Change Management

Below is your full, detailed lesson on Week 9 Change Management, built exactly from your slide deck (COMM 4353 – Week 9), while using:

  • Hill, Schilling & Jones (2024) Strategic Management 14e as the core textbook reference.

  • Crossan, Rouse, Fry & Killing (2002) chapters 10–11 for types of change, resistance, and guidelines.

  • Kotter (1995/2007) Leading Change for the 8-step model.

  • Kaplan & Norton (2006) for strategy-aligned change without restructuring.

Citations appear as required:
Slides →
Kotter →
Crossan et al. →

This is a complete, exam-ready lesson that expands every slide topic into a fully developed explanation.

WEEK 9 – CHANGE MANAGEMENT: FULL DETAILED LESSON

1. Why Organizations Need Change

Slides emphasize multiple pressures for change:
(Slides p.3–4)

  • Control systems

  • Staffing patterns

  • Management style

  • Organizational structure

  • Environmental domain (“feasible environment”)

1.1 Textbook Expansion (Hill et al., 2024)

Organizations must change when strategies no longer fit their environment.
Hill et al. emphasize:

  • New competitors

  • Technological disruption

  • Changing customer needs

  • Industry evolution

  • Internal inefficiencies

  • Strategic drift → gradual misalignment between strategy and environment.

As strategy changes, structure, culture, people, and processes must change to support it.

1.2 The Icarus Paradox (Miller, 1990)

(Slide p.3)
Companies fail because of the strengths that once made them successful.

Examples in Hill et al.:

  • Market leaders become rigid

  • Overconfidence leads to ignoring environmental shifts

  • Capabilities become core rigidities

This highlights why change cannot be optional—success breeds complacency.

2. Lewin’s Force Field Analysis

(Slide p.5)

2.1 Concept

Kurt Lewin explains change as a balance of:

  • Driving forces → pressures pushing toward change

  • Restraining forces → resistance, fear, habit, structures

Change occurs when driving forces overpower restraining ones, or when restraining forces are reduced.

Textbook Link (Hill et al.)

When firms attempt strategic renewal, they must:

  • Increase forces that support new strategy (e.g., incentives, leadership pressure)

  • Reduce barriers (e.g., culture, outdated systems)

Lewin explains “why change fails”: firms do not unfreeze the old system.

3. Leadership and Change

(Slide p.6)

Leaders must manage:

  • Content of change (what is changing)

  • Process of change (how change occurs)

Hill et al. (2024) emphasize that successful strategy execution requires leadership, not just management:

  • Managers → maintain stability

  • Leaders → create new direction, motivate, challenge norms

This aligns with Kotter’s recurring theme: strategy change = leadership problem, not an administrative one.

4. Types of Change (Crossan, Rouse, Fry & Killing)

Slides p.7–9 introduce Crossan’s model.

Crossan identifies four key types of change situations:

4.1 Evolutionary Change

  • Small, incremental changes

  • Builds on existing capabilities

  • Low resistance

  • Appropriate when strategy ≠ radically shifting

4.2 Revolutionary Change

  • Major, frame-breaking transformation

  • High uncertainty

  • Common when facing disruption

  • May require restructuring, new business models, cultural shifts

4.3 Adaptive Change

  • Local or department-specific tweaks

  • Does not transform whole organization

  • Training, minor process changes, improvements

4.4 Transformational Change

  • Enterprise-wide

  • Alters strategy, culture, leadership, structure

  • Often triggered by environmental shocks

4.5 People & Change (Slide p.9)

Categorization of individuals:

  • True supporters (believe in change, capable, centrally connected)

  • Potential allies (need skills/time)

  • Resistors (fear loss, perceive threat, may be right)

  • Indifferent/risk-averse individuals (can be swayed)

Crossan emphasizes that success requires identifying where stakeholders fall and managing them accordingly.

5. Major Pitfalls in Strategic Change

(Slide p.10)
Kotter identifies two universal mistakes:

  1. Skipping steps → creates illusion of speed

  2. Critical mistakes in steps → kills momentum

Both are common because firms underestimate the complexity of organizational change.

6. Kotter’s 8-Step Change Model (Slides p.10–19)

Your slides closely follow Kotter’s article Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail (HBR, 1995).

Below is the full, detailed lesson using both slides and Kotter’s text.

STEP 1: Create a Sense of Urgency

(Slide p.11)
Kotter: More than 50% of change efforts fail right here.

Why urgency matters:

People will not leave their comfort zone unless they believe staying put is more dangerous.
Kotter says urgency is high enough when 75% of managers believe status quo is unacceptable.

Tactics:

  • Expose competitive threats

  • Show declining financials

  • Use external voices

  • Discuss crises openly

  • Manufacture a crisis when necessary (Kotter example)

STEP 2: Build a Powerful Guiding Coalition

(Slide p.12)
Coalition must include:

  • Senior management

  • Influential employees

  • Experts

  • External advisors

Kotter notes it must be powerful in influence, not just in position.

Off-site retreats help alignment early on.

STEP 3: Develop a Vision and Strategy

(Slide p.13)
A vision must be:

  • Clear within 5 minutes

  • Appealing to customers, employees, shareholders

  • Inspiring and direction-setting

Kotter notes: Without a vision, change dissolves into a list of incompatible projects.

STEP 4: Communicate the Vision

(Slide p.14)

Communication must be:

  • Relentless and across all channels

  • Consistent

  • Supported by leader behaviour (“walk the talk”)

Kotter: Most organizations undercommunicate by a factor of 10.

STEP 5: Remove Obstacles

(Slide p.15)
Obstacles include:

  • Structure

  • Systems

  • Policies

  • People who resist

  • Skills gaps

Kotter: If blockers remain in power, transformation stops.

STEP 6: Create Short-Term Wins

(Slide p.16)

Short-term wins must be:

  • Visible

  • Unambiguous

  • Celebrated

Kotter: Recognizable early wins within 12–24 months increase credibility.

McKinsey (Slide p.18) shows first win often occurs around Year 2, and maximum effect around Year 4–5.

STEP 7: Consolidate Gains & Produce More Change

(Slide p.17)

Premature victory kills momentum.

Kotter: Change initiators and resistors will push for early victory.
Use wins as fuel for deeper structural/cultural reform.

STEP 8: Anchor New Approaches in Culture

(Slide p.19)

Change sticks when it becomes:
“the way we do things around here.”

Two critical methods:

  1. Show how new behaviours → better results

  2. Promote leaders who represent the new culture

7. Kaplan & Norton (2006): Implementing Strategy Without Re-Structuring

Slides p.22–23 introduce this idea.

Key Argument:

Restructuring is costly, disruptive, and often unnecessary.
Instead, align strategic systems to existing structure using Strategic Themes via Balanced Scorecard:

  • Financial

  • Customer

  • Internal Process

  • Learning/Growth

Steps:

  1. Identify strategic themes

  2. Assign senior executives to each theme

  3. Identify cross-unit initiatives supporting these themes

This allows strategic change while minimizing organizational disruption.

8. Linking to Hill, Schilling & Jones (Textbook)

8.1 Structural Fit and Change (Hill Ch. 12)

Hill reinforces that strategy implementation requires changes to:

  • Structure

  • Controls

  • Incentives

  • Culture

  • Processes

  • People

If structure does not support strategy → failure.

8.2 Culture as a Source of Resistance

Hill notes that:

  • Cultural inertia

  • Existing power structures

  • Resource allocation habits

all resist change, matching Kotter’s emphasis on obstacles.

9. Putting It All Together — What the Slides Are Teaching

The Week 9 slides integrate three major frameworks:

1. Why change is necessary

(Icarus Paradox, environment, structure)

2. How to understand change

(Lewin’s force field, Crossan’s change types)

3. How to lead and implement change

(Kotter’s 8-step model, leadership, obstacles)

4. How to implement strategy without chaos

(Kaplan & Norton strategic themes)

Collectively, these frameworks prepare you to explain:

  • Why firms fail to adapt

  • Why employees resist

  • Why change fails so often

  • How leaders can drive successful transformation

  • How change connects to strategy implementation

If you'd like, I can also create:

✅ Flashcards (Knowt-ready)
✅ A condensed cheat sheet
✅ A PowerPoint-style outline
✅ A multiple-choice practice quiz
Just tell me what format you want next.