STRATEGIC CHANGE MANAGEMENT

STUDENT NAME:
STUDENT ID:
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WORD COUNTS: 5067
 Executive Summary
Microsoft is an American multinational technology company that provides computers, computer
software, android applications, essential parts of computers, and services. The covid-19
pandemic situation has created various challenges for the business organizations which created
the trend of adopting strategic changes in the organization. A strategic change is needed in the
company to avoid and meet pandemic challenges and other market threats that have been faced
by the company in recent times. Two change management plans have been suggested such as
Kotter's change management theory and ADKAR change management model for the company to
overcome the negative impacts of the changes and acquire the opportunities.

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 Table of Contents

Task 1: Report..................................................................................................................................4

Introduction and background.......................................................................................................4

Need for change...........................................................................................................................5

Change management models.......................................................................................................7

Kotter's change management theory.........................................................................................7

ADKAR change management model.......................................................................................8

Recent changes.............................................................................................................................9

Barriers to the recent changes....................................................................................................12

Conclusion and recommendation...............................................................................................13

Task 2: Reflection Report..............................................................................................................15

Description.................................................................................................................................15

Evaluation..................................................................................................................................16

Analysis......................................................................................................................................17

Action Plan.................................................................................................................................18

Reference List................................................................................................................................20

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Task 1: Report
Introduction and background
Microsoft is a multinational technology company in America that was established in 1975 by Bill
Gates and Paul Allen. The company is a giant producer of computer software, operating system,
internet browser, essential parts of computers, and other consumer electronics. Microsoft is
developing, manufacturing as well as selling and licensing company. The vision of Microsoft is
to help people and business organizations by providing helpful tools and technologies for their
growth and success (Microsoft, 2021)). The mission of the company is to empower every person
and organization to achieve more.
Strategic changes are needed in an organization in order to evaluate and understand the
importance and impact of change support staff to help them in understanding the change process.
A change in business strategy in an organization is needed to ensure the potential performance of
the company and it helps in entering a new market segment or a profitable industry. In addition,
strategic changes encourage business innovation, develop the skills of staff, help the leaders to
gain big business opportunities, and improve competitive advantages in a new market. However,
it has been found that most of the companies do their strategic changes in organization for
meeting the challenges and achieving sustainability in a market.
Microsoft has also done several organizational changes among which few were such changes
that impact business strategies such as selling strategy, operating strategy, or marketing strategy.
As per the review of Parola et al. (2017), the key driver of strategic changes that enforces
companies to make some changes on their manufacturing strategy, operation strategy, production
strategy, marketing strategy, selling strategy, supply chain strategy is the need to link the
business with its environment in such a way that competitive advantages can be gained and
customer's need can be met. In the fourth industrial age, strategic changes that the company has
conducted such as rethinking customer engagement, rethinking employee empowerment,
rethinking operation optimization, and rethinking product transformation helped the company to
achieve sustainability in the global market (Leonidou et al. 2017). The company has aimed to
make strategic changes in its high-volume products. Therefore, the company needs to enhance
open connections with third-party products to help the third-party developers in connecting with
the company’s high-volume products.

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This report includes an important strategic change that is required in Microsoft in order to
enhance their productivity and make more sustainable business operations. The company also
needs to follow change management models to implement this particular change in business
strategy. Therefore, the report provides two change management models that support the
implementation of the strategic change. Furthermore, several changes have been made within
this company among which few are strategic changes. Therefore, this report also included three
types of major changes that have been conducted by the company in recent years, the strategies
that have been maintained by the company in order to achieve success for those changes, and
barriers that have been considered during the implementation of the change management plan. In
addition, the report also provides some suggestions for the company to overcome challenging
situations during the changes and adoption of a change management plan.
Need for change
The global pandemic of 2019 is a major key driver of digital transformation which is a strategic
change that has been identified as an important change in the business of Microsoft. Covid-19
has created several challenges for the company such as working in the workplace or face-to-face
communication in the workplace. The need for remote working has also been trendy for the
challenges that the department managers have been faced during the Covid-19 situation in 2020.
However, there are several other key drivers that are responsible for the strategic change of
adoption of digital transformation in Microsoft such as the need for speed, business survival in
challenging situations, the role of artificial intelligence, innovation, user experience, linking the
gap of online and offline marketing, faster and better decision.
Digital transformation of an organization helps to increase better user experience as consumers
have more power in order to acquire the products and services. Microsoft needs to enhance its
business operation by adopting digital transformation for implementing the changes in business
strategies. The company has recently introduced an advanced cloud computing technology
named Microsoft Azure that is used to automate the business process and make the business
agile, cost-effective, and resilient. Adoption of this cloud-centric approach helps the company to
improve engineering productivity and unify the tools.
The company needs to develop a reliable cloud-centric approach that can secure the enterprises
that are connected directly with the company or connected with the software and technologies of
the company. Unification in the data strategy and flexibility of software-defined infrastructure

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are two other key drivers of strategic change in Microsoft. As per the review of Galaz et al.
(2018), the unified data strategy helps to develop a customized and comprehensive process of
controlling, monitoring, and managing data by undertaking the interconnected nature of various
sources of data and managing the business requirements. The remote working in the pandemic
situation brings the importance of managing the data from multiple sources to the business
owners and data management teams (Whitwell et al. 2020). Therefore, a unified data strategy is
needed in Microsoft to monitor and manage the data from multiple sources and systems. This can
help the company to achieve the success of maintaining competitive advantages in the global
market.
The flexible software-defined infrastructure allows the business organization to control the
information technology and distribute the workloads in order to maximize the potential value of
the infrastructure development. Software-defined infrastructure is a key driver of strategic
change in Microsoft as it develops intelligent virtualization, enhances software-driven
innovation, and introduces modularity in the design of the software architecture (Elali, 2021).
Software-defined infrastructure is compromised with four components such as physical
infrastructure, virtualization layer, management services, and software-defined capabilities.
These components need to be described to understand the impact of this key driver or the
software-defined infrastructure on the digital transformation. The physical infrastructure includes
hardware resources such as networking devices and servers that need to be developed for the
digital transformation of the company. In a flexible SDI infrastructure, the virtualization layers
are situated just above the physical infrastructure and it is applied to storage and network
resources.
Another key driver of the strategic change is the need for company growth and improvement
during the balancing of the company's running costs of the services. As per the review of Darling
et al. (2019), companies need to focus on growth and improvement of products and services in
the time of flat running costs of services. The covid-19 situation made the service running costs
flatter and therefore, there was no opportunity for the company to increase the costs of products
and services as the government rules and regulations related to cost increasing created barriers
for the company. Microsoft made a change in the search experience among the employees and
task capability among the employees. The company has implemented an advanced enterprise
search experience that is reliable and helps to boost team productivity, improve the customer

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journey, increase profitability and unravel the hidden value of existing tech. The new enterprise
search experience needs a change management plan to monitor the changes for decreasing the
cost of centralizing the information and collecting data sources.
Change management models
Kotter's change management theory and ADKAR change management model have been selected
to manage the strategic change of Microsoft that has been identified and needs to be
implemented. Change management models are used in an organization to identify the needs of
changes, determine the existing changes of the company, share the company values and culture,
manage the strategic change, monitoring the impact of the changes in the company's business
operation.
Kotter's change management theory
Kcmm can be implemented by following 8 different steps of planning such as creating a sense of
urgency or forming a strategic vision and initiative for the adoption of this change management
model. The first step of kcmm is to create the importance of urgency in which the management
team needs to show and explain the importance of the change with effective statements and
evaluate the opportunities for the change (Rajan and Ganesan, 2017). The second step of the
kcmm process is to build a coalition effectively to manage the changes and guide the employees
to complete the tasks according to the requirements of the change.

Figure 1: Kotter's change management theory

(Source: Rajan and Ganesan, 2017)

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The third step of this change management model is to develop a strategic initiative and vision in
order to bring the clarity of different scenarios in the future for the transformation of strategic
changes in the organization (Sittrop and Crosthwaite, 2021). The fourth step can be referred to as
an enlisting step in which the employees of the organization need to enlist their decisions
regarding the opportunity and threat that the company can avail or face. A large-scale change
needs common opportunity among the employees in order to implement the change management
model. The next step is to enable the action of this change management model by removing the
barriers such as inefficient processes. The next step of this model is to generate short-term wins
which help in motivating the employees to gain more encouragement for participating in the
implementation of the change management plan (Laig and Abocejo, 2021). The seventh step of
this model is to increase productivity and performance after achieving the first success. The last
step is to connect the organization's success and new changes in the organization. Microsoft can
adopt this change management model to create sustainable strategic changes by adopting digital
transformation in the organization that can help the company to achieve competitive advantages
in the global market and meet the upcoming challenges.
ADKAR change management model
This change management model is dependent on four strategies such as awareness, desire,
knowledge, and ability. In this model, it has been suggested to build awareness among the
employees about the changes by communicating with the employee, providing information about
the changes, inviting them to a strategic change discussion program, and creating a goal for the
change. The next strategy is to create the desire for changes among the employees by providing
information about the opportunities and achievements (Houben et al. 2020). The next strategy of
this change management model is to develop knowledge for the implementation of change
management by providing training and education, information, mentoring, and experience (Ali et
al. 2021). The last strategy of this model is to build the ability to adapt to the changes among the
employees by practicing, accessing the right tools, collecting feedback, and coaching the
behavior.

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 Figure 2: ADKAR change management model
(Source: Ali et al. 2021)
Recent changes
Rethinking customer engagement is a recent change that has been conducted in the company by
following some essential steps and mitigating the barriers to the changes. Enhancing mobile and
social technologies increases the power of consumers more than ever. In the present days,
customers are able to find the information regarding a product or service in a second and put
them in control by analyzing the substitute markets of those products and services. This trend
forced the company to rethink how the consumers are engaged with Microsoft and how the
company itself takes initiatives to connect with the customers. The company has followed some
steps to achieve success in this strategic change. Those steps are customer centricity, creating
fans, customer insights, and decision making.
The company has aligned customer experience with its business strategy and transformed the
whole organization as customer-centric by focusing on customer satisfaction in order to achieve
success for the strategic change. The second step that has been followed by the company was
personalizing the services based on customer insight and turning the customers into more
engaged in loving the products (Zhang et al. 2018). Microsoft has taken advantage of high-
quality data-driven customer insights to monitor the needs of customers and enforce the
marketing leaders to make technology and IT-related decisions that helped the company to go
ahead of the competition.
Social media channels have become the center stage of Microsoft to adopt the changes of
rethinking customer engagement as 5 out of 6 millennials around the world are connected with

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the company through social media (Info. Microsoft, 2021)). Microsoft has created a social
command center in the USA with 130 people to support the social media handles such as
OneDrive, Xbox, and 26 other brands. Azure Machine learning has been developed to analyze
customers' feedback. 360-degree lifecycle insights have been developed by the company to
monitor the view of customers in all touchpoints of products and services. These initiatives
helped the company to make changes in the business strategy.

Figure 3: 360-degree Lifecycle insights

(Source: Info. Microsoft, 2021)
The second strategic change that has been taken by the company is rethinking employee
empowerment in which some key steps have been followed by the company to make the
successful implementation of this strategic change. Covid-19 pandemic has created a shortage of
highly skilled employees in the company and therefore, rethinking employee empowerment in
the company becomes a part of strategic changes for the company in 2020. Being international
about people's needs and priorities is an effective strategy of empowering employees in a
company. Microsoft increased investment in creating a transformative culture and focused on
growth. Another strategy that has been taken by the company is to use the available data of
customer insights for making strategic decisions.

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Creating a new delivery system and model for human resource management and simplifying the
resource management tool for HR is the next step that has been followed by the company to
achieve success in rethinking employee empowerment (Chang and Andreoni, 2020). New skill
development and training are also important for empowering employees regarding their
workforce. The company has adopted Office 365 for collaborating; conferencing and instant
messaging that mitigate the challenges of communication among 14000 employees of the
company around the world. For this initiative, employees have become more engaged in sharing
various ideas about product design and services.

Figure 4: Building the next generation digital assistant

(Source: Info. Microsoft, 2021)
The third strategic change that has been taken by the company is rethinking transforming
products that helped the company to create value and enable new business models to provide a
significant impact on establishing new markets. Using data for entering a new market is an
effective strategy of rethinking the transformation of products that have been adopted by the
company in order to achieve the success of change implementation. The data management teams
of Microsoft have investigated the collected data to use it as the business opportunity for
transforming a product into a new product and acquiring a more competitive advantage in a new
market.

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Barriers to the recent changes
Microsoft’s core objective for implementing changes as mentioned above primarily relates to the
efforts made by the company to deal with the ongoing pandemic situations in an effective
manner. In this regard, these changes primarily relate to overall enhancement within the entire
workforce of the company, mainly pertaining to employee engagement and empowerment.
However, in the process of developing and implementing the proposed human resource
management changes in an effective manner, the company primarily faces several barriers
related to appropriate levels of employee involvement. This issue can be primarily related to the
shift in the working procedure on account of this pandemic situation, from office to work-from-
home. The presented issues primarily involve a significant drop in the overall cooperativeness
within the entire workforce of the company due to poor communication being maintained
through the virtual networks and workplaces used during the entire lockdown (Neill, 2018).
Consecutively, as per the reports made by the internal management of the company, the issues
related to poor cooperation also made a significant negative impact upon the overall
connectedness across respective teams per department. Such issues based on connectedness have
been determined to further decline gradually as the work-from-home regulation kept dragging
on. As per the surveys conducted by the company in regular intervals, it has been determined that
a significant portion of the issue is also related to ineffectiveness found within the management
of respective teams. Lack of active role undertaken by different managers to properly organize
and prioritize respective tasks while allowing proper facilitation of the work/life balance of every
respective employee is one of the primary reasons for such poor team connectedness (Khan and
Smuts, 2019).
Accordingly, a significant decline within the sentiment of individual employees for maintaining
proper communication and connectedness with fellow employees has also been determined. In
this regard, survey reports show that an overall decline in team connectivity has declined to 75%
by November 2020, as compared to 91% for April 2020. However, a slight but insufficient
increase was observed in December 2020, increasing up to 79%, and little to no decline or
improvement was observed in the following months (Rosenbaum, 2021). This signifies poor
efforts undertaken to manage and improve overall team connectedness and employee
engagement. Besides aforementioned management issues, the key reason that has caused such a

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significant decline in team connectedness involves an ineffective procedure undertaken to
manage the team experience for work-from-home.
The experience provided was focused to be aligned with office work and this brought about
multiple levels of inconsistencies, primarily related to activities solely available within a real
office environment, with prime examples including desk-side chats, happy hours, and offsites.
Additionally, this also led to improper allocation and management of working hours and
balancing such with leisure hours such as lunch breaks. In addition to poor management, these
issues can also be effectively related to certain other core barriers faced while undertaking a
change management strategy. On account of poor connectedness, the company faced decreased
cooperation levels and this led to improper communication being maintained among respective
personnel across different departments. Furthermore, insufficient efforts to provide a unique
employee experience while undertaking a work-from-home strategy caused various
inconsistencies as mentioned above (Kimengsi et al. 2016). This can be seen as a prime example
of bad culture shift planning, a key barrier to the change management procedure undertaken by
the company.
Conclusion and recommendation
This study takes a critical approach in identifying the key change management aspects of
Microsoft. In response to the current issues faced, it has been determined that the company is
placing key focus upon certain aspects, including customer satisfaction, employee
empowerment, and product development, within the change management strategy that is to be
implemented. In this regard, however, a wide range of barriers to such a change management
strategy has been determined, with such primarily including poor employee cooperation and
teamwork. Henceforth, further details have been provided regarding the key reasons due to
which such barriers are prevailing within the company and this mainly relates to the
implementation of ineffective work-from-home operational strategies.
In order to further improve the change management strategy undertaken by the company, the
core focus is required to be placed upon careful mitigation of the aforementioned barriers to
change. The primary recommendation involves a more careful planning process conducted
before developing and implementing requisite changes. Herein, every core change is required to
be recorded and documented appropriately, alongside mentioning the exact manner and process
through which such change is to be implemented within the current system. Accordingly,

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specific details based on the reason for implementing such change should be mentioned and
properly related to every individual employee to reduce the level of confusion and
uncooperativeness, with such mainly involving highlighting the key importance of such changes
(Lehmann, 2017). Additionally, high transparency levels are required to be maintained as well,
thus enabling maximum trust and cooperativeness to be gained from respective employees
during the entire change management process.
A definite documented and illustrated roadmap should be presented across every key meeting
based on change management strategies. This would further serve to reduce any sort of
confusion arising with respect to the change management strategies that are to be undertaken
(Widdersheim et al. 2019). Accordingly, higher levels of employee cooperativeness and
engagement across core change management stages would become readily available, thus
allowing a more comprehensive strategic approach to be undertaken. Furthermore, issues related
to improper understanding of the changes undertaken could also be effectively handled by
providing basic to advanced training and skills development programs for every respective
employee. Such programs could be effectively synchronized with adjacent change management
stages, thereby allowing a greater understanding level to be provided for individual employees
(Kouloukoui et al. 2020). Finally, a strong leadership approach is to be undertaken that leads
respective teams with a highly inspirational and innovative approach, thus allowing such
individuals to effectively accept and adhere to any implemented change.

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Task 2: Reflection Report
Description
This study based on Microsoft's change management efforts places primary focus upon bringing
in a significant level of improvement within the human resource management framework of the
company. As discussed above, the primary focus has been placed upon certain key aspects
related to HRM, including employee engagement, employee motivation, and employee
cooperativeness. A critical and detailed study based on these aspects has allowed certain core
professional and personal capabilities to be identified, as required to be possessed within
respective business personnel. For instance, in order to bring about an increased level of
employee cooperativeness across every respective team in different departments, the extensive
focus has been placed upon various management and leadership methods and skills that can be
effectively implemented.
One of the key leadership skills that I have learned from this module involves various essential
aspects related to communication. For example, I have found that a high level of charisma and
etiquette enables more effective conversations to be conducted with every individual employee,
thus increasing the level of understanding that can be maintained across an entire team
(Karagianni and Jude Montgomery, 2018). Additionally, having a considerable level of empathy
allows key concerns and issues faced by respective employees to be effectively addressed. In
terms of management aspects, I have learned the importance of bearing skills based on critical
thinking and problem-solving. Additionally, having a high level of confidence with regards to
every individual decision undertaken is also an essential requirement to bring about increased
employee engagement and cooperativeness.
Other key skills related to effective employee management involve accountability and
responsibility. These aspects are also in direct relation to risk management skills and
accordingly, the capability of the entire workforce to effectively conceive and handle any risks
faced across respective departments (Farrell, 2017). Furthermore, I have determined that building
personal relationships alongside maintaining a professional communication approach is a
requirement for workplace management. Consequently, I have found that maintaining
appropriate relationship levels has a direct positive impact on the level of integrity maintained
across every core communication and decision-making procedure. This also helps in building
planning and organizational capabilities among every individual employee and hence can be

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determined as a prime factor that affects overall workplace cooperativeness (Akaegbu and
Usoro, 2017).
Evaluation
As per my personal opinion, I preferred learning of various leadership capabilities as has been
mentioned in the above discussions. In this regard, I have placed core focus upon both personal
and professional skills and capabilities that are required to be possessed by a leader in order to
maintain a team most effectively. The module also placed core focus upon various aspects
related to customer needs and preferences that are required to be considered for maintaining
higher efficiency and relevance across key strategic decisions undertaken. Additionally, these
teachings were essentially related to a number of key economic frameworks and theories that
served to accurately describe the way various factors related to both internal and external
business environments affected customer preferences and behavioral patterns.
In terms of leadership skills and capabilities, key aspects that I learned involved personal
characteristics as has been mentioned above, including empathy, effective verbal communication
and listening, and charisma. As per the professional perspective, I liked the method through
which specific details related to various professional skills and capabilities were presented. This
mainly involved a comprehensive look towards key factors that affected the level and
effectiveness of such skills among every individual. For instance, the level of education within a
particular region is an essential determinant of the degree to which professional skills are learned
and effectively applied across respective professional domains (Zeike et al. 2019). In this regard,
the key professional skills that I regarded to be highly applicable across personal and
professional development aspects involved effective decision-making capabilities, with such
primarily relating to problem-solving and critical thinking skills.
I also preferred the key methods that were listed in order to facilitate the effective development
of respective leadership and management skills. In this regard, specific focus was placed on
maintaining a professional development routine alongside including a highly detailed structure
and framework for appropriately building such routine. Herein, I liked the way this module
placed primary emphasis upon providing a high level of support and guidance with respect to
both personal and professional development in the future years of every respective student. A
number of relevant samples were also provided that allowed a student to develop a keen idea
regarding the development and implementation of an effective professional development

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framework (Hungerford-Kresser and Amaro-Jimenez, 2020). As per subjects that I found
irrelevant in regards to my personal preferences, this mainly involved the key economic theories
and frameworks that were discussed, which I found to have little relevance with the provided
leadership studies.
Analysis
As per line of work, it mainly involves managing a particular design and development team that
serves to provide significant levels of improvement to every key product and service delivered
by my company, as per certain set specifications. Therefore, this involves a highly innovative
task undertaken by each team member for facilitating highly effective improvements and
respective modifications to be provided (Bebbington, 2021). In view of such, highly cooperative
teamwork and collaboration are required to be maintained among every respective team member.
Hence, this requires effective leadership to be implemented that can bring about high levels of
understanding among respective team members, allowing every requisite task and related activity
to be conducted in a highly effective and efficient manner. Furthermore, maintaining proper
understanding with each specific member encourages such individuals to ensure the same while
interacting with other members. This would provide a significant amount of boost to overall
team cooperativeness and collaboration that in turn, ensure the maximum level of performance
across every core task.
In this regard, I have determined that in order to implement the most effective leadership for my
team, a certain form of leadership framework is required to be considered. This framework is
termed as the transformational leadership framework and would allow every key learning based
on leadership skills capabilities to be properly integrated within the leadership approach that is to
be implemented. As per the model of transformational leadership, four key aspects are included
with the first one being inspirational motivation. In accordance with this aspect, I would organize
and effectively present a definite vision and mission statement, alongside defining a set of values
to be followed by my team. Therefore, with such values and vision being in tandem with
maximum innovative development, maintaining and effectively relaying such to each team
member would allow a consistent work regulation and work performance to be maintained (Day
et al. 2016).
This would be followed by providing a proper level of intellectual stimulation to the team
through appropriate encouragement. Herein, I would undertake an idealistic approach to define

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key team goals, while providing examples of success stories from self-experience or other
organizations achieved through the implementation of values and practices set for my team. Such
success stories, being in accordance with respective team values and goals, would win the trust
of every member. Finally, a well-defined approach related to individualized consideration would
be undertaken. Herein, through the application of core leadership and communication skills,
every employee's needs and preferences would be effectively addressed while allowing
appropriate tasks to be provided as per individual skills and capabilities (Soini et al. 2016).
Action Plan
The primary task would be to engage in regular meetings with every key team member in order
to facilitate the development and implementation of effective and relevant goals for the team. In
this regard, every individual member would be provided with an equal opportunity to participate
across various decision-making processes wherein individual preferences and opinions would be
recorded. Among every provided opinion, the ones most relevant as per the core team purpose
would be chosen and appropriate steps would be undertaken to present the final goals of the team
within an integrated framework. Any form of further opinions of respective members, primarily
pertaining to issues and personal concerns related to set goals and objectives, would be
effectively addressed through appropriate communication protocols undertaken before the
implementation of such goals. This pertains to the establishment of a highly effective employee
feedback system and hence, this would ensure that every key employee concern and personal
issues are properly addressed and resolved even post-change implementation.
Further feedback regarding the overall effectiveness of implemented goals and personal efforts
made to contribute towards such would be effectively gathered through conducting regular
surveys. This would also help in determining the exact performance and productivity obtained
across every key operation and related activity. Additionally, every employee would be provided
with opportunities to directly contact me or upper hierarchies in order to present respective needs
and concerns. As per my understanding, providing a direct audience to the employees would
serve to significantly improve the level of employee satisfaction and cooperativeness that can be
maintained within the team.

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