Understanding and Leading Change: Case Studies of Apple and Microsoft

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UNDERSTANDING AND LEADING
CHANGE

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION.......................................................................................................................................3
LO1.............................................................................................................................................................4
COMPARE WAYS IN WHICH CHANGE IMPACTS ON AN ORGANISATION’S STRATEGY
AND OPERATIONS...............................................................................................................................4
TYPES OF ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE.........................................................................................4
LO2.............................................................................................................................................................7
EVALUATE THE INFLUENCES THAT DRIVERS OF CHANGE HAVE ON ORGANISATIONAL
BEHAVIOUR.........................................................................................................................................7
LO3...........................................................................................................................................................10
DETERMINE HOW BARRIERS TO CHANGE INFLUENCE LEADERSHIP DECISION-MAKING
...............................................................................................................................................................10
FORCE FIELD ANALYSIS.................................................................................................................11
LO4............................................................................................................................................................12
APPLY A RANGE OF LEADERSHIP APPROACHES TO A CHANGE INITIATIVE.....................12
APPROACHES FOR DEALING WITH RESISTANCE TO CHANGE..............................................12
THEORIES, CONCEPTS AND MODEL OF CHANGE......................................................................13
CONCLUSION.........................................................................................................................................17
REFERENCES..........................................................................................................................................18

INTRODUCTION
Change is something which massively influences the number of people to stop the things which
they are doing currently and start doing something new which apparently they don't want to do.
In this assignment, we will learn how to manage the leading change in the organization.
Change is an unavoidable part of organizational life and if the organization have a good leader it
would really help them to lead the change positively and easily. But in most of the cases, people
often fear changes then human behaviour leads to resistance. Thus leading and managing the
change is a very critical role as it takes a person outside from his comfort zone and beyond the
existing administration too-set and management. Sometimes changes are predictable, leader or
an individual can anticipate the occurring change, how people will respond to that change and
what are the required that need to do by the leader to involve the people to adopt the change
positively. In this assignment, we will discuss how the organization can prepare, plan and handle
the refusal that surely comes from many people. So in order to study this, we will discuss some
practical tools and models to adopt the change.

LO1
COMPARE WAYS IN WHICH CHANGE IMPACTS ON AN ORGANISATION’S
STRATEGY AND OPERATIONS
Change is a constant demand or necessity of an organization; it's an unavoidable part of the
company. According to me, now days change management is basic management ability and to
lead the change in an organization we should follow some techniques to make a success of our
change:
 The leader should be aware of how people will respond to the change in your
organization because most of the time employee takes the change in a negative way.
 Changes need to be a plan which involves strategy, transformation, operations and
transactions in order to involve the person in the process of change.
 The most difficult part is to convince the people to adopt change by consulting them
within the organization to do the things differently.
 Involvement of people while forming the change, this will lead their commitment
towards new roles and will generate their interest in change management.
 Constant communication is very necessary while managing change. No one will change
themselves by only one announcement as it needs to be repetitive and show the concern
and reason to accept the change (Nordin et al., 2012).
 The last thing is to understand the reason why people don't want to change.
In this assignment, we will discuss this chapter in the context of two worlds biggest companies
that Microsoft and Apple. Both the companies are growing perfectly with the help of a
combined approach of innovation and change. Both the companies are known as valuable
technology companies and due to their constant acceptance of change in the organization has led
them to success.
TYPES OF ORGANISATIONAL CHANGE
Strategic: in the business operations, sometimes it is necessary to manage or adjust the change
in the organization's strategy to achieve the goal of the firm. Due to a change in external

environment, sometimes it is important to change the firm's statement or mission (Carlström and
Ekman, 2012). Change in strategy involves the change in the basic approach of doing business.
 Structural: due to change in external environment, the organization may change or
redesign their company structure. A change in structure involves structural
characteristics, the hierarchy of authority, management system and administrative
procedure. Change in the structure includes all the management of the organization.
 Process-oriented: to achieve excellent or better productivity and workflow in the firm,
they may need to change the processor redesign the process to get the optimum result.
For example change in the delivery of services or change in product assembles.
 People-centred: this change refers to make the change in employee's skills, behaviour,
performance or attitude in the company (Carlström and Ekman, 2012). This change
involves the process of motivating, communicating, interacting and leading among the
groups.
Sometimes organization includes small improvement or incremental changes in the process of
people-centred change such as some organization teach the managers and leaders how to manage
and communicate with the employees. And some organization focuses on both the aspect by
teaching employees as well as managers to work together with efficiency to reduce or solve the
problems.
Recently both the companies have shown a significant change in their leadership which resulted
in them in introducing significant successful change. Apple uses autocratic leadership style, the
culture of apple under the leadership of job is clearly autocratic as he always demands excellence
from the employees, because of this they are able to hold the position of a most innovative and
valuable technology company (Alam and Alam, 2015). Under the guidance of Steve jobs, Apple
was reinventing the things. But now Tim cook has modified the structure which allows
decentralization of decision making, collaboration and autonomy in the organization. They have
announced corporate social responsibility as well which was resisted by a job.
If we talk about Microsoft Nadella’s leadership has reboot the organizational culture of
Microsoft as well as he redefined the focus and strategy of the organization. Nadella beliefs on
Peter Drucker as he said: "culture eats strategy for breakfast”. He focused on the culture of the
organization which allows the company to renew constantly, the competitive style has been

transformed, collaboration, value for innovation and openness has been initiated. Nadella has
changed the strategy of Microsoft that build the productivity and services for the cloud-first
world, mobile-first (Alam and Alam, 2015). After the reformation of strategic directions,
Microsoft has achieved unbelievable success.

LO2
EVALUATE THE INFLUENCES THAT DRIVERS OF CHANGE HAVE ON
ORGANISATIONAL BEHAVIOUR
Internal factors
Communication: Sometimes the communication process in Microsoft does not allow the
workers to effectively communicate with their bosses. Due to these reasons, their top-level
management does not recognize the achievements of their employees and even did not know
their names. This indirectly affects individual behaviour (Hayes, 2018.).
Leadership: The leader and the leadership style also affect the behaviour of the team and the
individual. A successful leader direct, guide and inspire the employees. One of the reasons for
the success of Microsoft depends on the leader's behaviour towards the team and individuals.
External factors
Economic forces: There is a direct relationship between Microsoft and the economy of different
countries. The financial fluctuation such as inflation or deflation greatly affects the business
operations.
Political forces: Due to the global political scenario and global politics, the worldwide
economies are undergoing a rapid change and therefore present various challenges for Microsoft
(Gilpin, 2016).
 Internal and external drivers of change affect leadership, team and individual
behaviours in Apple
Internal factors
Company’s mission: Apple clearly defines the purpose of its mission and they make the
strategies to achieve the mission. The mission statement of the company affects the leadership,
team and individual behaviour in the manner that the efforts of all the members are focused on
achieving the mission.

Organization culture: The organizational culture of Apple is developed in a way that all the
staff members of the company are ready to change according to the demand of the environment.
Such organizations are the risk taker and always looking for new opportunities to expand their
market. The culture of the organization affects the individual’s productivity and efficiency
(Ceulemans et al., 2015).
External factors
Technological forces: Apple continuously discovers new technology to maintain its position in
the market. It is a very important aspect for the company to operate its function smoothly in the
long run. Various scientists are working on technology to bring innovation in the production
process.
Customer satisfaction: Customers are always looking for the products and services that are
readily available when they want. Customer service or delivery affects the individual at the
bottom line as well as the company. If they did not get proper service or delivery of goods then
they can switch to another option.
 Theories and models of change management
McKinsey 7s Model in Microsoft
It is a tool that is designed to show whether the internal factors are effectively aligned to achieve
the objectives. There are seven factors which are divided into hard areas and soft areas. These
are:
Hard areas
1. Strategy is the plan to achieve the objectives and to gain a sustainable advantage over
competitors.
2. Structure: is the division of the business into the units to decide who is accountable to
whom.
3. Systems: are the procedures and plan to carry out day-to-day activities of Microsoft.
Soft areas

4. Style: is the way that the managers and the leaders interact and operate the business.
5. Staff is the number and the type of employees in Microsoft all other related activities of
the employees.
6. Skills are the abilities of the company’s employees and what type of skills required
matching with the change.
7. Shared values: are the norms and standards that guide the employees in framing their
attitude (Channonand Caldart, 2015).
Conclusion and recommendations
Therefore it can be concluded that change is an inevitable part of every organization. The
organization should effectively plan the impact of the change in the organization. The
suggestions for effectively planning for change are:
1. Firstly, the organization must understand the implication of change in the organization.
2. Secondly, the organization must modify its files or necessary document.
3. Thirdly, the organization must identify and implement efforts that are required to bring
the change.

LO3
DETERMINE HOW BARRIERS TO CHANGE INFLUENCE LEADERSHIP
DECISION-MAKING
Many times organization get failed to achieve the organizational change due to some factors that
are as follows:
 Due to the negative attitude of employees(Georgalis et al., 2015)
 Lack of understanding about the change and its impression
 Resistance to the cultural shift of organization
 Fails to engage the employees in the change process
 Poor communication in the organization
 Insufficient budget and resources.
 People in the organization have no commitment to change
 Poor support from the management for change
 Due to a bad experience in past regarding change
Other than this, to initiate the change, there are many best approaches that can be applied by
leaders to initiate change but first, we need to know why people resist change (Georgalis et al.,
2015). A leader needs to first diagnose the resistance then we will discuss the best approach to
deal with resistance to change:
 The foremost reason to resist the change in the organization is people are narrow-minded,
they think they will the valuable thing if they get change.
 People think they will lose much more than they will gain if they change just because of a
lack of trust and misunderstanding.
 People also resist when they think they are less able to develop new skills and behaviour.
 As people think different, every person assesses the situation differently. This makes
them resist change because they think they will get less benefit from the change.

In the case of Microsoft, the barrier or roadblock coming in their success way is lack of big
app developers, they need to find an excellent app developer who can help this company to
reach success (DENIELLOCK, 2019).
And if we talk about apple, this company is mainly known for its advanced technologies and
they are planning to develop their own chips instead of using Intel chip, which will surely
give huge challenge to Intel, they are very good at innovations and creativity but they need to
unlock the abilities you’re their employees by giving them support to share their own ideas
for change.
FORCE FIELD ANALYSIS
This model of analysis is used by many organizations as it helps in understanding the change process and
change management in the organization. This model helps in analyzing the various characteristics of
driving force and restraining forces. Driving force refers to the change in technology, market, new
personnel and restraining force refer to the dullness of organization, fear of failure in individuals
(Mitchell, 2013). If the organization wants to achieve its vision and goal they need to follow three steps:
1. Organization need to dissolve the restraining and driving forces.
2. Need to reduce restraints forces and increase the drivers to enable the changes to take place in the
organization.
3. After the completion of change, it needs to be re-frozen by the organizations and people.
This model can really help the apple and Microsoft to implement the corporate strategies by providing
powerful techniques about the manufacturing vision as both the company is known for manufacturing.

LO4
APPLY A RANGE OF LEADERSHIP APPROACHES TO A CHANGE
INITIATIVE
Situational leadership:
This approach of leadership helps in directing the behaviour and supports that behaviour of a
person with the level of maturity in the dynamic situations of the organization. This leadership
involves the leader to facilitate, listening and supporting the employees, he engages one way or
two way or multiway of communication to understand the behaviour of employees and his
followers.
To understand the best-suited leadership style in a given situation once the leader must
understand his maturity level to determine the specific task. It's the responsibility of a leader to
increase the relationship behaviour as well as task behaviour in employees (McCleskey, 2014).
When the leader successfully finds the maturity level he can easily identify the appropriate
leadership style: telling, selling, participating and delegating.
 Telling: this style refers to the low relationship behaviour and high task behaviour. This
style is the best fit when fewer followers are there and there is a need to provide specific
directions and clear instruction to employees.
 Selling: this style refers to the high relationship and high task behaviour. In this
leadership, the leader motivates the employees by developing confidence through two-
way communication in them. This style is the best fit for moderate followers.
 Participating: this style refers to low task behaviour and high relationship behaviour. In
this style of leadership they share directive relationship and shares the decision making, it
is also good when followers are moderate (McCleskey, 2014).
 Delegating: This style refers to low task behaviour and low relationship behaviour. This
style is the best fit when leader delegates the responsibilities and tasks to his ready
followers who are motivated to accomplish the task. This style is best matched when the
followers are high in level.