Managing Change Paper Part III

Managing Change Paper Part III

MGT 426

13 January 2016

Managing Change Paper Part III

        Harley-Davidson is executing a fundamental change to their motorcycle corporation.This change in Harley-Davidson is being driven by reliability and customer feedback from customers. Customers are wanting more power with reliability. Harley-Davidson has researched and created an engine that will meet all of the customers’ expectations. The change that Harley-Davidson is adding a liquid cooled redesigned engine into their engine line-up. This new engine will be placed in some of their larger motorcycles. This change is being implemented using the Kotter Change model. We will describe the eight step process as we as Harley-Davidson is implementing this process. We will also describe the communication plan and agents we will use communicate our change. This plan will explain how communicating the change internally and externally to the Harley-Davidson.

Kotter Change Model

There are eight steps to the Kotter Change model.  The first step is creating urgency.  This means that we would propose the change and why we need it.  We would say that the competition is beating us in the sales of the bigger motorcycles because they run smoother and cooler.  Most people want to be comfortable while riding and if they get caught in a traffic jam on a big motorcycle with an air-cooled engine then they are sure to get high heat in the thigh area.  Sometimes the heat is so high it feels like their legs are on fire.  This makes the experience unenjoyable.  By using the liquid cooled engine they will not get as hot and people will be more likely to want to ride our motorcycles ("Mind Tools", 2016).

The second step is to form a powerful coalition.  This is done by finding the most influential people in the company and getting them to help push the change.  Sometimes this can be hard because first we will have to sell the change to them.  Usually the most influential people are supervisors, the most experienced, or the most liked person throughout the company.  Once we have them on board they need to work together as a team to assist in the sale of the change to the rest of the employees ("Mind Tools", 2016).

Create a vision for change is the third step.  In this step many different ideas will be thrown at us.  These are ideas to help in how we can make the change.  First thing we need to do is organize these thoughts and assemble them into a concise plan that will easily make sense to the least experienced employee in the company.  Harley Davidson would then need to create a short summary of where the company sees themselves in the future because of this change.  Along with the summary we need to come up with a plan to implement the change.  This plan needs to be easily explained by the team we get together to help push this idea.  They need to be able to explain it in 5 minutes or less.  The employee who is presenting the idea to all of the employees needs to practice their speech and become comfortable with it to help sell it to the other employees easier ("Mind Tools", 2016).