Running head: KOTTER CHANGE MANAGEMENT MODEL
Company Name Here: Kotter Change Management Model
Thomas Simmons
HRM 560 Managing Organizational Change
Strayer University
Dr. Carrie Cohill
November 15, 2015
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KOTTER CHANGE MANAGEMENT MODEL
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Walmart: Kotter Change Management Model
Wal-Mart is a retail giant having its reach in whole world. It is considered best retail
chain among all of its competitors. The company is famous for its quality products and good hold
on market. The organization is having its business in more than 25 countries. More than 1.4
million associate work for the organization (Walmart, 2015).
Wal-Mart is facing issues as many organizations have. The issue that I am going to discuss here
in this paper lies in HR department of the organization. HR is facing issues of conflict issue
which need to be resolved. In this paper, I will be utilizing Kotter’s 8 step model to bring this
change. The 8 steps relating this issues are discussed in the below section of this paperSection II: Kotter Change Plan
How Each of the Eight Stages Applies to [Walmart]
On the following pages I have developed an action plan for each stage of the Kotter
Change Management Process in order to address [One of the human resources management most
important policy and procedures is to analyze its turnover, hiring, promotions, and separations.]
at [Walmart].
Stage 1: Establishing a sense of urgency. First of all, ensuring that each and every
employee of the organization understands the change process is necessary. The HR manager will
take this responsibility to make sure that the change process is well known to all the effective
bodies. Conflict is found in almost every organization and it is managed wisely by the HR
manager. HR manager can call meetings with the employees telling them the reason of the
change in HR policies to remove the conflict issues. Wal-Mart is a multinational retail chain and
has employees from different cultures. Conflict is common in such organization.
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This stage is about prodding the workplace to consider change and spur them to end up tied up
with it. The basic stride here is that people show resistance for the change. For change to happen
it must be acknowledged by no fewer than 75% of the individual taking an interest in the change
process (Kotter, 1995).
Stage 2: Creating the Guiding Coalition.
Employees of Wal-Mart now need to know the reason of the change. Reason behind the
change is reduction in sale because of presence of conflicts in internal department. So, it is
necessary to initiate the change to avoid such issue (Rahim & Buntzman, 1989). HR manager
alone cannot simply do this. The powerful strategies are required to handle these. Following
steps can be taken•
Recognition of organization’s strength, weakness, opportunities and threats
•
Focus should be given promoting the team building
•
Receive strong commitment and trust from the employees
•
Strong leaders should be brought in front (Kotter, 1995)
Exactly when the coalition procedure is done, guarantee that everyone is assenting and
continue building urgency for change. Keep in mind that there are other change organization
models and change organization speculations out there. Guarantee that the change gathering
knows which one you are taking after to keep up a vital separation from issues (Kotter, 1995).
Stage 3: Developing a vision and strategy.
Several of the strategies can be adopted to bring the change. One best possible strategy is
to be used by HR department to remove the conflicts. Change team should be engaged for vision
and ideas of strategy. Following steps can be taken•
Practice for vision speech and constant review
KOTTER CHANGE MANAGEMENT MODEL
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Tell the importance of coalition to all
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Development of strategy that can deliver the vision
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Development of statement summarizing the potential outlook
•
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Recognizing the values of organization (Kotter, 2010)
Stage 4: Communicating the change vision.
It is extremely necessary that the employees are communicated the vision of the
organization. They should become passionate about the change and should be engaged in all the
actions related to the change process (Kotter, 2010).
Following steps can be taken•
Other’s concerns should be addressed honestly and openly
•
In every aspect of change process, vision of the organization should be incorporated
•
Each outlets of communication should be used
•
Change vision should be frequently promoted
Stage 5: Empowering employees for broad-based action.
This step of Kotter’s model is applied to remove obstacles to change. Wal-Mart may be up to the
extent of system or structure change that seriously undermines the vision. Thus, in this step, WalMart needs to allocate the time and money etc. to different strategies that are made towards the
change of resolving the conflicts and thus encourage more and more people to bring the actual
outcomes which will foster the environment of Wal-Mart towards jurisdiction and corporation.
In order to empower the broad based actions, Wal-Mart can promote the training programs for
their staff at stores so that they learn to work together as teams and any disputes amongst them
can be resolved. This will promote professional excellence in the international human resource.
If the company builds a strong senior local staff by promoting the staff towards the change, it
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will improve the familiarity of the company within local people (Bariff, 2013). Also the conflicts
between the management and the employees can be resolved if the management sets up a center
where employees can file their issues and grievances within the Wal-Mart.
Stage 6: Generating short-term wins.
This step includes planning for the achievements which are visible and follow through
them to get recognized. Short-term wins are the sign that the change is going in a positive
direction. Thus, the people who were not initially convinced will start participating when they
see the results. If there are no short term wins people feel that the change is useless and would
like to turn to the previous behavior or condition.
The Wal-Mart leaders need to recognize the achievements of the employees by rewarding
them and this will obtain the desired outcomes. The end achievement of the Wal-Mart’s shortterm wins must be linked to the efforts towards this change and should foster the corporation and
mutual understanding between the management and the employees so that no further conflicts
occur. These short-term wins will undermine the self-serving resistors and cynics’ credibility
(Bariff, 2013).
Stage 7: Consolidating gains and producing more change.
Through this step, Kotter warns people to never declare the victory too soon, instead wait
till they are really won. Sometimes while bringing the change, people get satisfied easily without
having known that the change has been fully embedded into or not. Wal-Mart also needs to
analyze this. There have been a lot of conflict issues in Wal-Mart in previous times and thus the
company needs to resolve them completely through this change. If they consider that change is
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successful too early, they may not be able to resolve this problem completely and conflicts may
occur again after certain period of time.
Thus, Wal-Mart need to consider that the change may take years to completely bring
modify the environment of the company and to resolve the conflict issues that are occurring
currently in the system of Wal-Mart (Rahim & Buntzman, 1989). The major challenge that WalMart will face in bringing this change is the resistance which cannot be neglected so easily. The
short-term wins would be considered by people and they may celebrate their success and think of
considering it as final victory. However, it must be noted that there is actually a difference
between the real victory and these short-term victories. Therefore, through this step, Wal-Mart
should consolidate the gains in the system and should focus on bringing more changes.
Stage 8: Anchoring new approaches in the culture.
This last step of Kotter’s 8 steps is the ultimate goals which the change incorporated to
achieve. Wal-Mart can articulate this connection between the successful change and the new
behavior by ensuring that the new practice is planted well into the culture of Wal-Mart and each
individual in the company is indoctrinated into its culture (Bariff, 2013).
Wal-Mart has its own qualities in numerous perspectives, for example, the propelled
preparing framework and corporate society, exceptionally created data innovation and great
notoriety in the public eye. Then again, it additionally confronts loads of difficulties and
administration issues. Huge changes in social creation and in way of life further enhance and
customize the customer interest. These progressions require the consistent advancement in retail
structures by resolving conflicts to adjust to evolving times.
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KOTTER CHANGE MANAGEMENT MODEL
References
Bariff, M. L. (2013). Managing Organizational Change. Business Strategies and Approaches for
Effective Engineering Management, 22.
Kotter, J. P. (2010). Kotter’s 8-Step Change Model. Mind Tools. Retrieved November 10, 2015
from https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newPPM_82.htm
Kotter, J. P. (1995). Leading change: Why transformation efforts fail. Harvard business review,
73(2), 59-67.
Rahim, M. A., & Buntzman, G. F. (1989). Supervisory power bases, styles of handling conflict
with subordinates, and subordinate compliance and satisfaction. The Journal of Psychology,
123(2), 195-210.
Walmart: 2015 Annual Report. Retrieved November 10, 2015 from
http://s2.q4cdn.com/056532643/files/doc_financials/2015/annual/2015-annual-report.pdf
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