Change Management Analysis: Kotter's Model, Case Studies, and Theories

This report delves into the intricacies of change management, primarily focusing on John P. Kotter's 8-step model for leading change. It begins by exploring the underlying assumptions about people and organizational behavior within Kotter's framework, drawing connections to various management ...Read More

Running head: CHANGE MANAGEMENT
CHANGE MANAGEMENT
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Authors Note

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Response to Question 1
Change management is deals with behavior people in supporting each other for adapting
to organizational changes. Kotter’s eight stage model is most widely used model that depicts
different stages, each of which acknowledges some important principles that relate to the
responses of the people and their approaches towards any change (Kotter 1995). The errors that
are being made by the people within the organization in performing change management-
1. People lack patience and does not emphasize much on the preliminaries.
2. The top executive members and the eminent members of the organization must form a
coalition and they need to be strong enough in terms of reputations, title, knowledge,
information, expertise and relationships in order to motivate and guide the people within
the organization and it lacks in reality (Tang 2019).
3. The people cannot get a fair idea without a clear statement that will tell them where they
are being leaded.
4. The change process is impossible if the people within the organization are not willing to
help themselves and the others.
5. Renewal always requires removal of obstacles and there are many people within the
organization including some senior members that act as obstacles in the change
management process.
6. Most of the people give up very easily rather than trying to make some short-term win-
win situations.
7. Most of the managers within the organization declare victory too soon as soon as there is
an improvement in performance (Cameron and Green 2015).

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8. If the people are not monitored and the pressure of the change is removed very soon, then
the change management process starts degrading.
Kotter observed all these behavioral patterns of the people within the organization and
formulated the eight step model on its basis, which is discussed as below:
1. Establishment of a sense of urgency– All the potential aspects of the market is needed
to be considered and the market should be examined thoroughly along with its
competitiveness. The threats and opportunities are to be clearly determined.
2. Formation of a strong coalition- This requires making and assembling a group that have
enough knowledgeable and powerful resources to motivate the workforce and that will
encourage the workforce to work together as a team.
3. Creation of a vision- A clear vision statement is required to be prepared that will be very
precise and clear. Clarity will help in better understanding of what the change
management will lead to.
4. Communication of the vision- All the channels of communication are to be used
properly in order to convey the vision to the workforce properly without any
miscommunication. The strategies should be clearly communicated and understood and
new behaviors and expectations are to be properly conveyed as well (Hayes 2018).
5. Empower actions – The systems that do not match with the vision are needed to be
changed. Constructive feedbacks and support from the leaders as well as rewards, awards
and recognition will also act as a guiding force to remove the obstacles.
6. Short-term wins- The leaders and the managers must setup short-term objectives rather
than giving up waiting for the long-term gain.

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7. Consolidation of improvements and creation of more changes- The team needs to be
persistent and keep on encouraging the workforce instead of giving up. Rather than
declaring victory too soon, achievements are to be highlighted and future milestones are
to be setup.
8. Make the change stick- Changes are to be monitored and deviations are to be corrected.
The change must be weaved into culture.
There are a number of change management theories that have been developed over the years
and these theories are somewhat interlinked with what Kotter has observed and suggested. The
theories are-
1. Lewin’s Change Management Model – This process involves steps of unfreezing,
change and freezing. The unfreezing process is linked with creating urgency and forming
coalition. The change is linked with vision, communication, empowerment and short-
term winnings. The refreeze process is linked with creating more changes and sticking to
the change (Cummings, Bridgman and Brown 2016).
2. McKinsey 7s Model – This theory involves strategy, step, structure, systems, shared
values, style, staffing and skills. The first four stages are strongly aligned with Kotter’s
model (Ravanfar 2015).
3. ADKAR Model – It deals with Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability and
Reinforcements. All these strongly allies with Kotter in terms of urgency creation and
coalition formation (Karambelkar and Bhattacharya 2017).
4. Nudge Theory – It deals with behavioral science, political situations and economic
theories. It links with Kotter’s empowerment of action.

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Response to Question 2
Change is the key to a competitive advantage but in order to make the process effective it
is necessary to properly identify conflict areas, individual and organizational needs and thereafter
bridging the gaps (Hornstein 2015). Change management refers to the discipline that deals with
how the people within an organization prepares and support each other in order to successfully
adapt to the changes. In the following paragraph one incident of change management that is
personally known has been discussed and the same is related with the Kotters’ approach of
change management (Kotter 1995). There is a proverb that says, “Old habit dies hard”, which
means when people get habituated with something it is very difficult for them to change. I
personally faced the same problem within my team in one of the change management process
within my organization. There had been a change in the building of the organization as well as
the particular process of the organization in my scenario. It took around more than six months to
actually cope up with such little changes (Kotter 1995). The change in the office structure made
some of the employees happy and sad. This was because of the distance of the work from home
as well as the interior setup and environment (Kotter 1995). While few people were happy with
the old setup, many were also happy with the new one. The change also took all of a sudden and
most of the employees were also not ready for it. It therefore affected the motivation and affected
the productivity (Rajan and Ganesan 2017). The managers and the higher authority did not
provide enough explanation for such a change and the vision was not properly communicated.
The process change was also sudden There were numerous changes in the accounting system and
the calculations that the employee did as their part of the job. Enough training and development
opportunities were not provided to them as the change took all of a sudden. This led to chaos.
Even though some training was given most of the people were unable to understand the process

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clearly and started to work mechanically without understanding the process properly. This
increased the number of errors within the process. The profits from that particular process also
went down drastically. It is therefore evident from the above situation that since there was a lack
of urgency being created and there were no proper communication and coalition, it resulted in
the loss of productivity and efficiency (Kosters and Van der Heijden 2015).
The very next quarter a strong team of efficient and technical people was formed who
got involved in training each team involved in the process and the managers also started to take
regular feedbacks related to the problems that the employees are facing. The company even
provided with cab facilities to the employees and opened a new cafeteria space within the floor.
This boosted the motivation and the next quarter became a huge success (Kotter 1995).
Kotter’s eight-stage model for change management is however the most widely used model that
emphasizes on a top-led change model. It can be seen from the above discussion that Kotter’s
theory has helped the change process in numerous ways. It has helped in understanding the
strengths and weaknesses of the process that are stated as below:
i. Kotter talks about urgency. Creation of a sense of urgency makes the employees
ready for the change but in reality aiming for the heart of the people and knowing
their deepest values is not so easy. The change in the building makes many happy and
at the same time made many sad too (Doppelt 2017).
ii. The guiding coalition is very important and it acts as strength but at the same time the
coalition must be neutral in nature. Moreover coalition is the second step, which
means urgency that was created lacked a vision.

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iii. Setting up a vision is one of the important tasks and is the ultimate strength of this
model. If a proper vision is set, things will go in the right direction.
iv. This is another strength of the model but making the people understand the vision is a
cumbersome job that requires patience and deep understanding of human needs. In
the above example once the need was understood productivity increased.
v. Removal of obstacles is one weakness as habituated things cannot be changed easily
and it increases the errors. Rather than sudden removal, slow variations can help in
making the change at a faster pace.
Response to Question 3
There are really some exceptional stories related to the change management like Shell,
Santander and many. Shell is one of the giants in the oil and gas industries. It is one of the
biggest examples of a successful change management program. The company made the largest
single upgradation of SAP implementation. This program is now renowned as “ A Milestone in
Shell’s Downstream Business IT Infrastructure”. The program covered operations within 35
countries that impacted around 29000 users worldwide. The organization made a number of
changes that included the elimination of organizational layers, matrix structure and reorienting
the structure around the worldwide businesses like production of oils, gases, chemicals and coal.
All these changes were being made as a response to the financial pressure and to increase the
efficiency by reducing costs (Reilly and Williams 2016). In order to hedge the potential risks of
these changes the company introduced a global business-operating model with more simple and
standardized procedures (Reilly and Williams 2016).

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Shell faced an oil reserves crisis, which affected its share price. The situation got worse
by sudden resigning of the oil group chairman, Sir Philip Watts. Jeroen van der Veer, the new
group chairman believed that the corporation must transform the existing structures and
processes in order to survive. A number of standard processes were identified, the introduction of
which would have a positive effect on 80 Shell operating units. These changes were important
for survival. This approach was a strong one and many operating units went against it. But in
order to make the approach successful everyone strongly adhered to the new systems and
processes (Kotter 1995). Shell Downstream-One leadership was a major success. The
transformation required huge determination focus in order to gain flexible cooperation and
adoption from everyone involved.
The staffs are now able to access systems from everywhere, having a common data,
process and reporting processes. The change triggers can be classified as external and internal
triggers. The external triggers of this change are –
i. Economic condition like interest rates fluctuations, inflation, low per head national
income and so on.
ii. Changes in the laws and regulations that affected the business cycle.
iii. Better and strong competitive strategies by the competitors.
iv. Advancement of technologies that led to improved research and development.
The internal triggers are –
i. Change in the top-level management and coalition along with introduction of new
operational and leadership strategies (Kotter 1995).

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ii. Change in the working environment because of business expansion in other areas of
the country as well as overseas.
iii. Introduction of diversified products and services.
The organization used ERP before using SAP and the systems were different in different
branches. The processes in different branches therefore varied and there was no standardization.
Any transferred employee would have to take a fresh training again before starting with the
process as the operational and reconciliation processes vary according to the applications being
used. The organization therefore implemented the change and dealt with the resistance in the
following manner –
i. A project-based team was first formed in respect to all functions and every function
was appointed their respective managers and heads. Job description and profile of all
the employees were again redesigned in order to meet the SAP requirements.
ii. Proper education, training and communication – The vision of change was made clear
to everyone and the potential benefits from the same were properly communicated to
the employees. On the job and off the job training were provided.
iii. Involvement – All the employees were free to participate in the change management
procedure and were free to express their issues to the management.
iv. Support and facilitation- Proper counseling and help to those who felt stressed and
were afraid to the changes were being given. An overlapping period was also
provided where both the old ERP and SAP ran together and transition was slowly
made.

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The stakeholders involved in this case are the top management of the organization, the
employees, SAP and IBM. IBM was one of the most important stakeholders that provided with
business consultancy services (Prat et al. 2015). It helped in analyzing the existing process. The
organization also switched to the latest IBM Power 7 Series Servers for better connectivity and
data storage (Prat et al. 2015). SAP on the other hand provided expert support for implementing
the upgrades. There was a great teamwork between Shell, IBM and SAP Team that helped in
successful implementation with nearly zero downtime.

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References
Cameron Cameron, E. and Green, M., 2015. Making sense of change management: A complete
guide to the models, tools and techniques of organizational change. Kogan Page Publishers.
Cummings, S., Bridgman, T. and Brown, K.G., 2016. Unfreezing change as three steps:
Rethinking Kurt Lewin’s legacy for change management. Human relations, 69(1), pp.33-60.
Doppelt, B., 2017. Leading change toward sustainability: A change-management guide for
business, government and civil society. Routledge.
Hayes, J., 2018. The theory and practice of change management. Palgrave.
Hornstein, H.A., 2015. The integration of project management and organizational change
management is now a necessity. International Journal of Project Management, 33(2), pp.291-
298.
Karambelkar, M. and Bhattacharya, S., 2017. Onboarding is a change: Applying change
management model ADKAR to onboarding. Human Resource Management International Digest,
25(7), pp.5-8.
Kosters, M. and Van der Heijden, J., 2015. From mechanism to virtue: Evaluating Nudge theory.
Evaluation, 21(3), pp.276-291.
Kotter, J.P., 1995. Leading change: Why transformation efforts fail.
Prat, D., Ortega, C., Casas, M., Moretó, M. and Valero, M., 2015. Adaptive and application
dependent runtime guided hardware prefetcher reconfiguration on the IBM POWER7. arXiv
preprint arXiv:1501.02282., 2015.

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Rajan, R. and Ganesan, R., 2017. A critical analysis of John P. Kotter's change management
framework. Asian Journal of Research in Business Economics and Management, 7(7), pp.181-
203.
Ravanfar, M.M., 2015. Analyzing Organizational Structure based on 7s model of McKinsey.
Global Journal of Management And Business Research.
Reilly, P. and Williams, T., 2016. Global HR: Challenges facing the function. Routledge.
Tang, K.N., 2019. Change management. In Leadership and Change Management (pp. 47-55).
Springer, Singapore.