Learning more about the change

management model:
The Kotter’s model
Kotter’s work
Kotter has worked more than any other theorist
on the definition of leadership and how it actually
differs from management.
Management is more a set of tools while
leadership is an art which can not be precisely
codified.
Comes to a definition of leadership that privileges
its dimension of being an agent of change.
Believes that institutionalizing a leadership culture
is the ultimate act of leadership.
 Norfolk Southern: Case Study
When Katie Frazier first joined Norfolk Southern’s Atlanta terminal, she felt it was
running well but still felt more could be done to improve operations. She was also
concerned about safety issues. As she got comfortable in her new job, she was wracking
her brain, struggling with how to help the company take its safety and operations
standards from just “good enough” to a higher level. One day, while in a local
bookstore’s business section, she noticed a book with penguins on the cover. Penguins
had always been her favorite animal, but she wondered what such a book was doing
surrounded by books on management! The book, needless to say, was “Our Iceberg Is
Melting.” Once she started reading it, she thought to herself, “wow, this is really
helpful.” She noticed that behaviors in her company sometimes mirrored the
penguins’ behaviors, for example, people would see a complex problem, and then
either ignore it or wait for someone else to fix it. Katie thought that if she could get
other people in the company to read the book, it might be a big help in giving people
perspective on the bigger picture.Katie, being one of the few relatively young workers
around, faced an enormous challenge in getting her older co-workers to buy in to the
notion that penguins could help the organization. There were many skeptics. She
showed the book to her manager, a former Marine. He told her that the book was
something his granddaughter might read, not something he would value as a business
leader. Katie persevered and insisted that he read it. After her manager actually did,
he quickly began to realize the same lessons could apply at Norfolk Southern. He gave
Katie approval to start applying the learnings.
Step 1) Katie started by trying to create a sense of urgency
around a willingness to raise safety and operational
standards. Through evaluation of these problems, not only
by Katie but also by the broader leadership team, people
began to feel that urgency was more than just the latest
fad. That process of raising the urgency level inside the
Atlanta terminal of Norfolk Southern took about 2 months
from start to finish.
Step 2) After sufficient urgency was raised, a guiding coalition
formed made up of a few conductors, engineers & supervisors.
Katie’s fear was that the group was too homogenous – she actually
wanted to include a few of the company’s more skeptical employees
to get their feedback and help strengthen the group’s decision
making. The Guiding Coalition began meeting regularly and called
themselves “The Iceberg Group.” This group started out small, but
eventually grew to have about 9 people, changing over time, from
different parts of the organization, meeting regularly to see how to
implement the rest of the 8 Steps.
Step 3) The vision that the group created was designed to
change everyone’s mentality and attitude about safety.
Injuries could not be treated as an acceptable risk at a
railroad – they had to be reduced in order to get the
railroad’s efficiency up and costs down.
Step 4) Communicating this vision was a constant battle, since most of a
railroad’s employees are on the move at any given time. Furthermore, most
of the crew members did not have access to modern communications like
e-mail.
As a result, the vision was communicated through a vehicle called “job
briefings,” where the days weather & track conditions were discussed for
crews about to go out on to the tracks. These briefings happen 3 times a
day, at the beginning of every shift. The Iceberg Group started
communicating the change vision at job briefings, around the clock, for
two weeks straight. Over time, every crew member was touched by the
vision multiple times, right at their point of highest awareness – before
going out to work on the trains.
Step 5)The largest barrier Katie felt she needed to overcome were
related to the concept of raising the bar on safety standards – how
can you make people really care about the highest possible safety
standards, when current standards are already high? The way to do
it, she said, was to make it personal – get to the heart and not just
the mind. They forced people to think about their families and how
they would feel about an injury to their loved ones. Over time, the
message began to sink in and people started to change their
behavior. This created a high level of engagement with the crew.
Step 6) The Iceberg Group set a goal for a short term win – six months
injury free and communicated it broadly. Since the inception of the
Iceberg Group’s work, with the exception of a small muscle pull, the
Atlanta terminal has gone almost 9 months injury free.
Other outcomes resulted as well, for example, because the terminal
became so proficient, they’ve never had to reduce the number of shifts
running, even as other companies have cut back. With injuries down about
97% over last year, the Atlanta terminal has had fewer missed days of work,
fewer injury-related costs and more productive workers, enabling it to gain
a critical advantage over the competition.
Step 7&8) Even with this success, the Atlanta terminal isn’t
content to let up. As they continue to move through the 8
Step process, they hope to make the change permanent by
anchoring these new changes into the culture. The Iceberg
Group continues to meet, looking for other ways in which
they can help the company improve its operations, and
hopefully, spread the Iceberg philosophy to other divisions
of the company
Change Management Models and Framework
Change Phases model
Proffesor J.P. Kotter’s Change Phases model (1990)
suggests that there are eight reasons why change
management might fail. His reasons are because
manager:
Allow too much complexity
Fail to win support from staff
Do not have a clear vision
Fail to communicate the vision to stakeholders
Allow obstructions to the vision
Change Management Models and
Framework
Do not focus on small continuous changes (to win
support).
Declare success too soon.
Ignore corporate culture when implementing change.
Ex: A company decides to implement a course of
meditation for employees, but some of them can’t be
there because of religion. If the boss doesn’t respect
that, it means that respect value is not paying
attention.
Change Management Models and
Frameworks
Iceberg Model
Wilfried Kruger’s Iceberg model of change argues that
there are two levels of change but that managers often
only concentrate their efforts on the top level of the
iceberg
Top level: Cost, Quality and Time.
Bottom level: People: Attitudes, beliefs, perceptions,
acceptance and behaviour of stakeholders (which can
be negative of positive)
Change Management Models and
Frameworks
Change Management Models and Framework
Kruger suggests that there are several groups of people who may
hinder or enhance the change process.
Opponents: Have a negative attitude towards change
Promoters: Have a positive attitude towards change. They
therefore support the change as they feel that they will personally
benefit from it.
Hidden opponents: Negative attitude towards change, but seem
to accept change in a superficial way, perhaps to avoid conflict or
getting into trouble.
Potential promoters: Positive attitude towards change, but they
are not yet fully convinced about the particular change in
questions
Change Management Models and Framework
What is the solution?
Incentives or coercion for the opponents and
consultation with the hidden opponents
 Change Equation
(Beckhard & Haris)
DISSATISFACTION with the status quo
All change begins with
(a) dissatisfaction with the current state based on a
recognition that the pain of not changing is likely to be
greater than the uncertainty of change, and,
(b) a willingness to search for alternatives.
Organizational leaders should never take for
granted that the rest of the enterprise will see the
need for change as clearly as they do.
A VISION for Change
When individuals or groups desire change, but
cannot identify a "way out," the result is anger,
depression, frustration, anxiety and/or apathy.
Mobilizing the energy generated by a desire for
change requires a Vision.
A shared vision is the answer to the question,
“What do we want to create or achieve—together?“
Vision should be communicated in such a way
that organizational members are encouraged -­‐-­‐
not mandated -­‐-­‐ to share the vision.
FIRST STEPS
While Dissatisfaction without Vision often leads
to despair, Vision without Action is no more than a
"castle in the air“.
When engaging organizational members in the
process of change, they must have the opportunity
to describe their own reality, influence the shaping
of a new vision for the future, and to participate in
developing action plans (First Steps) for making
the Vision a reality.
RESISTANCE to change
In order that the product of Desire, Vision and
First Steps is greater than the Resistance to change,
it is important to have a method of gauging the
degree and nature of resistance.
Organizations do not resist change — people do.
People resist change when they...
Believe they will lose something of value in the change
(status, belonging, competence);
Lack trust in those promoting or driving the change;
Feel they have insufficient knowledge about the
proposed change and its implications;
Fear they will not be able to adapt to the change and
will not have a place in the organization;
Believe the change is not in the best interests of the
organization;
Believe they have been provided insufficient time to
understand and commit to the change.
RESISTANCE to change
It’s not that people resist change; it’s just that they
resist “being changed.”
By far the most effective method of dealing with
resistance is to engage stakeholders in shaping the
elements on the left side of the change equation.
DVF at two levels
In every organizational change situation, stakeholders
must experience Dissatisfaction, Vision and First steps
at two distinct yet related levels:

At the level of the whole change initiative; and

At the level of the personal impact of the change.
DVF at two levels (Illustration)