How Kurt Lewin’s theory manages Change Management in ERP Implementation

The change management practices that have been taken into action by the ABC in implementing the system can be applied to Lewin’s Theory. Unfreeze stage, transition stage and the refreeze stage can be clearly identified in the change management process of ABC concerning the considered system implementation.

In this stage, they have got an understanding of the difficulties related to the identified system and strategies are developed to strengthen the driving forces and weaken or reduce the restraining forces. Unfreezing had involved identifying key players that will be affected by the change and gathering them together to communicate ideas and create lists of all driving and static forces that will affect the project. The SLT had formed a project team to handle change effectively and the team had been made responsible for communicating the change to the employees.

The old manual system had been studied clearly and thoroughly to identify the weaknesses of the system. More specifically in that department, they have analyzed their existing revenue assurance system and present it to the top managers to get the support to this automation process. Those documents have showed that things have to be changed in a way that everyone can understand.

To transform the organization successfully, they have started at its core -they had to challenge the beliefs, values, attitudes, and behaviors that currently define it. That is how they had broken the traditional way of doing the process. When they start cutting down the “way things are done”, it put everyone and everything off balance.

After the uncertainty created in the unfreeze stage, people begin to resolve their uncertainty and look for new ways to do things in this stage. To make them believe about this new process mainly they have to provide training sessions brainstorming the employees. These training sessions have been held by the vendor consultant and several sessions had been conducted in abroad for top managers.

In this phase they have been more careful to communicate often with the top managers as well as employees of the department. Throughout the planning and implementation of the a change they had taken steps to communicate the benefits of the system, explain exactly how the change will affect everyone and prepare everyone for the system.

They also have taken steps to dispell the rumors that have spread among the employees within the department to ensure smooth implementation. Because of that they had to deal with that immediately by answering the questions and rumors came up.

And also to make the employee satisfied with this new system they have involved the employees in the system actions. They mentioned that it was a good opportunity to make them learn about the system and that will make less the rejection of the system.

When changes have done and people are aware of this change organization is ready for the change that’s what philosopher of Lewin’s theory mentioned. So when it comes to SLT telecom transforming to the new system they have been more careful to stabilize the organizational chart which means providing new job descriptions to the employees and make them aware of what they need to do within their responsibility.

Moreover, they have developed a way to sustain that change of the system by adapting the organization structure as necessary which means adapting the organization-level positions and duty, responsibilities, rules necessarily.

But most importantly they haven’t taken a step to measure the feedback of the employees who are using the system. When exploring this thing, from the vendor perspective they handle the feedback system but they don’t provide necessary information to the company.

Originally published at https://www.baexperts.info.