Kotters Eight Step Change Management Model Management Essay

Change is the word that best described of the modern societies and culture. Change occurred in almost every aspects of life. Change presses us out from our comfort zone. People changed in their life to avoid stagnation and to improve their quality of life and become a better person. This is also true in business where the rapid change in technologies, the way of doing things, advances in information technologies, internal and external pressures, e-business and globalization creates a competitive environment in most organization in order to survive and to be relevant. How business react, operate and adapt to any changes determine the survivability of the company. In organization, change is necessary but often proves to be challenging.

To guide a change (managing a change process) may be the greatest test for the leader of the organization especially when there is resistance. Therefore to lead a change is essential but difficult (Kotter 2007). The successfulness on implementing change in an organization requires a series of phase, a correct tools and proper planning. Palmer, Dunford and Akin (2009) quoted that “Changing organizations is as messy as it is exhilarating, as frustrating as it is satisfying, as muddling-through and creative a process as it is a rational one” (p. 1).

On the other hand, ‘Lean Six Sigma’ or ‘Lean thinking’ has been widely accepted and adoptable tool for improving organizational performance. The thinking provides a method to do more with less without jeopardizing the quality, cost and delivery and at the same time meeting customers’ requirements. Less means less effort, less equipment, less time, less cost, less space and eliminating all sources of wastes in the process. Developed as a production systems eliminating wastes in the Toyota’s manufacturing plant in 1960’s, now lean thinking evolving across countries and industries as a management approach that improves all processes at each level of the organization.

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However, in realities, many organizations are not able to transform themselves to lean organization and unable to get the benefit out of it. Transformation initiatives towards the lean organization are full with challenges and resistances. Many companies that promote lean thinking, even those undertaken with the best intention are often destined to a failure due to its unsuccessful execution (Jeyaraman 2010). There are a lot of resistance factors and mostly can be divided into human and non-human factor. From Langstrand et al. (2012) “In a member survey, the Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI) found that more than 36% of the respondents attributed change failure to middle management resistance. Along with employee resistance and supervisor resistance, these were considered three of the four most significant obstacles to implementing lean (LEI, 2007)”.

According to (Norani 2011) lean transition requires emergent strategy and he suggested that among all the emergent change approaches, Kotter’s Eight-Step Change Management Model is one of the best-known change management model. Kotter (1996) suggested Eight-Step Change Management Model as shown on Table 1.1.

Table 1.1: Kotter’s Eight-Step Change Management Model

Step 1

Establishing a Sense of Urgency

Step 2

Creating the Guiding Coalition

Step 3

Developing A Vision And Strategy

Step 4

Communication the Change Vision

Step 5

Empowering Employees for Broad-Based Action

Step 6

Generating Short-Term Wins

Step 7

Consolidating Gains And Producing More Change

Step 8

Anchoring New Approaches In The Culture

This study will analyze the effectiveness of change steps efforts that have been taken during the implementation of Lean Six Sigma Program in government owned service oriented organization from a perspective of change management using the Kotter’s eight-step change management model as benchmarks.

Background of The Study

In today’s fast-moving era, if there is an organization that is looking for the pace of change to slow or slow in their reaction to any response, is likely to be sorely disappointed and left behind. In fact, some says that, in businesses change is permanent. Change is important in every organization because without change, business would likely lose their market shares, competitive edge and fail to meet the various needs of the customers.

SIRIM Berhad is also not neglected from the challenges of reacting more intelligently to customers’ needs to become more effective. SIRIM Berhad, formerly known as the Standards and Industrial Research Institute of Malaysia (SIRIM), is a corporate organization owned wholly by the Malaysian Government, under the Minister of Finance Incorporated. It has been entrusted by the Malaysian Government to be the national organization for standards and quality, and as a promoter of technological excellence in the Malaysian industry. The organization came into operation on September 1, 1996 via corporatization scheme of standards and industrial research institute, initiated by the government with the vision to be a corporation of choice for technology and quality.

SIRIM Berhad as the national organization of standardization and quality, and as the prime mover in industrial research and development acts as a catalyst in bringing about national economic dynamism through excellence in technology and international acceptance of Malaysian products and services. Their mission is to enhance their customers’ competitiveness through technology and quality, and fulfill the needs of the shareholders.

As such its role is to act as:

A champion of quality.

The national technology development corporation.

Vehicle for technology transfer.

A provider of institutional and technical infrastructure for the Government.

SIRIM Berhad has initiated a program called ‘Lean Six-Sigma Program’ (LSSP). LSSP is developed based on the infamous improvement methodology known as Lean Six Sigma Strategy. It was initiated based on the emerging needs to develop SIRIM to be a market driven organization with sustainable business growth and global market penetration. The proposal has been developed by Group Quality Occupational Safety Health and Environment Department (GQOSHE) in 2008.

The main objective of the LSSP is to establish an Integrated Business Process Improvement (IBPI) system that builds on four initiatives namely Lean Six Sigma (LSS), Innovative and Creative Circle (ICC), Just Do It (JDI) and Personal Quality Program (PQP). The first three initiatives are continuous improvement methodology used to enhance business performance while the latter is a motivational and cultural conditioning program for SIRIM staffs. The continuous improvement initiatives were used to promote, nurture and inculcate innovative, creative thinking and learning culture into SIRIM to strengthen its business processes and systems in order to be a market driven organization.

Problem Statement

Upon acceptance of the proposal from President and Chief Executive, LSSP was officially started on January 28, 2008 followed by the directive to begin the Lean Six Sigma project implementation on few small scale “pilot” projects on February 29, 2008. Seven (7) departments / divisions of SIRIM Berhad have been selected for the pilot project.

These departments have been participating in the Lean Six Sigma workshops and training program which comprise of Green Belt and Black Belt programs. The program focusing on areas as follows;

To assist the existing project team to implement prioritized ICC projects,

Lean Six Sigma Value Stream projects,

To initiate Lean Six Sigma initiative at other SIRIM departments and,

To certify the Green Belt who has fulfilled the certification process.

During the training period, 19 projects initiated on cost saving activities and 9 of the projects have been completed. Based on value stream mapping (process analysis) conducted at participating departments, upon completion of all the prioritized projects, the program has estimated cost savings of RM300k per year (including project savings from Genba Kaizen 5S implementation). Other tangible benefits from the program are:

Safer and more organize work place.

Creation of work space and elimination of obsolete and out-dated items.

Low and controllable stock keeping level of certain items such as stationeries, chemicals resulting to better cash flow and stock management.

Improved process visibility and productivity.

Lean Six Sigma Program (LSSP) is expected to be a new change program in SIRIM Berhad and the successful implementation of the program is important for sustainability and growth of the organization.

Despite the 3 years of training program consists of briefings, training session and pilot projects, the program unable to reach its goal of transferring SIRIM Berhad to become lean organization and to embed lean thinking into the culture of the organization. From an early interview with some of the staff involved, it is confirmed that currently Lean Six Sigma has not been practiced in their section or department. The program seems to be abandoned and not getting enough coalition to sustain the initiatives.

Research Objectives

The objectives of this study are:

To analyze the effectiveness of change steps efforts that have been taken during the implementation of LSSP with reference to Kotter’s Eight-Step Change Management Model.

To determine the benefit of LSSP to the department during the implementation stages.

To determine the weakness of LSSP to the department during the implementation stages.

To make recommendation on the finding to the management of SIRIM Berhad on managing lean program and any change management initiatives.

Scope of The Study

This study will be focusing on the implementation stages of Lean Six Sigma program in SIRIM Berhad. The respondents will comprise of managerial and non-managerial employees that participated in the program before. This study is focusing the change management steps as per Kotter’s eight change steps of change management as a benchmark.

Significance of The Study

After the training period, Lean Six Sigma program seems to be abandoned and not getting enough coalition to sustain the initiatives but no formal and structured study has been done to understand why the program not achieving the expected outcome especially on the implementation process. Therefore this study is significant to fill the gap by assessing the implementation steps that have been taken during the implementation of the Lean Six Sigma program.

The research will analyze the employee’s perception toward the effort of change steps that have been taken during the implementation. By understanding this, it will help the management to prepare the suitable and effective steps to improve the implementation of LSS program in SIRIM Berhad and also to be used as a guideline for any change’s initiatives in the organization.

This study will also provide value by identifying if Kotter’s popular change management model is also useful in government owned service organization. As a result, the outcome can also be used by other government owned organizations that will or are undergoing Lean Six Sigma initiatives by providing information concerning the applicability of Kotter’s eight-step change management model as a useful model on managing a change in their organization. Academician and lean consultant could also get the benefit from the findings on the effective way of managing lean in government owned service oriented organization.

Limitation of The Study

It is important to understand that this is a case-study. This study is limited only to the staff of SIRIM Berhad that involved during the implementation of LSSP. The survey is based on perception and subject to bias that could impact the end results. Therefore the sincerity of the correspondents during answering the survey is very important.

Definition of Terms

Black Belt

Full time position responsible for leading project teams. They are responsible for delivering the value and benefits that were determined for each of their projects during the projects selection process.

Green Belts

A person who works on a Lean Six Sigma project only part-time, on a specific process about which he or she generally possesses knowledge important to the success of the project (Michele 2002).

Kaizen

Continuous improvement in Japanese. The kaizen process is modeled after quality circle, the team-based continuous improvement vehicle utilized in the Toyota production System. The secret to Kaizen is that it emphasize creativity before capital (Michele 2002).

Lean Six Sigma

The activities that cause the customer’s critical-to-quality issues and create the longest time delays in any process offer the greatest opportunity for improvement in cost, quality, capital, and lead time (Michele 2002).

Value Stream

The set of activities that convert customer needs into delivered products and services. Improving an entire value stream requires multiple projects (Michele 2002).

CHAPTER 2

LITERATURE REVIEW

Introduction

Chapter 2 presents the literature review of the research study. This chapter is discussing about the change management, lean six sigma, change model, Kotter’s eight-step change management model and the research questions.

Change Management

Change is a reality of life. In the past five decades change/improvements initiatives have been driven by a lot of approaches. For example, in 1950s Management by Objectives (MBO), Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) have been introduced. In 1960s to 1970s Sensivity Training, T-groups, Quality Circles, Corporate Culture have been used. The famous improvement initiatives such as ISO9000, Total Quality Management and Corporate Culture were introduced in 1980s and in 1990s Reengineering Agile Strategies, Horizontal Corporations, Employee Empowerment, Core Competencies and Vision have taken the scene (Palmer, I. et.al 2009). Motivations for change have been customers satisfaction, cost reduction, improved efficiency, improved quality, or, in extreme cases, survival (Longbothom et.al 2006).

Self D.R and Schraeder M. (2009) explained that the first challenge organization faced during implementing change in the organization is recognizing the need for change and second, and possibly more significant is effectively deploying strategies to implement change. Contemporary literature outlines a multitude of various strategies for implementing change in an organization.

Wikipedia (2012) defines Change Management as an approach to shifting / transitioning individuals, teams, and organizations from a current state to desired future state. Smith (2005) explained that change is a process of letting go of things as they are in order to take up a new ways of doing things. Organizational change normally challenges the status quo of the employee and it may challenge the values and perceived rights of workers and work group. For some people, change is welcome and relates to something new, fresh and exciting but for some people may be more cautious by seeking to test and examine before proceeding.

Palmer et. al (2009) explained that there are six images of managing change. First is ‘change manager as a director’ which gave an image of management as control and change outcomes as being achievable. Second is ‘change manager as a navigator’ where the manager is in control of a given situation and the outcomes are partly emergent rather than completely planned and result from a variety of influences, competing interests and processes. Third is “change manager as care taker” is an ideal image of management is still one of control, although the ability to exercise control is severely constrained by a variety of forces, both internally and externally driven, that propel change relatively independent of manager’s intentions. Forth is ‘change manager as a coach’ where the manager is in a position to shape the organizations capabilities in particular ways. Fifth is ‘change manager as an interpreter’ where managing change places the change manager in the position of creating meaning for the other organisational members, helping them to make sense of various organisational events and actions. And lastly ‘change manager as nurturer’ where the nurturing image to managing assumes that even small changes may have a large impact on organizations and managers are not able to control the outcomes of their changes.

For other journal, Michael Stanleigh (2008) found that most change initiatives fail because management may not be engaging employees in the process towards change and do not allow sufficient time for change to set. It is important to implement change in a series of phases that will engage employee and to allow sufficient length of time for each phase to become institutionalized within the organization. He listed out several drivers of change such as mergers and acquisitions, innovation, technology, restructuring / re-organizing, declining sales and/or market share, globalization, expansion and growth, sense of urgency and lastly when 75% of the leadership is honestly convinced that business as usual is no longer as acceptable plan. However he claimed that, too often, management fails to recognize that adjustment to change takes time. They expected the employee to react quickly to the changes and fail to recognize that each individual will go through all of the phases at different paces. As a result, sometimes the employee may burn out, scared or frustrated and unable to cooperate. Therefore he recommended all managers to apply multi-step process to guide, include, empower, enlist and motivate employees toward change.

2.2 Lean Six Sigma

Lean Six Sigma is a technique to improve process and can be used either individually, in a group of people or in combination with a target to improve the quality and delivery of any business process. Originally developed by Toyota called as ‘Toyota Production System’ is based on series of principles focusing on eliminating 7 categories of Muda, Japanese word means ‘waste’, specifically any activity of consuming resources but creates no values. Waste such as over produced of goods that no one wants, transportation of goods from one place to another without any reasons, waste due to correction of defects which require rectifications, waste in waiting time due to delay in process, over-processing, inventory pile up and motion waste of unnecessary processing steps will end up not meeting the needs of the customers.

Liker (2004) claimed that the lean thinking was used by Taiichi Ohno, a Toyota’s Plant manager who was assigned to improve Toyota’s manufacturing process back in 1950. TPS underpins many innovation including the elimination waste – ‘muda’, quality at the source – ‘jidoka’ and continuous improvement – ‘kaizen’. Through years of trial and error, Toyota caught the world’s attention in 1980s where the cars produced were lasting longer than American cars and required much less repair. Based on his study, in 1990s Toyota capable to produced new design of auto faster, with more reliability, at a competitive cost and became third-largest auto manufacturer in the world behind General Motors and Ford. Much of the success comes from its astounding quality reputation. Kaizen (continuous improvement) will lead to ‘learning organization’. This culture when embedded to the organization will give a great benefit by providing opportunities for improvement and sustainability in a long run.

Any organization will obtain an effectiveness and efficiency in their process by implementing Lean. Lean requires a specific way of thinking, philosophy and management system. Liker (2004) describes fourteen principles of lean at Toyota Production Systems (TPS) and the principles can be divided into four categories that are;

Long-Term Philosophy.

The Right Process Will Produce The Right Results.

Add Value by Developing Your People and Partners, and

Continuously Solving Root Problems Drives Learning.

Womack J.P and Jones D.T (1996) explained that the lean thinking provides a method to make any tasks more satisfying by converting waste into value with less human effort, less equipment, less time and less space – while coming closer and closer to providing customers with exactly what they want. He proposed 5 lean principles consist of:

Specify Value.

Identify the Value Stream.

Determine the Flow.

Pull.

Perfection.

They proposed that all 5 steps should be applied holistically and it is important that all the steps are performing together due to the interrelationship between the principles is enough to enhance the outcomes of the others. They also argue than lean not just can be successful in manufacturing organization but also in any other organization. They come out with a term called ‘From Lean Production to Lean Enterprise’. Although lean will always associated with reduction of costs, eliminating waste and JIT but the adoption of lean is beneficial for knowledge-based activities such as services, design, engineering and product development.

2.3 Change Model

There are a lot of change models been studied and introduced to organize change activities in a systematic approach. Researchers have been studying change, specifically organizational change, for decades. Detail studies on implementing change has been conducted by Ian Palmer, Richard Dunford and Gib Akin (2009) and presented in their book “Managing Organizational Change”. They said that in various change management approaches provide multistep models of how to achieve larga-scale, transformation change. They studied 9 examples of change management model that have been introduced from 1992 to 2006. These models differ not just in terms of the number of steps but also the way to implement the steps. Katner, Stein and Jick proposed an approach called ‘Ten Commandments’ in 1992, Pendlebury, Grouard and Meston proposed ‘Ten Keys’ in 1998, Nadler proposed ’12 Action Steps’ in 1998, Taffinder proposed ‘Transformation Trajectory’ in 1998, Anderson and Anderson proposed ‘Nine-Phase Change Process Model’ in 2001, Kirkpatrick proposed Step-by-Step Change Model in 2001, Mento, Jones and Dirndorfer proposed 12-Step Framework in 2002, Light proposed RAND’s Six Steps in 2005 and Leppit proposed ‘Integrated Model’ in 2006. The summary of all 9 change models made by Palmer et. al. (2009) is as Appendix 1.

Ian Palmer, Richard Dunford and Gib Akin (2009) said that possibly one of the best-known change management model is John Kotter’s eight-step model. Norani (2011) also says that among all the emergent change approaches, Kotter’s model is said to have a long standing high reputation that has flexibility to deal with vast number of problems and issues that may be experienced during change. Kotter’s simplifies the steps during change process to overcome the challenge and constraints that might occurred during the implementation.

2.4 Kotter’s Eight-Step Change Management Model

John P. Kotter graduated from MIT and Harvard. He joined the Harvard Business School faculty in 1972 and after 8 years, at the age of thirty-three, he was voted tenure and a full professorship. He wrote a lot of books, journals and articled related to leadership, change and managements. In 1994 he wrote an article for the Harvard Business Review entitled “Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail.” It was based on his analysis from a lot of initiatives to produce significant useful change in organization via restructuring, reengineering, restrategizing, acquisitions, downsizing, quality programs and cultural renewal in companies that trying to remake themselves into significantly better companies. These companies included large organizations such as Ford, General Motors, British Airways, Landmark Corporation etc. The basic goal of all change efforts was to make fundamental changes in how business is conducted in order to cope with a changing market environment. He has made his study on both success and fail of change initiatives.

As a result from his analysis Kotter developed his 8 steps for change. The eight steps were created to be followed one by one and in sequence where for him each step building on the previous. Kotter states that it is essential to thoroughly complete all 8 steps, not cutting only one or short. Kotter (1996) quoted “Whenever you leave one of the steps in the eight-stage change process without finishing the work, you usually pay a big price later on”.

Step 1 is ‘Establishing a Sense of Urgency’. Change efforts begin successfully when some individuals of a group of people start realize and look hard at a company’s competitive situations, market positions, technological trends and financial performance. Kotter notes that over half of the companies he analyzes have never been able to create enough urgency to prompt action. Compared with other steps in the change process, step one can sound easy but it is not. “Well over 50% of the companies I have watched fail in this first phase” (Kotter, 2007, pg. 3). Kotter proposed that the change initiatives can be successful is when 75% of company’s managements is honestly convinced and agreed to change.

Step 2 is “Creating the Guiding Coalition”. Kotter (1995) described it as a step that requires the organization to assembling a group with enough power to lead the change effort and encourage the group to work together as a team. The team may consist one or two people in the early stage but it must grow over time. It is important that the team get full support by the top managements. A high sense of urgency for change within the top management is such organization helps enormously in putting a guiding coalition together. Leadership play an important role to spread out the sense of urgency to change. Efforts that don’t have a powerful enough guiding coalition can’t only sustain for a while and in the end the progress will stop.

Step 3 is “Developing a Vision and Strategy”. A vision helps clarify the direction in which the change results should be. Kotter (1995) describe this step as developing a picture of the future that is relatively easy to communicate and appeals to customers, stock-holders and employees. Without a sensible vision, any change effort can easily dissolve into a list of confusing and incompatible projects that can take the organization in the wrong direction or nowhere at all.

Step 4 is “Communicating the Change Vision”. In this step, every possible communication channel must be used to spread out the change initiatives. Everybody needs to know, aware and get familiar about what is happening. Some key elements of effectively communicating shall be used such as repetition, explanation, forums and leading by example of the guiding coalition.

Step 5 is “Empowering Employees for Broad-Based Action”. In this step, action should be taken to remove all obstacles to change. This might as be up to the extent of changing systems or structures that seriously undermine the vision. It also may involve allocating some budget, money, time, support etc. These are to get more people to involve. The more people involved, the better the outcome (Kotter 1995).

Step 6 is “Generating Short-Term Wins”. Transformation will take time and effort and will risk losing momentum if there are no short-term goals or achievement. Some people will only get participate when they start to see the positive results. Without short term wins, people will get exhausted and may turn back to their original behavior or condition.

Step 7 is “Consolidating Gains and Producing More Change”. In this step, Kotter gave warns that people tend to declare victory too soon before they are really won. They easily get satisfied with the changes without knowing that it is not fully embedded into the systems of the organization. The change might take years to complete.

Step 8 is “Anchoring New Approaches in The Culture”. This step is the ultimate goal of any change initiatives. It embeds in the culture of the organization, when it seeps into the bloodstream of the organization.

2.5 Research Questions

Based on the discussion above, the following research questions have been formulated to guide the study.

Is the program established enough ‘Sense of Urgency’ to the staff during the implementation period?

Is the program creating a group of people with enough power to lead the change effort and encourage the group to work together as a team during the implementation period?

Is the staff been thought about the ‘Vision and Strategy’ and understand the end results of Lean Six Sigma program?

Is the staff well versed and understand about the benefit of Lean Six Sigma?

Is the program gets enough support from the management and well accepted by the staff?

Is staff clear about the short term target and long term target of the program and feel that Lean Six Sigma will give a lot of benefit to them?

Is the program continuously developing and more people start to talk about Lean Six Sigma?

Is Lean Six Sigma embedded into the culture of every staff?

CHAPTER 3

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

Introduction

The previous chapters provide with a contextual framework for understanding the purpose and objectives of the research. Chapter three focuses on the research methodology and its application to the research objectives and questions outlined in chapter one and two. The research design, population and sample, sampling procedure, assessment instruments and pilot study are described according to its use in this chapter. In addition the statistical tools used for data analysis are defined in relation to the objectives and research questions.

Research Design

Research can be describe as a systematic and organized effort to investigate a specific problem that needs solution. “Management research could encompass the study of employee attitude and behavior, human resources management, the impact of changing demographic on management practices, production operation management, strategy formulation, information systems, and the like” (Sekaran, 1984, p. 5).

The type of this research is applied research. “When research is done with the intention of applying the results of its findings to solving specific problems currently being experienced in the organization, it is called applied research” (Sekaran, 1984, p. 6). Data can be collected in a variety of ways, settings and sources. This study will base on quantitative research using questionnaires (survey) method and qualitative research by interviewing some of the selected staff ‘purposive sampling’. Sekaran (1984) explained that a “questionnaire is a preformulated written set of questions to which respondents record their answer, usually within rather closely defined alternatives” and interviewing is a process to obtain information on the issues of interest to the researched. It can be either unstructured or structured and could be conducted either face to face or any means. The main purpose of the interview is to have an early understanding on Lean Six Sigma Program that has been implemented.

Population and Sample

A total of 120 participants from 7 departments / divisions of SIRIM Berhad participated in Lean Six Sigma Program will involve in this study. The participants are full time staff work