Home Depot's Blueprint for Culture Change - Research Paper Example

One of the greatest levels of inference that this can help to provide is with respect to the deviation that oftentimes occurs between the real world application of theory as compared to the academic interpretation for theoretical models and approaches. Firstly, Kotter and Cohen present what they term as the first stage of the eight step plan. Within this first stage, three particular steps are evidenced. These are as follows: increasing urgency, building what they term as “guiding teams,” and getting the right vision.

It can immediately be inferred that they engaged with each and every one of these. Firstly, the urgency was created within the corporate level and soon diffused to the lower middle management within the entity. Secondly, it can be directly noted that the implementation of guiding teams was something that Nardelli placed a high emphasis upon. Although it would have been nice to see these guiding teams leverage a further degree of information rather than merely seeking to implement a rather vague vision.

Further, with regards to the last step in this three-step first stage, the actual vision creation and definition that Nardelli sought to engage within Home Depot was largely lacking. Although it is obvious that a new CEO was to seek to leverage increased profitability and maintain sales in an era of growing complexity and competition, the actual means by which this was to be effected were not presented in a step-by-step metric that the reader was able to follow in any discernible or applicable way.

Similarly, the second stage of Kotter and Cohen’s eight step plan for instituting change is what is termed as “engaging and enabling the organization.” This stage includes the following: communication for buy-in, enablement of action, and creation of short-term wins. The is the particular stage of Kotter and Cohen’s process that Nardelli accomplished so effectively and to such a high degree, most likely providing this particular change approach with the degree of success that it ultimately achieved.

By interacting with the respective stakeholders of this change process early, the communication for buy-in was related to them and understanding of the need for action was enabled. A more difficult part of this process is allowing for a situation in which short-term wins can be created so that stakeholders not only are continually cognizant of the process but also are aware of the fact that the changes that they have thus far implemented have reflected positively and will allow for future success.

However, even though this is difficult, it was achieved by Nardelli in the fact that the changes in approach were proven successful to the stakeholders by increased sales numbers and profitability (Charan, 2006). Moreover, even though the cultural change that was implemented forced many individuals within middle management out of their respective comfort zones, it also allowed for a reconsideration of the aversion to paperwork and central procedures that have thus far pervaded the entire business.

The final stage of Kotter and Cohen’s eight step process is what is termed as implementing and sustaining change. Within this particular stage exist the following two steps: not letting up and making the idea / change stick. Although it might be easy to say that there are verified statistics that help to prove that Nardelli did not