Change is challenging and rarely to be welcomed by everyone as a person need to come out from his/her comfort zone and spend time, as well as effort to adapt new things. However, change is inevitable for a company to succeed and grow. As a lead consultant who is going to implement change in management and to make sure the whole process of change can be carried out successfully, a strategic and effective change management model must be carefully chosen.
Among the available change management models, I will use Kotter’s change management theory for this change. The main reason is Kotter’s theory focused primarily on the people involved in the change process and widely used in the world. If everyone is being listened, well-addressed and supportive, this will highly increase the chances for a successful change that will benefit the organization.
Kotter’s theory is divided into below 8 steps and each step will be applied in sequence to carry out this change in the organization:1. Increase urgency
Firstly, a meeting with high management level must be conducted to discuss the issue to be addressed, solution and benefits of this change to centralize and decentralize product departments. Once got approval and support from them, this change direction must be conveyed to all employees by explaining the purpose of this change to motivate them. Survey/questionnaire will be distributed to all employees to ensure everyone is involved and listened. Employees will start to be panic with this change hence organization will assure employees there will be no job lost.2. Build the team
It is important to build a specialist team with mixed knowledge and skill to run this change management. For example, members with IT skill is needed to distribute, collect and tabulate survey result. Members with marketing skill to continue create urgency and awareness for this change.3. Get the vision correct
Vision must be clearly defined and cascaded to all levels within organization. All employees must know that organization want to accomplish this change by centralize and decentralize product departments.4. Communicate
Centralize and decentralize product departments will take place here to form new teams. Prior to forming new teams, impacted departments Finance and HR and others must be well-informed with their new roles with increased specialization and responsibility. This is to minimize everyone confusion after forming new teams. If communication is well-established, all employees will be more confidents on their new roles and also this change.5. Get things moving
There must be some issues and obstacles faced by the newly formed teams so need to understand their issues and address them. This is the critical time and everyone and every process must be monitored closely to ensure daily business-as-usual process and organization can run smoothly.6. Focus on short term goals
Break long term goals into short term goals for newly formed teams as this will create a sense of accomplishment to motivate employees once they completed short term goals. Furthermore, this can make sure newly formed teams are consistently taking steps toward the long term goals.7. Don’t give up
At this point of time after went through long and hard processes, most of the people will be exhausted and discouraged, organization can celebrate with employees for every short term goals achieved to cheers and motivate employees. For instance, organization can plan for company dinner and give free gift.8. Incorporate change
Lastly, the organization management has been changed successfully. Newly formed teams still must be continuously monitored to ensure that they are adapting the new change management.
