To remain relevant in the industry, organizations must plan for change. For a change to be effective in the company, planners ought to have a vision of the company’s future. The change management ideas must be in conformity with the change project objectives. The proposed action plan has to govern the creation of change as the next stage. A well definite method of measurement should be implemented after the endorsement of an idea. Validation and evaluation methodology completes the change in the organization. Also, it involves incorporating the planning for change stage with Kotter’s model providing a detailed and robust strategy. Kotter's model is the method that consists eight steps: Institutionalized Change, Change Build, Quick Wins, Empowered Action, Communication, Vision, Coalition and Urgency (Pollack and Pollack, 2014).
Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. is a company that operates a chain of grocery stores, discount department and hypermarket. More so, it is a multinational retail corporation founded in 1962 with its headquarters based in Arkansas at Bentonville, U.S.A. Under a total of sixty-three banners, Wal-Mart has clubs in 28 countries as well as 11,539 stores. According to Fortune Global 500, Wal-Mart in 2016 was the largest private employer as well as world’s largest company by revenue. For Wal-Mart to remain productive and relevant in the retail industry, they must ensure the continuous process for changes as a culture to ensure the company succeeds. The executives and the managers should utilize Kotter’s Model in ensuring that the 2.2million employees in its roster follow a definite path of focus and vision (Mujtaba and Maxwell, 2011). Implementing change in Wal-Mart will not only affect the personnel within the organization but also the whole general society consuming or interacting with the company’s products.
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Project Goals
For Wal-Mart to remain relevant, it ought to focus on particular objectives that change the corporation thus making it more independent, reliable and sustainable in the future. In any company, sustainability is essential because its survival in the long term depends on it. Wal-Mart is already the leader of sustainability in the retail industry. However, the objectives of change ought to ensure that the company is unshakable on the top spot in the next couple of years. The urgency for a change ought to be well understood by the company’s leaders such as the CEO, managers and the other subordinate as well. Wal-Mart must be able and willing to compose a plan that is actionable. It must be through the provision of a detailed path of the direction the company wishes to move. More so, Wal-Mart must provide training development for the employees specifically the managers so that as the action plan is comprehended by everyone. The main objective is the creation of a common feeling towards change in the organization thus everyone will be willing to contribute positively towards the success of the plan.
At the onset of change, training is essential because it enables the employees to become experts in keeping the change plan moving even in the future. To eliminate the problem of employees jamming the phone when asking for help, managers ought to be situated in different stores to act as the resource persons (Sherratt, Jefferies, and Awad, 2013). For the customers to buy into the idea of change, all the workers will need to be advertisers of change wherever they are situated. For the company to continue on an upward trend as the pace setters of change in the retail industry, Wal-Mart ought to galvanize the project goals in its daily activities.
Action Plan
Change cannot be casually implemented in any organization. Wal-Mart developed a strategy where the action plan begins with introducing time critical and key changes through its leaders. Delivery of information to the employees will be done regularly through staff meetings, training, courses, social media as well as email. To track change progress, Wal-Mart will utilize a web-based portal in seeking support if needed, seeing the upcoming events and courses as well as training. To promote the employee's involvement, marketing department in Wal-Mart will, set-up a lot of internal; programs. In the bid to contribute and implement the new strategy once the employees understand and familiarize with key initiatives, Wal-Mart will set up a team to accomplish specific objectives. For the goals to be met in the required time, leaders are included in the groups thus ensuring that they gain necessary skills to guide the senior management. To ever team or group, specific tasks will be assigned to the various individuals as they develop. To complete the job, each team will be provided with productivity tools and goals that are necessary to complete the tasks. In a continued employee awareness and engagement plan, leaders will need to have a critical role to play. In Wal-Mart, the leaders will be tasked with the responsibility of ensuring that goals are met and streamlined according to the new structures put in place. Constant checking that the designed goals are in alignment with the new structures is necessary for the Wal-Mart leadership.
Measured Progress
For Wal-Mart to change into a company that embraces sustainability and corporate social responsibility from its traditional management, Jon Kotter’s model eight steps ought to be followed keenly. The eight steps in Kotter model remain relevant as planning tools to date. It is despite them being proposed 20 years ago (Sherratt, Jefferies, and Awad, 2015). For Wal-Mart’s organizational development practitioners to assess the entire company’s transformation, all the eight steps must be identified and known for progress to be measured. The eight steps include anchoring new approaches in culture, consolidating and producing change, generating short-term wins, empowering broad-based change, developing a vision and strategy, creating the guiding coalition and establishing senses of urgency. In any company, progress measurement that is not linked to the monetary value such as dollar and cents is difficult to measure. Wal-Mart is by no means an exception. Therefore, measuring the way Wal-Mart is faring from a standard management model is even more difficult in the consideration its greater social responsibilities. Wal-Mart will be keen to implement Key Performance Indicators as the best method to measure the progress of the company. The Key Performance Indicators are computer applications that can be utilized in measuring performance by comparing the scorecards against Wal-Mart’s set objectives and thus indicating failure or success. The Key Performance Indicators ought to be result oriented, specific, measurable as well as achievable. Change progress in different direction thus the Key Performance Indicators ought to be constantly updated and closely monitored. To control the company, Wal-Mart’s leadership must embrace measurement to understand the trends so as to make a well-informed decision.
Performance Validation
There are several levels that are involved in performance validation. The project team level is the first level. The Key Performance Indicators in comparison to goals will guide the Wal-Mart’s assessors to evaluate the project teams. Leaders are measured in the collective productivity bases while individuals, on the other hand, are measured on unit production. Additional responsibilities might be assigned to the teams that achieve at the high level of productivity. Wal-Mart managers ought to continually evaluate the productivity objectives as well as ensuring that the new structures are in place. As change is implemented, leaders have got the overall responsibilities of ensuring that workers’ projects and assignment are in conformity with Wal-Mart’s vision. Wal-Mart will constantly validate that every project or activity is the best way to actualized future desired transformations within the organization. Across all functional sectors of business, there will be cross-department task force or team established to ensure that communication is effective. Individual tasks may be altered by the leaders for them to align to the action plan when Wal-Mart’s performance reports are produced. Organizations in the past have tried implementing major transformation but have failed completely or partially. About Wal-Mart’s stockholders, the executives are responsible for validating the company’s performance. The desired outcome might not always be achieved but as Kotter’s model indicates there is always the ability to repeat the process. In the wake of competitors adversary, there is the need for top leaders to validate transformation in conformity with the market conditions.
Conclusion
In conclusion, for Wal-Mart to achieve the transformation from its traditional management model to embracing a new social corporate responsibility program as well as sustainability, change must become its culture. Kotter’s model provides eight implementation stages that the company ought to follow (Appelbaum et al., 2012). Wal-Mart leadership ought to make efforts continuously to ensure that the overall strategy for change is in alignment with the action plan. Supporting change ought to be overall responsibilities of the entire employee community at Wal-Mart that is led by its leaders. Finally, creating an environment for a change ought to be high on the agenda of Wal-Mart management for them to achieve the desired results. Ensuring that everyone is on board will reduce inefficiency or delayed execution of the action plan. However, in case the change does not produce the desired results, Wal-Mart leadership must go back to the drawing and start afresh.
References
Appelbaum, S., Habashy, S., Malo, J., and Shafiq, H. (2012). Back to the future: revisiting Kotter's 1996 change model. Journal of Management Development, 31 (8), pp.764-782.
Mujtaba, B. and Maxwell, S. (2011). Wal-Mart In The Global Retail Market: Its Growth And Challenges. Journal of Business Case Studies (JBCS), 3 (2), p.1.
Pollack, J., and Pollack, R. (2014). Using Kotter’s Eight-Stage Process to Manage an Organisational Change Program: Presentation and Practice. Systemic Practice and Action Research, 28 (1), pp.51-66.
Sherratt, S., Jefferies, M., and Awad, R. (2015). Applying a New Model of Organizational Change Management in Health. Change Management: An International Journal, 15 (1), pp.1-13.
