from guidance provided by the coalition, effective and constant communication and, most importantly, previous short-term wins. While the short-term success stories were important to begin the transition period, they are not enough to sustain the change. To make the changes more permanent, the previous successes would be analyzed to determine their faults and strengths. To follow up on this knowledge, more ambitious goals would be rolled out to build momentum upon achievement. In this stage, the more important privileges like transport perks and company vehicles would finally be taken. True development would be achieved when these changes are rolled out while the previous changes are still sustained.
Anchor the changes in the organization’s corporate culture
Finally, the last phase would be the permanent incorporation of the changes into the company culture. The changes made should be consolidated by ensuring that momentum is not lost until the new state of equilibrium has become synonymous with the company culture. This may be achieved by taking all opportunities to reiterate the success of the executives in foregoing their privileges and recognizing their contribution to the success of the proposed change. Furthermore, the core values have to be instilled to any and all new hires to ensure that they understand the changes and the legacy of the changes which may then be sustained.
The change model proposed in this report used Kotter’s process which is one of several change models used for organization change. The use of Kotter’s eight stage process provided a linear and progressive approach to effecting change ( Lucidchart, 2019 ). In the organization, there is a need to progress changes from the company level (as the executive) and also more importantly, the stakeholder level, involving the different units and stakeholders. Fortunately, the change only affected the management level of the various departments. However, other stakeholders were used separately to effect the change by creating urgency and highlighting what the implications of the suggested reforms meant. The proposed change would require the support of all levels of management to actualize it.
References
Lucidchart. (2019). How to Implement Change with Kotter’s 8-Step Change Model | Lucidchart Blog. Retrieved 23 August 2019, from https://www.lucidchart.com/blog/kotters-8-step-change-model
Pollack, J., Pollack, R. (2015) Using Kotter’s Eight Stage Process to manage an organisational change program: presentation and practice. Systemic Practice and Action Research, DOI 10.1007/s11213-014-9317-0
