Change agents should instill in their organizations a sense of urgency to challenge the prevailing status quo (Kotter 39). Owing to the increased rivalry, the CEO of Fraser Valley Power (FVP) created the need of encouraging the company to be "market and customer centric'. Deregulation and the removal of legal restraints posed a substantial risk to the company's future viability.
Following the creation of a sense of urgency, the manager must form a strong coalition of change champions (Kotter 62). The team is made up of employees who share similar commitments and interests in increasing successful transformation. After being appointed as the head of the Marketing and Distribution Channel, Halstead challenged his juniors and the CEO to fasten the transformation process in order to remain competitive. Halstead became the champion of change aimed at realizing the vision set by the CEO. His established a team to develop various recommendations.
The created team engages in the formulation of change vision and developing strategies to achieve the desired goals (Kotter 62). Halstead aimed at implementing the ‘market and customer oriented’ vision suggested by the CEO. Halstead utilized his leadership, technical, and people-oriented skills to engage with both customers and employees. He appointed a consulting company to formulate an effective market strategy together with the executives from the senior division. Some of the strategies used by Halstead included reducing the costs and benchmarked at Walmart to identify best strategies for becoming a low-cost company.
The team together with the change manager should use all the available techniques and channels to communicate the vision across the organization. Halstead spends half of his time with workers and clients with an aim of engaging them and communicating the change vision. According to Kotter, the change vision should be demonstrated in the way the champions talk and walk in order to develop a new culture. Halstead created the change enthusiasm in his division. However, he failed to communicate the critical issues of marketing.
Communication should be enhanced by empowering the transformation team and the entire workforce (Kotter 28). Halstead achieved this through delegating engineering and legal aspects to the managers in his division. The change manager should also eliminate and alter the organizational systems and structures that may inhibit the smooth transition. Powerful individuals, who continuously resist the change, should be replaced with energetic and innovative workers. Unfortunately, Halstead failed to eliminate the powerful staffs from the central unit who barred him from implementing critical decisions concerning Marketing and Distribution.
The change leaders should be keen with short-term wins or visible improvements recorded from the innovativeness and creativity (Kotter 65). In this case, Halsted failed to match the cost reduction strategy with capabilities of the utility leading to declined customer satisfaction. Accordingly, managers in the Marketing and Distribution levels lacked accountability and personal initiatives. Increased bureaucracy between the CEO and Halstead’s division affected the delegation of authority This can be achieved through hiring, training, and developing the team members who depict the creativity and ability to design innovative processes, systems, and policies.
The last phase entails integrating the new systems, processes, and structures in the organizational culture (Kotter 67). Unfortunately, Halstead’s change processes did not reach this phase. The marking team was enthusiastic about the small wins and forgot to enhance more change. Secondly, he was not able to transform the centralized structure leading to slow decision making by the CEO. Thirdly, he failed to eliminate the obstacles including managers and supervisors who acted decisively. Despite being courageous, bravery, and endurance, Halstead did not create a strong, motivated, and committed champion of change. These weaknesses led to short-term outcomes in the firm. However, the long-term gains of the change process were not realized due to the above weakness in the leadership pf Halstead.
Works Cited
Kotter, John P. "Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail." Harvard Business Review (2007): 1-18. Print .
