LEADING CHANGE: WHY TRANSFORMATION EFFORTS FAIL Page 1 Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail Lynda Greene MMOL 601A Dr. Toni Pauls October 23, 2012 Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail Page 2 Summary of Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail John Kotter, a former professor of Leadership at Harvard Business School, has studied both success and failure in change initiatives in business. “The most general lesson to be learned from the more successful cases is that the change process goes through a series of phases that, in total, usually require a considerable length of time. Skipping steps creates only the illusion of speed and never produces satisfactory results” and “making critical …show more content…
The text lists these four steps as the following: “2. Involve one or more change champions, change agents, a change team, or some combination of each in a preliminary needs assessment and consideration of alternatives for change. Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail Page 5 3. Clearly identify the key stakeholders and explore ways to involve them in planning and managing the change process. 4. Build support and seed the organization for change (develop advocates, share information and ideas, etc.).” (Rothwell, 2010, p. 257). Stage Three in the case study is Create a Vision. The main points are: * “Having a clear vision & strategy directs, aligns and inspires action in all employees. * Also helps provide clarity over every single decision made within an organization and clears the decks of unnecessary projects/actions. * The ‘Vision story’ needs to be constantly told – when you think you have told everyone, tell them again (and again…). * Actions speak louder than words so need to enact it – we learn primarily through modelling.” (slooowdown.wordpress.com) The Create a Vision stage is comparable to the textbook’s Step Five in the Exploration Section as: “5. Contract for change by involving the appropriate people in designing and negotiating a change strategy that provides a clear vision of what has to
Foreword by Spenser Johnson: One the surface, the story of this book appears to be a fable that is relatively easy to grasp, but it does subtly impart an invaluable lesson on change. The book covers John Kotter’s Eight Steps to bring about successful organizational change and can be equally useful for a high-school student as it is for a CEO of a multi-national organization.
Step 2 is forming a powerful guiding coalition. Leadership will have to be on board and on the same page in regards to the change. Kotter and Cohen reveal the core problems people face when leading change. Their main findings are that the central issue concerns not structure or systems but behavior and how to alter it (Farris, 2008). The success of the changes will depend on the ability of the managers to show their commitment to change and motivate the employees to do the same. Without any process to track the implementation, the change can also fail.
Havelock’s model of change will be used for this project. Perception of need, diagnosis of the problem, identification of the problem, devising a plan of action, gaining acceptance of the plan, stabilization, and self-renewal are all steps included in Havelock’s model of change (Kearney-Nunnery, 2012). Leadership is also an important part of the change process. In order to have a positive outcome, the leader must incorporate the staff in the change process.
• use strategies for promoting collaborative decision making and problem solving, facilitating team building, and developing consensus.
Choosing a change model can be difficult for an organization. The company must ensure that the model it chooses will help them make the smoothest transition possible for everyone involved. The chosen change model must also help the company reach its goal within the time frame the company needs to have changes made.
Organizational change is a necessary outcome when considering various scenarios contributing to the resulting vision. Perplexing as it may seem, change initiatives don’t always result in positive outcomes. In fact, many never succeed. As a change agent, one should always have formulated a vision of what change will “look” like for the organization. One would be hard pressed to paint a landscape without having a vision of what the landscape should resemble. Yet, resistance to change usually becomes a significant factor contributing to an initiative’s failure. It is likely an
TCO G - Given that developing a “vision for change” and communicating that “vision” is a critical part of the change process, analyze the key elements of the “vision for change” and develop a strategy to communicate the change to the stakeholder.
In order to obtain long term success, it is important to strictly follow Kotter’s Eight Step Change Model in the correct order. The first step is to create a sense of urgency among the staff. The PCA called in a meeting and introduced the concept of the change and reason for the change. It was a mandatory meeting and snacks and beverages were served. Several concerns and threats affecting the financial aspects of the company and how to maintain job security were addressed. Employees were asked one by one how they like what they are doing, why or why not they like it, what is important to them and what do they think can be done to improve it. Creating a guiding coalition and directing others in the right direction of change is the
Organizations must respond to their internal and external environment. Therefore, organizational success heavily relies on leaderships ability to manage change. Unfortunately, many leaders struggle to effectively lead change initiatives. In fact, Ashkenas (2013, para. 1) reported 60 – 70% of organizational change initiatives fail to meet their objectives.
According to Cummings and Worley (1997) there is a five-phase process for managing change, including: motivating change, creating vision, developing political support, managing the transition, and sustaining momentum. Motivating change involves creating a work environment that embraces change and developing approaches to overcome any resistance to change. The general guidelines include: enlightening members of the organization about the need for change, expressing the current status of the organization and where it should be in the future, and developing realistic approaches to change.
What change is right for our situation?: The change program should be adapted to the company and its particular business situation.
In order to examine this issue further, this research will look at a number of different sources. Contemporary managerial sources are explored in order to understand how other voices in the field are describing similar methods for change. First, popular structures for change management are examined, especially within their correlation to Palmer & Dunford (2009). This is followed with an extensive
The aim of this report is to provide a critical analysis of the concept of change in the business industry. The concept of change can be tracked back to Lewin’s Model of Change therefore the intitial introduction of this report focuses on the relevance of the Model of Change and its importance to giving precedence to other relevant change management theories and how Kurt Lewin’s work on heavioral science and planned change during World War II gave rrise to prominence of experimental leadership and planned change processes which also in turn launched a new generation of research that lead to group dynamics and how change programs are implemented into an organisation (Burnes, 2004). This is important because today’s basic elements or factors
* In third step, I build a strong vision to assist the change efforts and also develop a plan to attain the stated vision.
adopt before setting out on a change initiative. Kotter identifies the ‘‘analysis-thinkchange’’ mindset as the traditional method