In the past football and medicine could not fit together while recently that has changed since people can reflect on a healthy future by being part of a football community. Professor John P Kotter provides eight principles for strategic change that resonate in diverse settings that include public traded companies, as well as private firms. This paper will discuss the relevance of the principles in light of Federation International de Football Association (FIFA) Additionally the paper proposes a model that other global sporting organizations and the national federations can adopt. The paper looks at the eminent change management model by John P. Kotter published in 1995 in the Harvard Business Review. Similarly, his book Leading Change is an academic undertaking that offers extensive concepts of transformational change for organizations.
Cohen (2005) believes that the business have to adapt to a changing environment for them to maintain a significant position in the market and to continue enjoying extensive growth. According to Appelbaum et al. (2012), change is an inevitable component in the current market. The current technological advancement and growth in global competition enables the management to foresee necessary changes in the future. Murray (2013) and Nancy (2010) argue that the change never starts because it never stops. FIFA is one of the organizations that attempt to adapt to constant change of the environment since it strives to learn the new cultures and evolve its services to emerging successfully.
(1) Establishing a sense of urgency concerning the need to achieve change since people often will not change from the existing model to a new one unless one arouses the need to change.
(2) Creating a building coalition where one has to assemble a powerful or influential group that will serve as the leaders of change.
(3) The development of vision and strategy that create the contents of the change that will inform people on the importance of change and the process of achievement.
(4) Communicating the change vision that will inform the people concerning every opportunity, reason for the change and other issues pertaining to change in the organization so as to ensure the team has a vision.
(5) Empower broad-based action where it is the change effort that will ensure that people are thinking concerning the changes and what they will do to achieve them instead of having a negative feeling concerning the change and stopping the process.
(6) Generate short-term wins- it is crucial for the people to see changes taking places using pilot programs that are gradual so that they can motivate the team to continue working to achieve the overall objective.
(7) Consolidate gains and produce more change-this entails the creation of momentum that will build future successes of change, invigorate people through the changes, and develop people as agents.
(8) Anchor new approach in the corporate culture- the process is critical for the future success of the institution. Failure to institutionalize the change will lead to people reverting to old ways of doing things.
Step 1: Establish a sense of urgency
According to Weiss (2012), a successful change effort for FIFA must begin with the evaluation of the firm’s competitive situation, market position, financial performance, and technological trends. A confident action associated with good leadership and it is a key requirement to create a strong sense of urgency. Nancy (2010) state FIFA management must look for the best way to communicate the information in a broad way since the first step is essential for organizational change that necessitates aggressive cooperation of the team. All members of staff at the organization must understand the need for change failure to which the change agents will not have credibility and power to start the required change program. Weiss (2012) document the use of consultants that will create a sense of urgency as well as challenge the company’s status quo. Applebaum et al. (2012) concur with Kotter that the process of reinforcing will reinforce the change agent information. Kotter argues that the urgency is critical to the sports for health across countries. The achievement of change desires a committed leadership as FIFA’s president Sepp Blatter. At the helm of the leadership, Blatter has been able to organize health efforts in the major sport in coordination with the Chair of the FIFA Medical Assessment Jiri Dvorak and other national sporting organization leaders. The team conveys a sense of urgency using a careful structure to enable tem obtain a buy-in concept for every country as the main objective of the sporting organization.
Step 2: Creating a guiding coalition
Murray (2013) utter that no one person has the capability of leading change alone and effectively managing the change process in the organization. The correct guiding coalition is a process that can provide success. It has the following attributes leadership, expertise, position power, and credibility. Each of the attributes supports the implementation of organizational change. An effective change agent must possess high amounts of position power and high expertise to ensure success of FIFA’s change. A leader such as Sepp Blatter must have monarchical attitude since such an attitude will enable the transformation of the sporting organization. Any success of the initiative depends on the facilitation of the management coupled with continuous support to the team. According to Kotter, there will be no effect where there lack willingness to encourage others to engage in change. A coalition is necessary for the creation of transformational change to have football for health. FIFA collaborates with other professional international sports leaders to support both the professionals and recreational football players. The executive committee led by Michael D’ Hooghe promotes and elaborates the medical matters at the critical political platform. The most successful change coalition consists of powerful coalitions in terms of information and expertise relationships. It is important for the lead agent at FIFA to create multiple coalitions that can deal with different aspects of the change process. A good manager must keep the change management process under control as well as create the vision to drive the change.
Step 3: Development of a vision and strategy
Step 4: Communicate the change vision
Effective communication in the organizational change process reduces uncertainty, negative responses, and decrease ambiguity. Murray (2013) observes of a significant correlation between management communication and workforce satisfaction. Employees receive more satisfaction where the management communicates the vision since they portray a positive attitude towards organization change. Employees that feel that the survival of the company depends on the organizational change depict positive responses concerning high-quality management communication. Effective communication of the vision by the management leads to trust and openness where the workforce engages in conversation on the subsequent implications of the change process. Subgroups in FIFA that view change as necessary use it for personal gain as response to past organizational problems. Greater dialogue permits greater participation that will respond positively to change. Some of the effective communication strategies that ensure successful organizational change include increasing people’s memory by repetitive messages that lead to message retention. Two-way communication is better than one-way communication. Kotter maintains that a face-to-face communication has the greatest impact in an organization. In a face-to-face communication, it is possible to ask for clarifications, and this will increase chances for often communication. Inconsistencies always undermine credible information. FIFA develops and delivers football medicine manual in seven different languages and currently it is available on DVD. The product will help the developing measure to understand how football can make their citizens healthier to contribute better to the community. The communication program extends to the professional and recreational players.
Step 5: Empowering broad-based action
Kotter says that the communication is never enough to help rid problems, systems, structures, and processes. Management should encourage the employees to try out new concept and approaches to address four major issues in the organizations this includes skills, systems, structures, and supervisors. The analysis of empowering employees in FIFA reveals that supervisor attitude, skills, .training, that plays a role in employee empowerment. Supervisors create obstacles in the hierarchical organizations structure. Empowering actions coupled with independent thinking can create an effective training to build a sense of responsibility to the employees. Employee empowerment on organizational change will create team ownership that will help the organization to transform successfully. Organizational change cannot occur without a paradigm shift in the organizational culture and empowerment of the employees at the functional level. Providing employees with an empowerment opportunity will have a profound effect on the worker's attitude to enable them have control in the change process. FIFA Football for Health Program empowers others to act on the vision through intensive meetings at the national and the international meetings. Innovation by the political leaders and the sports team will generate power structure of the sports organizations. FIFA empowers others to act on the vision since it accredits the global centers with one hub of every continent to serve the football communities in the local areas. The center of excellence of FIFA provides a communication channel to engage the grassroots constituency.
Step 6: Generating short-term wins
Kotter state that a large-scale change is a long and formidable course that can create short-term wins. According to Applebaum et al. (2012), early victories create self-confidence to derive bigger successes that can build momentum for the long-term goals. Management and employees should celebrate small wins and rewarding opportunities to reassure themselves they are on the right track. The focus of short-term goals and the long-term effects of change on the employee perception has become a difficult issue for the organizational leaders. Short-term wins are an illustration that change effort pays off. Those kinds of wins will assist the guiding coalition to evaluate the vision against real conditions and enable them to make necessary adjustments. Additionally, short-term wins will help to remove obstacles as well as reinforcing the change vision in the employees’ minds. Short-term wins provide opportunities to reward and celebrate of the change agents. In a transformational process, a leader must set high expectations and a reward system in line with the fulfillment of the vision.
Step 7: Consolidate gains and produce more change
According to Kotter, short-term gains will help to tackle issues that are not in line with the implemented changes. The management should verify the credibility of strategy and vision as the main goal in the gathering of successes. Management needs the first successes that will help them plan for subsequent successes in the organization change process. Managers have a duty of justifying the benefits of the transformation process to neutralize and the self-centered opponents. FIFA is a large organization that attempts to leverage professional sport and promote social change. The change management process will incorporate transformational change agents to determine the success of the transformation. A sufficient change-based momentum will permit the occurrence of transformation organization process. Committed employees are unlikely want to maintain the status quo. The uncommitted employees are hard-liners that resist change lose their commitment in the change-based path.
8. Anchor new approaches in the corporate culture
Football for health hopes to achieve equality for all human beings in a society in its corporate culture. The institutionalized of change in the corporate culture serves two purposes that include displaying new behaviors, approaches, and attitudes to help improve performance. Secondly, the new approach in the corporate culture ensures that the next generation of management personifies with the new approach. To sustain any profound change one should have a fundamental shift in thinking. An understanding of the bottlenecks that hinder growth in the change process is crucial to enable one deal with the processes. A support structure for change agents sustains changes in a firm. The structure offers mentorship and training opportunities through different forms of communication in the recognition of change initiatives. The steps aforementioned permit the solidification of change in the corporate culture of a corporation.
Kotter eight-step model in this paper has focused on FIFA since this sporting organization in the leadership, and guiding coalition demonstrates exceptional commitment in health and social change. Kotter business principles since it apply in the sport and health context. Like-minded leaders like Kotter can benefit from the model and champion for change in their institutions. Organizations that intend to transform their operations must apply the eight steps in an orderly fashion to realize the maximum benefits. Kotter eight steps is an excellent initiative for managers to implement changes in their organizations.
References
Appelbaum, S. H., Habashy, S., Malo, J., & Shafiq, H. (2012). Back to the future: revisiting Kotter's 1996 change model. Journal Of Management Development, 31(8), 764-782. doi:10.1108/02621711211253231
Cohen D. The Heart of Change Field Guide: Tools and Tactics for Leading Change in Your Organization. Harvard Business School Press Books [serial online]. October 2005;:1
Murray, B. (2013). The Challenge of Simultaneous Management and Creativity. Organization Development Journal, 31(4), 27-35.
Nancy, L. (2010). FIFA's Football for Health: applying Kotter's eight-step programme for transformational change to a mass participation activity. British Journal Of Sports Medicine, 44(8), 537-539.
Weiss, J. (2012). Orchestrating organizational change in one traditional post-secondary institution in the midst of trying times. San Diego, CA: Bridgepoint Education Inc.
