Change Management Tools: Analysis of Kotter, ADKAR, and Skill Gap

This report delves into the critical realm of change management, exploring various tools and models essential for organizational transformation. It begins by introducing the concept of change management and its significance in today's dynamic business environment, emphasizing the need for continuous adaptation and improvement. The report then provides a detailed examination of three prominent change management tools: Kotter's 8-step change model, the ADKAR model, and skill gap analysis. Kotter's model is dissected step-by-step, highlighting each stage from creating a sense of urgency to anchoring changes in the corporate culture. The ADKAR model is explained, focusing on the five key elements: Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, and Reinforcement. Finally, the report outlines the process of skill gap analysis, detailing its steps and the importance of identifying and addressing skill deficiencies. The report concludes by emphasizing the applicability of these tools in modern organizations and their role in driving successful change initiatives, while also acknowledging that the best tool depends on a company's unique characteristics.

Running head: CHANGE MANAGEMENT
Change Management
Name of the Student:
Name of the University:
Author note:

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Table of Contents
1. Introduction............................................................................................................................3
2. Discussion..............................................................................................................................3
2.1. Kotter’s 8 step change model..........................................................................................3
2.2. ADKAR model................................................................................................................6
2.3. Skill Gap analysis............................................................................................................7
2.4. RACI matrix....................................................................................................................7
3. Conclusion..............................................................................................................................7

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1. Introduction
In order to sustain and survive in the contemporary marketplace, businesses need to
continuously examine its processes, strategy, systems and performance for understanding and
identifying the changes that need to be made for ensuring success. Change is something that
is always constant in the workplace, particularly in the age of digital transformation and
globalisation (Beck, 2016). However, it is never an easy process. In the context of businesses,
it affects a huge range of aspects. There are several researchers and scholars who have
offered some change management tools for helping in a smooth flow of transition. This report
shall elaborate on the topic of change management tools. It will be highlighting and analysing
the current tools on change management including the Kotter’s 8 step change model, the
ADKAR analysis and the Skill Gap analysis. They provide some really helpful frameworks
for the companies that are embarking on the transformation efforts. With the same, it would
also compare, contrast and analyse the sustainability of the different types of models for
different scenarios.
2. Discussion
According to McCoskey, Mouser and Pierson (2017), change management refers to
the process, techniques and tools of managing the people-side of change for achieving the
required business result. It incorporates several organisational tools which could be used for
helping the individuals in making some successful personal transitions that result in the
realisation and the adoption of change. There are several tools of change management. Some
of the mostly used tools are described below:
2.1. Kotter’s 8 step change model
The Kotter’s 8 step change model is a model developed by John Kotter. According to
him, the major change efforts unfortunately do not always have the desired outcomes. There

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is only 3% chance of success in the organisational change. Therefore, companies around the
world implement changes in unsuccessful manner and fail to attain the desired outcome
(Creasey et al., 2016). Therefore, he has developed the 8 step change model for improving
the ability of the organisation to change as well as to increase the chances of success.
Figure 1: Kotter’s 8 step change model
Step 1: Creating a sense of urgency- As per Small et al. (2016), it is the most important of all
the steps. It suggests making the employees in the organisations making aware about the
urgency and the need for the change. This will create a support for the change. With the
same, it is also to note that this step requires some honest, open and some convincing
dialogues in order to convince the employees why it is necessary to take the action. This
could be accomplished by sharing with them the potential threats and discussing about the
possible solutions to them.
Step 2: Creating a guiding coalition- In this step, an idea of establishing a project team which
could occupy itself with the changes that the organisations want to implement. The team will
manage all the efforts and would encourage cooperation among the team and the employees,
taking a constructive approach (Wentworth, Behson and Kelley, 2018). This coalition should
be made up from the employees who are working in different job settings and positions in

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order to ensure that every employees could depend on the group and identity themselves with
the members of the team.
Step 3: Creating a vision for change- Formulation of a clear and concise vision could help
each and every employees in understanding what the company is trying to attain or achieve
within the set time frame. It automatically make the change strong and concrete and at the
same time, creates support for implementing them (Calegari, Sibley and Turner, 2015). It is
also to mention that the ideas of every employees should be incorporated in the vision in
order to ensure that they accept the vision faster. Moreover, the adopted vision should be
linked to the strategies as this will help the employees to achieve their goals.
Step 4: Communicating about the vision- One of the most important objective of this step is
creating a support and acceptance among all the employees. It can be achieved by talking
regarding the new vision of the organisational employees at every chance and considering
their opinions, anxieties, dilemmas and concerns in serious manner. It is to note that the new
vision should be completely adopted all over the whole organisation.
Step 5: Removing the obstacles- Before the change get accepted by all the levels, it is
important to change and remove the obstacles that have the potential to undermine the vision.
By means of entering into the dialogue with all the employees, it would become clear to note
the ones who are resisting the change and this would also encourage acceptance of the set
vision among the employees at all levels.
Step 6: Creating short-term wins- Creating some short term goals to ensure that employees
are having a clear idea of what is happening is important. When these goals would be met,
the employees would be motivated to fine tune and to expand the change. Rewarding and
acknowledging their success would also result in high level of motivation among the
employees.

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Step 7: Consolidating the improvements- As claimed by Wentworth, Behson and Kelley
(2018), there are several changes that fail because victory is declared very early.
Notwithstanding this fact, the process of change is very slow and therefore, it needs to be
driven into the whole corporate culture. The quick wins are just the starting of the long term
change and therefore, only after achieving multiple successes, it can be declared that the
change is truly paying off thing that was expected.
Step 8: Anchoring the changes- It is the last step in the model. It is to mention that the change
will only become a part of the corporate culture when it becomes a part of the core of the
organisation. It does not comes about by its own. The standards and the values need to be
agreed with the new set vision and the behaviour of the employees should provide a seamless
match. They need to continue to support the change. Regular discussions and evaluation
regarding the progress help in consolidating the change.
Following these steps could help the organisations to avoid failure and to become
adept towards implementing change in the organisation. This results in organisations that no
longer feel the need of adjusting the changes and their chances of success also gets increased.
2.2. ADKAR model
The ADKAR model was developed by Jeff Hiatt (Levy, 2018). It is an acronym for
Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability and Reinforcement. It is based on these five building
block that bring in successful change. This tool helps in identifying why the change is so
tough and why some changes are successful and the other are not.

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Figure 2: ADKAR change model
All the five elements of the ADKAR model are sequential. While bringing in a
change, it is very crucial to ensure that each and every employee is aware of the reason
behind the change as the natural reaction of employees to change is to resist first. Therefore,
organisational managers need to be made aware of the necessity of change. According to
Kiana and Chuadhry (2015), the precondition for the implementation of change is extensive
and sound knowledge about the same. Learning for new skills and steering towards the
various different behaviours are part of this. After the implementation of change, it is very
important to ensure that the change is sustained for preventing the lapse into former
behaviour. The five building blocks of the ADKAR model are described below:
Awareness- Employees should be made aware of the necessity of change.
Desire- Employees should have the desire of participating by their own and completely
support the change.
Knowledge- By means of gathering the knowledge regarding the process of change, the final
goal of the change would become clear to the employees.
Ability- Due to the ability of learning new skills and managing the employee behaviour, the
change is accepted.

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Reinforcement- The reinforcement of sustaining the change makes it clear for all the
organisational employees that there is absolutely no turning back.
2.3. Skill Gap analysis
Skill gap analysis is a change management tool that is used for determining the
training and the hiring requirements of an employee or a team or group of an organisation. It
helps in revealing the different variances in between the prevailing and the necessary levels
of skills and identifying the best of all strategies for closing the gap or reducing the variations
(Malik and Venkatraman, 2017). It is to note that the primary tools for assessing the current
levels of skills include the performance assessments, the questionnaires, interviews and group
discussions. With the same, the projections and goals of the company and its long term
development plans give a clear idea of the desired levels of skill. The process of skill gap
analysis include the following steps:
Step 1: Planning- It is to note that the skill gap analysis could be performed at two different
levels and they are- individual level and organisational level (Dadzie et al., 2018). At
individual level, one can identify the skills that are required for a specific job and then
compare them to the real level of employee skill. On the other hand, at the team level, one
can check whether or not the employees have of the organisation have the necessary skills for
a specific project.
Step 2: Identifying the necessary skills- At this step, identification of the required skills is
done. They can be identified by answering questions like- which skills does the organisation
value, which skills do the employees need to do their jobs now and in future.
Step 3: Measuring the current skills- At this step, measurement of the existing skills of the
employees is done by means of survey, assessment process, employee interviews, and

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performance review or by using different online software like Skills DB Pro etc. that can
notably reduce the time that is taken at the time of skills gap analysis.
Step 4: Taking action on the data and information- it is the last step of the skill gap analysis
and here, the skill gaps of the employees are filled with either hiring or training the employee.
Most of the organisations train their employees for filling the vacant gap or position in the
organisation instead of hiring a new candidate for the position. Right training helps in closing
the gap prevailing in between the present and the expected levels of skill. On the other hand,
there are firm that use hiring process in order to fill the vacancy of position in the
organisation if the training cannot reduce the skills gap present. They choose the candidate
with the required skills, experience and knowledge suitable for the very position.
3. Conclusion
The current models and tools of change management are derived from several
theoretical and academic frameworks. The three leading change management tools- Kotter’s
8 step change management tool, Prosci ADKAR change model and Skill Gap analysis- are
widely used in the modern day businesses are discussed in this report. All these tools and
models are applicable in the modern organisations and economy of contemporary world in
one or the other way. They provide some really helpful frameworks for the companies that
are embarking on the transformation efforts. However, it is to note that there is no universal
common change management tool that can be applied by every company. Each and every
company has its own different characteristics that make them unique from the rest other and
the change model or tool that should be used by the company depends on these
characteristics.

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