Managing Change: Models and Strategic Plan for Implementation

This study explores the concept of managing change in organizations and discusses various models proposed by researchers. It also includes a strategic plan for implementing change in Marks and Spencer, a British multinational retail company.

Managing Change

Table of Contents
Managing Change............................................................................................................................1
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Organisational change means disturbing the equilibrium to improve functioning and
system of organisation. Change can be brought in various forms like organisational culture,
processes, technology, infrastructure etc. Change can be small and big depending on the
objectives of organisation that it tend to achieve by bringing change in organisation. This change
needs to managed properly so that organisation can get maximum benefits of it and overcome
challenges that can come during change and reducing its negative outcomes to lowest possible.
Change management is an approach to deal with difference being occurred. This management
helps organisation and its people to cope up with change and allow time to adjust as per their
pace. This study highlights change management and models proposed by various researchers to
ease the process of change in organisation. This study also includes strategic plan to implement
change in Marks and Spencer, a British multinational retail company.
MAIN BODY
Whenever an organisation decides to change something related to its process and
functions or system. Organisation cannot directly do it without any consideration of its effect on
its people. Individuals working in working for organisation are most likely to get affected by the
change that company brings. Therefore to consider them and their ease is very important.
Management of change though does not remove the effect completely but help that people can
cope with change and later work in that situation. Change management in present scenario and
highly flexible organisations has become very essential because organisation need to change
itself in one form or other in a very short time span (Al-Haddad and Kotnour, 2015). That time
change management is essential so that people can prepare themselves to work in a changed
organisation. Marks and Spenser a renowned British multinational retail organisation. They have
also brought change in their organisation in terms of technology that has become essential factor
for organisation's success. Change that are adopted by company are of various types, first is
happened change, this type of change happens without any advance preparation and are often
traumatic (Cameron and Green, 2019). Simply these changes are not brought by the company but
as their name suggest they happens and organisation have a very little control or no control over
it. Second is Reactive Change, this happens when change in external environment have already
happened and to cope with that company implement change in internal environment. This change

allow less time to prepare and is also traumatic in most of the situation. Third is Anticipatory
Change, when company enables itself to anticipate event or events that are going to happen in
external environment and to face that pressure and cope with that prepare itself in advance and
implement change in organisation. Fourth is Planned change, this type of change is implemented
by the company to achieve pre decided goals and objectives. In order to stay ahead in
competition this type of change are adopted by the company and that is why it is also known as
Developmental Change (Hayes, 2018). Fifth is, Operational Change this change is essential
when company is under competitive pressure and to deal with that change in its operations
become essential in form improved quality and services. Lastly Strategic Change, change in
organisational strategy and change at organisational level that affects various aprts of the
organisation this change is known as strategic change. Change in management style a an
example of strategic change. To facilitate these changes in organisation various change
management models have been proposed by researchers, some of them with their evaluation are
as follows-
Kurt Lewin's model-
Three step process of change management is most popular and accepted around the
world. Steps included in this model are-
Unfreezing
Make Changes
Refreezing
these three steps cover whole change management.
Unfreezing, includes analysing every existing process and its human interaction that comes
under change. Doing this gives a perspective and enable to look and and realize the need for
change. Under this step organisation or change agents need to make need of change visible to
everyone in order to prepare and convince them to accept change and that they now have to deal
in different manner from which is already they are doing (Rosenbaum, More and Steane, 2018).
This not includes convincing people but also includes dealing with resistance which is not
abnormal. Change agents should resolve all the queries and doubts of people in order to deal
with their resistance.
Make Changes, this step includes implementation of change and guiding and giving required
direction to team so that can guide everyone who is a part of change. In this step every problem

that comes in initial processing of change needs to solved by change agent and their teams so
that implementation and working over changed processes become easy for employees.
Refreezing, once the change has been implemented and has been accepted by everyone, it
becomes new status quo, which needs to refreeze. Later this change become habit as earlier
processes. Refreezing ensures that old processes and habits do not surface again.
McKinsey's 7-S Model-
McKinsey has developed this model to manage change in organisation. In this 7-S
respectively represent strategy, structure, system, shared values, style, staff and skills. Before
implementing change organisation need to assess its strategy, what is the objective of company,
what strategies have been made to achieve objectives and what scope strategies have for
changes. Then Look at structure of the organisation, what is hierarchy in the organisation, how
departments are organised and how each department are connected with other and what is the
frequency of their communication. Then analysis of system needs to be undertaken this includes
identifying core system in business, how they are used, are these system accurate and how results
of these are assessed and who has access to these system. Then next process includes recording
of Shared Values which includes company's values, culture, culture of teams and these can be
strengthen. Then recording of style is undertaken which includes, analysing leadership and
management styles and their effectiveness. Then staff is evaluated positions filled and skills
these employees possess and what skills they lack and do company need to hire someone.
Evaluating skills like what skills do staff possess and what skills are not there in company and
which are required in company. After this analysis this needs to be considered how each factor
affect others and are they supportive to change or not.
Kotter's Theory-
Theory that focus more on people who are behind change and less on change itself. This
theory works like-
Creating a sense of urgency- When change needs to be implemented initially a sense of
urgency should be created to get the team on board and motivate them to accept change.

Build the core coalition- When process has started next step is to gather leaders and
stakeholders of the company to convince them about the need of change. These people should be
having various skills sets and experience and needs to ask for their commitment to changes.
Form a strategic Vision- This step undertakes defining changes and vision for that changes are
being implemented and what values are going to be achieved through the change and what will
be the outcome predicted.
Get everyone on board- In this step idea of change needs to be spread across the overall
organisation. So that everyone can contribute in implementing change. For that regular meetings
and open discussion are organised. The main idea behind this is that whole organisation and
employees are convinced with the idea of change.
Remove barriers and friction- When everyone is ready to implement change, problems that can
block the process should be assessed (Pollack and Pollack, 2015). Timely assessment of this will
allow to remove them before they occur and block the process of change.
Generate short term wins- After process in his run organisation should make sure that there are
short term wins during process that can motivate and encourage people and also assures that
process of going in the right direction.
Sustain Acceleration- Once the process has started and going in the process it should be kept
accelerating. So that desired results can be achieved in decided time period and as effective as
they were assumed to be.
Set your change on Stone- This is about reflecting change in organisation culture and
documents.
On the basis of above explanation it can be evaluated that all these models focus on
human aspect of change and suggest that firstly minds of people involved in the process should
be changed and prepared to accept the change then only they will be able to work on
implementing change and then working with change being implemented. All these models
represent management of change in different style and is suitable for different situation in
different type of organisation.
Development of Strategic plan for implementation of Change-
Implementation of change is way more critical than it looks in theory and only a well
developed strategic plan can implement change successfully (Nikkilä and et.al., 2017). In this

study development of strategic plan to implement change in Marks and Spencer has been
included. Plan is as follows-
the things that need to be changed in M&S are-
Extra Spending and Attention of extra curricular activities.
Low quantity of product line.
Technology.
For these company needs to evaluate finance management and control spending, need to focus
on product line and increase quantity of product line and then upgrade its technology.
For these changes Kurt Lewin Model can be used. Which is
Unfreezing- As there are more than one change is required. Unfreezing also become difficult as
there are more people gets involved and process of analysing also becomes large. In case of
M&S changes are related to finance, product line and technology. These factors respectively
affect those who are involved in management of finance, production and operation and all the
employees tend to work on technology. In this situation company have to convince people who
are working in finance these people needs to train by expert and that will definitely affect them
and will make employees uncomfortable (Suehs, and et,al., 2019). Those who are in production
and operation activities will have to be convinces as increasing product line will increase their
work. People who do not know use of technology though they will be provided training required
to make them work with new technology they may feel like their jobs may end because of
technology. These situation will naturally probe people to resist. To deal with resistance
company should make the need visible to all who resist and then let them feel the need. Then
company should make sure that all their queries get solved. Later they should be given initial
training so that they can understand that change will not create any difficulty while working and
convince them for their wilful acceptance.
Make change- This phase involves implementing the change in real which was earlier recorded
in documents. Then people should be guided while working so that they do not feel and have any
difficulty while working on the changed process. Their problems related to work should be
timely addressed (Verhulst and Lambrechts, 2015). Like people who are working with upgraded
technology may find it difficult to initially work with that. They should be helped whenever they
are facing any difficulty. Feedback of their work should also be provided to them so they can be
aware of their performance and at this time they should be recognised for every small

achievement by them. Refreezing- Once people have started working on new processes then to
make these processes their habit so old habits does not get refurbished.
Using this model M&S can enable itself for successful change in the organisation.
CONCLUSION
On the basis of above study it can be concluded that change which is natural comes
within an organisation needs to be managed to get desired outcome and minimise negative
implications in organisation. There are models that can help organisation to successfully
implement change with wilful acceptance of those being affected by change. Models in which
Lewin's model is most popular and widely accepted includes all the necessary requirements for a
successful change implementation and similar facts have been included in Kotter's theory but
they are divided in more small parts and explain more subject matter than explained in Lewin's
model. These models should be implemented as per suitability in organisation and change
agents.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
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Verhulst, E. and Lambrechts, W., 2015. Fostering the incorporation of sustainable development
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Online
Change-management. 2019. [Online]. Available Through:
https://searchcio.techtarget.com/definition/change-management
Models of Change Management. 2019. [Online]. Available Through:
https://www.lucidchart.com/blog/7-fundamental-change-management-models