Kotter's 8 Step Approach for an Organization - Term Paper Example

    Company Overview FedEx Corporation is among the best international companies operating in distribution industry, in providing reliable, timely, and rapid express delivery to over 200 states and destinations. The company is able to link international markets that cover beyond three quarters of world’s GDP within a period of four working days. What makes FedEx a world leader is its highly developed information technology infrastructure, competent air path officials, together with well-established mode of transport.

The company delivers about 3 million cargos every day in Europe, Africa, India, and the Middle East and currently operates in almost all the cities and territories with its reliable inter states and continental distribution services. United States has one of the biggest offices for FedEx express and is currently expanding its wings to cover more areas around the region through rational and well-planned investments. FedEx story is not all positive since it has been facing various challenges and problems, especially in the current economic meltdown (Gutierrez, 2008).

Diagnosis FedEx as an international company that has operated for over three decades has become too complex especially at management level. In addition, competition in the modern world is growing tougher and rapid in the modern economy and this requires FedEx to keep on updating and reinventing themselves. Over the years FedEx image has been tarnished due to numerous complaints from customers, for instance in their packaging methods. Some of the styles and organization practices being used in FedEx have been outdated hence the need to revisit and rebrand the company.

The major problem is that FedEx has been unable to adapt effectively to the current economic situations (Gutierrez, 2008).   Kotter’s Change Approach Step 1: Creation of urgency Change can only happen in a company if at all every person or stakeholders in the company desire the change. Developing a sense of urgency in an organization starts with identifying and accepting the existing weaknesses in the company because the thought of the company falling or losing their investments arouses managers need to act, and similarly spreads the aspect of urgency to other stakeholders.

Financial problems or loss of workforce mostly sparks people to act or make a decision in most companies. Human nature requires a touchable or a foreseeable aspect of failure in order to come out of their comfort zones. For change to occur successfully and effectively in any organization, managers or executives of the company must facilitate a coordinate a discussion where actual problems and threats are mentioned and analyzed (Shaffer & Thompson, 2008). In most scenarios, external consultation has proved to be the most effective, as it brings out the overall weaknesses of the entire company and eliminates biasness.

According to Kotter, the degree of urgency is huge enough when about two thirds of the organization’s executives becomes understands the fact that the existing organizational culture and practices are out of line and need to change. Change in most cases starts with an individual or a few people and then others realizes it significance with time. FedEx as a company can take the following steps to initiate change: 1. Documentation of potential threats and forecast in the future in order to predict situations