The paper looks at the concept of change especially through the theory of Kotter and how change can be managed within an organization. The paper looks at the case of Walmart attempt to implement several changes in 2010 and the eventual failure of these changes. The paper then suggests the best approaches that should have been used.
¶ … Organizations
Kotter's theory on organizational change
Kotter's theory has been known to help leaders leverage the power within their hands and utilize it effectively to bring about change in steps that are subdivided into manageable bits bringing about possibility of high success rates. According to the Managing Change (2012), the philosophy that was propagated by Kotters was geared more towards approaching leadership with change orientation than what management brings about. It indicates that "The fundamental purpose of management is to keep the current system functioning. The fundamental purpose of leadership is to produce useful change." Kotter further puts it that in order for an initiative, especially dealing with change to be successful, there is need to have at least 75% of the concerned people supporting the initiative. Consequently, one should spend most of the time in this step in order to galvanize significant amount of support and consequently surety of bringing about the change.
The case under study in this paper is the changes that were instituted in Walmart in 2010 and in particular the manner in which these changes were communicated to the employees.
Summary
Bill Simon, the vice president of Walmart U.S. sent out a memo to all employees of Walmart notifying them of the changes that had been made within the organization. One of the key changes highlighted in the Memo was the realignment of the Logistics, Real estate and Store operations under one leader. The memo also highlighted the introduction of new senior leadership team with several promotions in the senior leadership positions. The Memo further informed the employees of the alignment of the Puerto Rica business with the U.S. ones. Finally the memo asks the employees to support the new changes and give a hand to the new leaders to make the organization achieve its goals.
Discussion
The changes that were made at Walmart in this case in the year 2010 were predominantly meant to help salvage the name of the business that was facing stiff competition in the U.S. At the time. The economic slowdown that was experienced in the U.S. In 2009 onwards saw Walmart suffer a great deal and hence started looking to foreign land for more investments like Puerto Rica and even China. These new ventures called for changes in leadership and even the changes in operations hence these changes were effected rapidly and the employees informed of these changes.
The problem with these changes were numerous since most of them were internal changes and yet from the memo, it is apparent that the employees were not involved in the making of these changes, the y were also not informed of the impending changes and the changes were made and a list of changes passed down to them from the Vice president. Indeed, even before implementing the changes, the employees were not informed of how these changes would affect them and the organization in a positive or negative way, and an attempt to put that forward is in the introduction of this memo under study.
These changes, as noted by Adam Hartung (2012) failed to reach the intended ends within the organization with many responsibilities bundled on one desk due to the merging of the departments and also employees not buying into the changes fast enough as would be expected.
According to Kotter, J. And Cohen, D. (2002), there are eight steps that were formulated by Kotter to be followed for there to be effective change management. This method that Kotter came up with has been widely accepted by many management practitioners and is as follows below. If the Walmart applied all or some of these steps, then it could have increased the chances of the changes to be effective.
Step 1-Create urgency-since change can only be effectively initiated when the entire organization sees the need for the change and the change that should be experienced soon. The Walmart management did not take time to explain the employees why these changes were essential and urgent. Walmart management should have opened a candid and honest discussion with the employees about the change that is required in relation to the outside forces in order to create the urgency.
Step 2- Form a powerful coalition- such a coalition would work best if it has the most influential people like experts or people with titles within the organization. Walmart did not bother to form such coalition that would ensure each employee understands and participates in suggestion and implementation of the significant changes.
Step 3 - create a vision for change- with a clear vision each member will understand what they are called upon to take part in. With each employee able to see for themselves the sense behind the changes it gets easier to work with such a team, yet Walmart just made the changes and passed out a memo outlining the changes to be implemented by employees, hence uwilling participation for the sake of retaining ones job.
Step 4 -- communicate the vision- this must be done as many times as possible to keep the vision of the changes fresh in the mind.
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