Week 3: Overcoming Obstacles To Change And Why Change Is Imp ✓ Solved

Week 3: Overcoming Obstacles to Change and Why Change is Im

Week 3: Overcoming Obstacles to Change and Why Change is Imperative. Introduction Changes take place in every organization. There are three challenges that leaders in any organization face when managing change: Instability, uncertainty, and stress. In response to these three challenges and to overcome resistance to change, 12 action steps have been developed. In this Discussion, you will address the action steps you witnessed in your organization. In your initial posting, please address the following: Given a change initiative that you witnessed in your current or former organization, identify how the action steps either matched or fell short of the action steps identified in Chapter 5, "Winning Hearts and Minds: Overcoming the Obstacles to Change," in Champions of Change. Please address each action step in your answer. With these thoughts in mind: Have you ever experienced people resisting a change you communicated to them? How did you handle the situation? Did you try to convince them? Communicating a change needs to be planned. You also need to understand the reasons that may lead to resistance, which, in turn, leads to failure of organizational change. Quinn, Robert E. (2012). The Deep Change Field Guide: A Personal Course to Discovering the leader within. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Nadler, David A. (1998).

Champions of change: How CEOs and their companies are mastering the skills of radical change . San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. There are various action steps that you as a manager can take to overcome resistance to change. This week, you will learn about these action steps. You will also learn how to diagnose organizational changes.

Learning Outcomes By the end of this week, you will be able to: · Evaluate the importance of diagnosis and planning in organizational change efforts · Evaluate the reasons for failure in organizational change · Synthesize the components required for effective organizational change

Paper For Above Instructions

Introduction and purpose. The discussion prompt requires evaluating a real change initiative against the action steps articulated in Chapter 5 of Champions of Change, which describes how leaders can overcome resistance to change through structured steps. To ground this analysis, I identify a change initiative from my former organization—the company-wide transition from a legacy customer-relations system to a modern, cloud-based CRM platform. This paper maps observed practices to the action steps (as described in Champions of Change) and assesses where the initiative aligned with or diverged from recommended practices. The analysis is framed with established change-management theory, including models of urgency, coalition-building, visioning, communication, empowerment, short-term wins, consolidation, and cultural anchoring. Throughout, I draw on the literature to interpret resistance, diagnose root causes, and propose planning improvements that could enhance diagnostic clarity and change outcomes. (Kotter, 1996; Lewin, 1947; Hiatt, 2006; Heifetz, Grashow, & Linsky, 2009; Bridges, 2009; Senge, 1990; Nadler, 1998; Quinn, 2012; Armenakis, Harris, & Feild, 1999; Nadler, 1998; Kotter & Cohen, 2002.)

Change initiative description and initial observations

The organization faced typical pressures: market volatility, need for better customer data integration, and a desire to improve cross-functional collaboration. The CRM transition was intended to standardize processes, reduce manual data entry, and improve customer insight. In practice, urgency was communicated through leadership town halls and dashboards showing current inefficiencies. A cross-functional steering committee was formed to guide the implementation, and a vision statement emphasized customer-centricity and scalable processes. However, alignment with all departments varied, and some units perceived the change as a threat to established routines and job responsibilities. These dynamics provide a useful lens to test the 12 action steps described in Champions of Change.

Mapping observed practices to the Champions of Change action steps

1) Create a sense of urgency. Observations indicate leadership highlighted missed opportunities and rising support costs to justify the project. Urgency was present at the executive level but did not consistently permeate mid-level management. Result: some teams engaged quickly, while others delayed action. This partial adoption mirrors common gaps where urgency is not fully cascaded (Kotter, 1996).

2) Build a guiding coalition. A cross-functional steering committee existed, with IT, sales, and operations representation. The coalition provided authority for decisions but occasionally faced turf battles, slowing progress. This aligns with the recommended practice of forming a powerful guiding coalition but demonstrates the need for clearer coalition dynamics (Kotter, 1996; Nadler, 1998).

3) Develop a vision and strategy. A clear vision emphasizing improved customer experience and data-driven decisions was published, yet concrete strategic initiatives and measurable targets were not uniformly defined for all teams. The gap between vision and operational plan highlights a common failure mode where vision lacks specificity at the departmental level (Kotter, 1996; Hiatt, 2006).

4) Communicate the vision. Communication occurred through town halls, emails, and training sessions, but inconsistent messaging across departments led to mixed interpretations of how workflows would change. This underscores the importance of multi-channel, tailored communication to ensure shared understanding (Kotter, 1996; Bridges, 2009).

5) Empower broad-based action. Some obstacles were removed through process redesign and authority to approve certain adjustments. Yet, several teams encountered residual bottlenecks, such as approval delays and a lack of decision rights at middle management levels, indicating incomplete empowerment (Hiatt, 2006; Heifetz, Grashow, & Linsky, 2009).

6) Generate short-term wins. Early pilot implementations demonstrated improvements in data accuracy and response times. However, visible wins were not consistently scaled organization-wide, which limited momentum (Kotter, 1996; Senge, 1990).

7) Consolidate gains and produce more change. The initiative advanced some benefits but stalled before broad institutional adoption of the CRM as the standard tool. This illustrates how momentum can fade without intentional consolidation efforts (Kotter, 1996; Nadler, 1998).

8) Anchor new approaches in the culture. This step was not fully achieved; HR processes, performance metrics, and promotion criteria did not consistently reflect the new CRM-based workflows, reducing the likelihood that changes would endure (Senge, 1990; Kotter, 1996).

9) Align systems and structures. Some supporting systems (data migration, integration with ERP, analytics dashboards) were aligned, though others lagged, creating silos and friction that undermined adoption (Lewin, 1947; Armenakis, Harris, & Feild, 1999).

10) Provide training and capability development. Training sessions occurred, but participation varied and hands-on coaching was inconsistent, limiting users’ ability to apply new processes confidently (Hiatt, 2006; Bridges, 2009).

11) Involve stakeholders early and continuously. Stakeholder engagement occurred in planning but not with equal intensity across all departments, resulting in uneven buy-in and pockets of resistance (Quinn, 2012; Nadler, 1998).

12) Measure, learn, and adapt. Feedback loops existed but were insufficiently rapid or comprehensive to drive timely course corrections, reducing responsiveness to evolving user needs (Kotter, 1996; Heifetz, Grashow, & Linsky, 2009).

Resistance to change: causes and handling strategies

Resistance stemmed from uncertainty, fear of job impact, disruption of routines, and perceived loss of control. In addressing resistance, the literature recommends transparent communication, participatory planning, training, and leadership modeling. Transparent data on costs and benefits, opportunities for employee input, and visible leadership commitment can reduce ambiguity and build trust (Kotter, 1996; Bridges, 2009; Hiatt, 2006; Heifetz, Grashow, & Linsky, 2009).

In practice, we attempted to mitigate resistance by increasing local decision rights, offering role-specific training, and creating pilot teams to demonstrate value. Yet, the persistence of resistance in some units suggests that these measures were insufficiently integrated with broader organizational change mechanisms, including explicit alignment with performance metrics and HR policies (Senge, 1990; Armenakis, Harris, & Feild, 1999).

Diagnosis and planning implications

The case underscores the importance of diagnosing readiness and planning accordingly. Diagnosing readiness involves assessing psychological acceptance and structural capacity across units, not only the technical feasibility of the CRM. Planning should link vision to concrete milestones, resource allocations, and accountable owners, with explicit change agreements at multiple organizational levels. The literature emphasizes readiness-building, clear messaging, and continuous feedback loops as critical to success (Armenakis, Harris, & Feild, 1999; Kotter, 1996; Nadler, 1998).

Conclusion and lessons learned

Overall, the change initiative demonstrated several strengths—clear vision, cross-functional involvement, and some early wins—but also gaps in sustaining momentum and anchoring changes. To improve outcomes in future initiatives, organizations should ensure that urgency is widely communicated, empower actions across all levels, provide consistent, tailored communication, and embed the new approaches into performance management and culture. Integrating diagnostic activities with ongoing change efforts, and using iterative feedback loops to adjust course, aligns practice with well-established change-management theory. The synthesis of these insights supports the broader claim that change is not merely a project but a continuous organizational capability (Kotter, 1996; Lewin, 1947; Senge, 1990; Hiatt, 2006; Heifetz, Grashow, & Linsky, 2009).

References

• Kotter, J. P. (1996). Leading Change. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
• Kotter, J. P., & Cohen, D. (2002). The Heart of Change. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
• Lewin, K. (1947). Field Theory in Social Science: Selected Theoretical Papers. New York, NY: Harper & Row.
• Bridges, W. (2009). Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change. Boston, MA: Da Capo Press.
• Senge, P. M. (1990). The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. New York, NY: Doubleday.
• Hiatt, J. (2006). ADKAR: A Model for Change in Business, Government and our Community. Fort Collins, CO: Prosci Research.
• Heifetz, R., Grashow, A., & Linsky, M. (2009). The Practice of Adaptive Leadership. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Business Press.
• Nadler, D. A. (1998). Champions of Change: How CEOs and Their Companies Are Mastering the Skills of Radical Change. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
• Quinn, R. E. (2012). The Deep Change Field Guide: A Personal Course to Discovering the Leader Within. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.
• Armenakis, A. A., Harris, S. G., & Feild, H. A. (1999). Creating readiness for organizational change. Human Resource Development Quarterly, 10(2), 179-199.