Implementing Change Management Plan At Amazon – Analysis And Strategies

Nature and Development of Change

Change is considered as the primary tool for sustainable growth and overall development. Implementation of change could also be considered as the measure of consistent learning in order to match up with the dynamic business trends, changing customers’ demands and preferences and dealing with competition in an effective manner. Although, lot of problems and challenges occur while implementing change at workplace but the positive impact of change could be ignored. Primary aim of implementation of change is to ensure that the organization will obtain appropriate outcomes. In this report, implementation of change management plan will be discussed with relevance to the functionalities of one of the behemoth players of e-commerce industry i.e. Amazon. It is the largest e-commerce company in terms of revenues and market capitalisation and with millions of product offering, organization is successfully operating its functionalities in more than 188 countries worldwide. In addition to this, organization is planning to enter into untouched markets also in the near future with the objective of retaining its leading position along with enhancing its performance in the global market (Carnall, 2018).

Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos is one of the giant, unique and creative leaders of this era. With his unique style of leadership, Jeff has made his dream of selling everything true over internet. In consideration to this, he has always been into the favour of implementation of change in order to retain the interest of its target audience along with the objective of attracting new customer segments for enhancing its market share (Doppelt, 2017). The report will focus over several aspects related to change management such as analysis of nature and development of the concept of change in the organization will be the first part of the report. The next part of the report will focus over analysis of factors which influence change at workplace along with the implementation of appropriate organizational change models to gain positive outcomes and to match up with the external business requirements.

Concept of change determines the situations where change is required for the objective of developing particular areas in terms of improving the performance. Requirement of change could be considered in any area in the organization because organizational performance is dependent on all departments’ functionalities, thus, it is required to determine the need for change in every sector through which relevant and desired goals could be accomplished. Process of change is challenging and critical because when change is implemented, lot of stakeholders gets affected and in relation to this, organization is required to take analyse the requirement of all those stakeholders with the objective of diagnosing change problems along with developing plans to implement sustainable and ethical change solutions. Thus, it could be said that nature of change is complex because it may create impact over the whole organization or at any one of the department of the organization (Hayes, 2018).

Factors Influencing Change at Workplace

I was working in the Amazon in the early 2000s and at that time, Amazon was at its growth stage as the company’s CEO was struggling hard to enhance its product offering along with the objective of setting up its presence in the global market. At that time, decisions of the organization were taken by the top level management only and they were following centralisation decision making process. Although, most of the companies were using this model for taking decisions but there were few also who moved towards decentralisation decision making process with recognising change in the external and global business scenarios (Stark, 2015).

Jeff Bezos once took a decision of selling toys on Amazon and in this decision; he did not took consent from any of the stakeholder within or outside the organization. Jeff’s primary vision was to enhance its product offering and with regards to this, he took decision of selling toys. Apart from this decision, Jeff took various decisions by his own which made his image as an autocratic leader and due to this; he faces criticism from his own subordinates and employees. Labour turnover of the organization was also very high at that time and organization lost various highly efficient employees. At that time, I realised that organization requires change in their decision making process because the technique used by the organization was not only bit old, but it was also affecting the performance of whole organization (Chang, 2016). The decision taken by Jeff Bezos of selling toys gets failed and more than 50% stock of toys was donated at the end and rest stock was sold at lower rates under discounts and promotional offers. From that incident, I realised that for sustainable growth and overall development, it is required to change their decision making process in order to enhance the performance of the organization as well as to retain its employees.

There may be internal or external factors which influence change at workplace and these factors could be management functions, competition, structural transformations, technology, changes in the policy or laws, socio-economic factors, etc. In the context of Amazon, major factors which influenced the change are failure of the decisions, increasing labour turnover, and lack of employee engagement in the decision making processes of the organization. All these factors not only affected organizational performance due to which rather going towards development stage, organization was moving opposite to it (Malva & Bousquet, 2016). These factors have created major impact over the organizational performance and with regards to this, need for change have been recognised which originated the requirement of change.

Appropriate Organizational Change Models

While implementing change in the scenario of Amazon, lot of issues and barriers were faced by the whole organization because change was required in the top level management practices. With regards to requirement of change found at the workplace, it was found that the organization could adopt and implement decentralisation technique along with the post-bureaucratic management approaches in order to assign the roles and responsibilities to each leading position in order to manage the functionalities of the organization. With these techniques, organizational performance was improved and the employees were given enough power to deal with the issues at their level in order to generate positive outcomes (Gumz, Geyer & Brähler, 2014).

Intervention strategies for change refers to taking organization from here to there which means adaptation of change with the objective to deal with the issues faced by the organization as well as to enhance organizational performance. Intervention strategies for change differs on the basis of situation and with regards to this, organization could deal with all those factors which have generated the requirement of implementation of change. Amazon was majorly suffering their traditional techniques used for making decisions for organization. Centralisation decision making technique and bureaucratic management approaches made the organization realised the requirement of change. With regards to those changes, organization adopted engagement of stakeholders in the change management procedure as their primary intervention strategy (Vachon, et. al., 2018).

The issues faced by the Amazon was affecting the whole organizational functionalities due to which not only organizational performance was getting declined but at the individual level also, employees were not able to perform in an adequate manner as they were bound to work as per given guidelines without being creative or innovative (Cummings & Worley, 2014).

In relation to this, organizational top level management along with their CEO Jeff Bezos decided to adopt decentralisation technique and post-bureaucratic management approaches. Under these techniques, leader for every department was held responsible and accountable for their as well as for their team’s actions. In this manner, top level management could focus over other things such as adopting new measures to deal with the external affairs, making appropriate changes in the policies, strategies and standards to boost up the performance of the organization in order to generate opportunities to expand in the global market (Gray, et. al., 2018). Decentralisation technique has helped the employees to take their own decisions along with showcasing their talent in order to meet with different scenarios.

Strategies and Interventions for Change

Along with this, organization adopted the strategy of involving stakeholders in the decision making procedure so that all possible solutions could be gathered in order to select one of the best possible measure to boost up organizational performance as well as to accomplish desired goals and objectives. Involving stakeholders in the decision making process has also helped the organization to develop appropriate relations with their employees along with developing confidence amongst them with the objective of gaining positive outcomes. This process has also helped the organization to analyse the talent available in the organization which could be promoted at next level which could handle organizational operations at further level. These strategies also helped the organization deal with the issues faced by the organization as well as to determine appropriate ways to decline the impact of those issues over organizational performance (Chandra & Kumar, 2018).

While implementing change at workplace, it creates impact over whole organizational functionalities. Number of issues generated while implementing change is resistance of change from employees, relevancy of the change as per the requirement, etc. With regards to this, Kotter’s 8 Step Change Management Model have been considered as the appropriate option through which change could be implemented successfully. Following are steps for leading change along with dealing with all the issues faced by the organization:

• Create urgency: The first step for implementing change is to create urgency in terms of requirement of change. This could be done by showcasing facts and figures under which performance of the organization could be observed as declining. Apart from this, potential threats could also be analysed which could be occur in the near future due to non-implementation of change. Through this way, organization could be able to realise their stakeholders the requirement of change to deal with the threats along with gaining positive outcomes (Cameron & Green, 2015).
• Forming a powerful coalition: This step focuses on convincing all stakeholders which will be impacted by the implementation of change. This may also require strong leadership and management skills in order to take consent from all the stakeholders. Along with this, research will be conducted in relation to the requirement of change as well as to develop coordination amongst the teammates for working together towards implementation of change.
• Creating vision for change:While implementing change, numerous thoughts and ideas also generates with respect to the change in terms of dealing with the barriers and challenges faced by the organization. In this context, Amazon’s senior level management and Jeff Bezos, CEO of the organization clearly made their vision of adopting change in their decision making and management approaches so that employees’ talent and skills could be utilised for the attainment of desired goals and objectives (Doppelt, 2017).
• Communicate the vision:Amazon communicated their vision of implementation of change clearly with all their stakeholders through various communication tools. Communication act as the agent between the organizational thinking and stakeholders’ perception and this also helped the organization to address every stakeholder’s query in terms of taking their consent for implementation of change (Hickman & Silva, 2018).
• Remove obstacles:After communicating vision to the stakeholders, organization adopted all possible steps and strategies through which obstacles faced by the organization could be removed and this helped the organization to build confidence amongst the employees for moving forward to grab the opportunities (Clegg, Kornberger & Pitsis, 2015).
• Creating short-term wins: Before reaching to the desired destination, it is necessary to celebrate short term wins in terms of building confidence amongst the employees. This also helps the organization to motivate their employees for moving forward along with believing in the organizational vision to reach to the desired destination.
• Build on the change: This step focuses on analysing the short term wins as per the expectations in order to analyse whether organization is moving towards right track or not. If not, all previous steps needs to be analysed otherwise focus should be kept on attainment of further goals.
• Anchoring change:The final step described by Kotter is implementing change and anchoring the change as per the organizational standards and policies. Corporate culture needs to be addressed while implementing change with the objective of reaching towards the desired destination (Thompson, 2017).

Actions	Who	When	Performance Measures
Create Urgency	Change leader	After detecting the requirement of change	Performance of the organization before implementation of change and after implementation of change will be compared
Forming powerful coalition	Change leader	After creating urgency in order to inform all the relevant stakeholders regarding change	Strong leadership and management skills will be the major elements to determine the impact of change
Creating vision for change	Change leader	Before implementation of change with respect to the vision of the organization	Employees will be engaged in the decision making processes and the outcomes will be compared to analyse the impact with the outcomes at the time of centralisation decision making process
Communicate vision	Change leader	As soon as possible organization will be sure with the implementation of change	Consent of stakeholders
Remove obstacles	Change leader	While practising change	Factors which will affect the expected results
Creating short term wins	Change leader	Along with the change management practices	Attainment of short term goals
Build on the change	Change leader	After completing all the above steps or along with these steps	Expected outcomes will be compared with the actual outcomes
Anchoring change	Change leader	While executing change in order to make it as per the organizational requirements	Organizational policies and standards will be followed up with the desired goals.

References: 

Cameron, E. and Green, M., 2015. Making sense of change management: A complete guide to the models, tools and techniques of organizational change. Kogan Page Publishers.

Carnall, C., 2018. Managing change. Routledge.

Chandra, S. and Kumar, K.N., 2018. Exploring Factors Influencing Organizational Adoption of Augmented Reality in E-Commerce: Empirical Analysis Using Technology-Organization-Environment Model. Journal of Electronic Commerce Research, 19(3).

Chang, J.F., 2016. Business process management systems: strategy and implementation. Auerbach Publications.

Clegg, S.R., Kornberger, M. and Pitsis, T., 2015. Managing and organizations: An introduction to theory and practice. Sage.

Cummings, T.G. and Worley, C.G., 2014. Organization development and change. Cengage learning.

Doppelt, B., 2017. Leading change toward sustainability: A change-management guide for business, government and civil society. Routledge.

Gray, B., Kirkwood, J., Monahan, E. and Etemaddar, M., 2018. Internal factors influencing effective opportunity identification in a Tongan social enterprise. Journal of Small Business & Entrepreneurship, pp.1-25.

Gumz, A., Geyer, M. and Brähler, E., 2014. Psychodynamic therapy from the perspective of self?organization. A concept of change and a methodological approach for empirical examination. Clinical psychology & psychotherapy, 21(4), pp.299-310.

Hayes, J., 2018. The theory and practice of change management. Routledge.

Hickman, C.R. and Silva, M.A., 2018. Creating excellence: Managing corporate culture, strategy, and change in the new age. Routledge.

Malva, J.O. and Bousquet, J., 2016. Operational definition of active and healthy ageing: roadmap from concept to change of management. Maturitas, 84, pp.3-4.

Stark, J., 2015. Product lifecycle management. In Product Lifecycle Management (Volume 1) (pp. 1-29). Springer, Cham.

Thompson, J.D., 2017. Organizations in action: Social science bases of administrative theory. Routledge.

Vachon, B., Foucault, M.L., Giguère, C.É., Rochette, A., Thomas, A. and Morel, M., 2018. Factors influencing acceptability and perceived impacts of a mandatory ePortfolio implemented by an occupational therapy regulatory organization. Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions, 38(1), pp.25-31.