WMBA 6882 Week 6 Kotter Model Application Example

Kotter's Eight Steps Laid Over Prairie Line's Ordering Change, May to December 2028: Where Short-Term Wins and Consolidation Demand the Same Weeks in September, and Why the Pilot Read Gives Way by Two Weeks

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Walden University

WMBA 6882: Initiating and Managing Change

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Month Day, Year

Kotter's Eight Steps Laid Over Prairie Line's Ordering Change, May to December 2028: Where Short-Term Wins and Consolidation Demand the Same Weeks in September, and Why the Pilot Read Gives Way by Two Weeks

The Effort, Its Fixed Date and the Model Chosen

Prairie Line Farm & Home, a composite retailer with nineteen rural stores across two plains states, is replacing the weekly hand-written hardgoods order with computer-generated orders reviewed by each department lead. The pilot runs in three stores from July 10, 2028. One date cannot move: the handheld scanners leads use for the current order walk lose vendor support on December 31, 2028, and the replacement contract covers only devices that run the new ordering screen. Every store must be on computer-generated ordering, with its first full cycle complete, before the old handhelds stop working.

This paper applies the eight-step model in Kotter (1995). I chose it over a model of individual adoption such as ADKAR (Hiatt, 2006) because the hard problem here is organizational sequencing across nineteen stores against an external deadline, which is what Kotter's steps are built to order. ADKAR's individual stages, awareness through reinforcement, are better suited to the training plan for each lead, and they are used there.

Steps One to Four: May and June

Step one, establishing urgency, took place in May. The case for change was not abstract. Out-of-stocks on the chain's top 500 hardgoods items averaged 6.8 percent in 2027, and leads spent four to six hours a week on the order walk. The scanner deadline added urgency that nobody could argue with.

Step two, forming a guiding coalition, ran from May into June. The coalition is the vice president of merchandising as sponsor, the director of store operations, two district managers, the inventory analytics manager and, unusually, three department leads, one from each pilot store. Including leads was a direct response to the objections recorded in May.

Step three, creating a vision, and step four, communicating it, overlapped in late May and June. The vision fits in one sentence leads repeat back: the system does the counting, and leads keep the judgment. It was communicated at the May 15 regional meeting, in store huddles through June and in a one-page question sheet answering the eight objections.

Step Five: Removing Obstacles, June to August

Step five carries the most work. Before the pilot, the analytics team added demand events leads can enter, connected counter special orders to the demand calculation and excluded vendor-managed lines. The scorecard for leads was changed so that in-stock rate replaced order-walk completion. Hours were protected in writing through July 2029. These changes were the design responses to the resistance register, and they had to be in place by July 10.

Step Six: Short-Term Wins, July 10 to September 15

Kotter (1995) argued that transformations lose momentum unless visible wins appear within the first year or two, and that those wins should be planned rather than hoped for. The pilot is the planned win. Its measures are the in-stock rate on the top 500 items, the hours leads spend on ordering and the share of system orders leads release without edits. Eight weeks of data end on September 1, and the analytics team needs two weeks to compare pilot stores with matched non-pilot stores. A full, credible pilot result is therefore available on September 15.

Step Seven: Consolidating Gains, From September

Step seven extends the change. Kotter warned against declaring victory too early and argued for using credibility from early wins to change more systems and bring in more people. Here that means two waves: eight stores, then the remaining eight. Each wave needs four weeks of training and parallel running before its stores' old handhelds can be retired. Working back from December 31, with a two-week margin, wave two must be complete by December 15, so it must start by November 17. Wave one must finish before wave two begins, since the same four trainers run both, so wave one must start by October 20, and its training preparation, which takes five weeks, must start by September 15.

Where the Model Breaks

On paper, September 15 works: the pilot result arrives the same day wave one's preparation must begin. In practice it does not. Wave one's preparation includes ordering the new handhelds, which have a six-week lead time from the vendor, and configuring store data, which needs the pilot's final settings. To have devices in stores by October 20, they must be ordered by September 8. Step six needs until September 15 to produce a credible win; step seven needs a commitment by September 8. Two steps demand the same week, and Kotter's order, wins first and consolidation second, cannot be kept as written.

Three options exist. The pilot read could be shortened to six weeks, giving a result on September 1 and a decision before September 8. The device order could be placed on September 8 on faith, before the pilot result is known. Or the deadline could be bought out by renting extended support for the old handhelds into February 2029, at a vendor quote of $38 per device per month for 190 devices, or $14,440 for two months.

The Decision and Its Price

I recommend shortening the pilot read: wave one will be committed on September 1 using six weeks of pilot data, with the full eight-week comparison completed on September 15 as a check before training begins. If the full result contradicts the six-week read, wave one can be cut to four stores without changing the device order, since devices can be reassigned to wave two.

The price is real. Six weeks of data cover the end of summer but not the start of fall stocking, when heaters, fencing and hunting supplies turn over, and a flaw that appears only in that changeover would spread to eight stores rather than three. Analytics estimates that fixing order settings and clearing excess stock in eight stores would cost about $9,000 in lead hours and markdowns, compared with about $3,400 if caught in three. That $5,600 difference is less than half the cost of renting extended support, and renting support would push wave two into the January inventory count and the February planogram reset, which the readiness assessment identified as the chain's most crowded weeks.

Appelbaum et al. (2012), reviewing research on each of Kotter's steps, found support for most of them individually but no study testing the full sequence, and noted that the model's appeal rests partly on its usable format. This case shows why a usable format still needs judgment: the steps were all appropriate, but an external date forced two of them into the same week. Edmondson et al. (2001) found that hospitals that succeeded with a new technology used early trials as deliberate learning, with reflection built in. The shortened read keeps that principle by holding a second review on September 15 rather than treating the six-week result as final.

Step Eight: Anchoring, 2029

Step eight begins after December 31, when the old handhelds stop working and the hand-written order cannot return. Anchoring means writing the review of system orders into the department lead job description, keeping in-stock rate on the scorecard and including the demand-event screen in every new lead's training. That work belongs to the sustainment plan rather than to this application.

References

Appelbaum, S. H., Habashy, S., Malo, J.-L., & Shafiq, H. (2012). Back to the future: Revisiting Kotter's 1996 change model. Journal of Management Development, 31(8), 764-782. https://doi.org/10.1108/02621711211253231

Edmondson, A. C., Bohmer, R. M., & Pisano, G. P. (2001). Disrupted routines: Team learning and new technology implementation in hospitals. Administrative Science Quarterly, 46(4), 685-716. https://doi.org/10.2307/3094828

Hiatt, J. M. (2006). ADKAR: A model for change in business, government and our community. Prosci Learning Center Publications.

Kotter, J. P. (1995). Leading change: Why transformation efforts fail. Harvard Business Review, 73(2), 59-67.