Leadership and Change Management

Introduction

Apple is a computer company started in 1976 and expanded over the period to a large scale that specializes in much more than only computers. It entered the music world in 2001 with a innovative product called iPod and gradually became the leader in music players. In 2007, it entered the phone industry with a unique iPhone which was successful enormously. Eventually, the company has changed from only Computer Company to Consumer Goods Company and gradually understanding its customers and products in a better way. The company is known for its comprehensive aesthetic design and its distinctive advertising campaigns and has developed a unique reputation and brand in the electronic goods industry. Moreover, over the period the company has been able to develop a strong customer base (appleindia.com, 1999).

Apple has made his first computer, the Macintosh 128K in 1984 which was the first personal computer to feature mouse and graphical user interface. Now the company has three Macintosh computers, iMac, Mac Mini and the Mac Pro. The most successful brand has been iMac desktop computer which is very slim in appearance due to its unique feature built-in computer into the monitor. In laptops, its products are MacBook Family consist of MacBook Pro, MacBook, MacBooK Air. Each is unique in its features and has captured the market with its innovative styles (Tannenbaum, Weschler & Massarik, 2013).

The paper gives a presents the leadership and change management system with reference to Apple. It gives a brief on its leader Tim Cook and its leadership. The paper also explains the change issues of Apple and review the literature on best leadership and practices of change management. Further, the Kurt Lewin’s Force-Field Analysis Change Model is reviewed and key theories are briefed for the best practices in leadership and change management.

Leadership and Change Issues in Apple

Tim Cook is the successor of ionic and masterful Steve Job as a CEO of Apple. Initially there were doubts about his leadership qualities but gradually people started having faith in him and several leadership lessons were learnt from him. Tim cook believes in taking risk knowing that it may lead to failure because without failure, success cannot be attained. He is quiet and reserved person and believes in listening carefully to those around him and takes down the key points to be more focused on the conversation. A leader should trust the people around and give them responsibilities to complete and prove them (Hargreaves & Fink, 2012). Tim Cook has given chance to the employees to speak their mind and think differently because he believes in diversity that helps to bring the best out of the people. Being humble is an important quality of a leader as it makes others to respect you and accepting your fault always makes a leader more respectful and helps him to avoid the past mistakes in near future. Moreover, a leader should make the employees thinks well and do what they feel to do with full confidence and should be transparent and write their own rules to perform best.

The leadership of Tim Cook has benefitted the company in achieving some of the successful results in technology innovation. The company sales had increased to $1 billion dollars a week in 2013 under his leadership. The employees are motivated better with lots of time spend by Tim Cook in motivating them through different schemes of incentives and training programs (Storey, 2016). The mini iPad was introduced under his leadership to strengthen the competitive advantage of the company in the market. Hence leadership plays the vital role in making the company grow and achieve success in long run. The success of Apple under the legendary leadership of Steve Jobs and Tim Cook is the classic example of it.

Change Management refers to an approach that is structured to transform the organization and the individuals from the current state to future state. Apple has been quite successful in change management despite of several critics from its competitors. The company has been able to build a chain of users despite its premium product. It has been possible by introducing new concepts and technology in the market and through it the company has gained the full advantage of making the changes (Shields et al., 2015).

The company follows its own release cycle of products. It does not release the products just to beat its competitors or other industry. However, it does make mistakes and when it had released its first iPhone, the apple store was not functioning. Further, when every other company was trying to capture the market by releasing bigger screens on Phone, Apple was actually slow and did not opted for bigger screen (Lussier & Achua, 2015). The iOS of Apple has grown slowly from 1.0 to 4.0 version compared to that of Microsoft which upgrade its version nearly every year. Apple does not have extensive manuals like other company and believes that the operating system should be well designed and intuitive so that the user can easily use it.

Review of Literature on best leadership and change management practice

Change management has become an important part of any organization. In today’s world of competition, the major task of an effective manager is to identify the ability, cope up with the situations and take advantage from organizational change. The practice of change management indicates the planning process which designs the method of how an organization will move from its present state to a desired future state (Hargreaves & Fink, 2012). It refers to an activity that is planned and links different parts of the process of change, sets the timeline of actions, decides the priorities, assign responsibilities and develop a review mechanism to avoid the mistakes. A change management practice is effective if it is planned properly and begins well in advance.

Leaders in form of managers play a vital role in making effective change management practices. They need to make the employee understand the change and put them back into work to obtain maximum advantage from change. Effective change management practice is categorized into three phases, unfreezing, moving and refreezing. Unfreezing refers to the acceptability of change and become ready to change. It means to become ready for change and leave the current state. Moving refers to move forward for making the change happen (Goethals et al., 2014). People have to move forward and leave their current state of comfort zone and move forward to let the change happen. Refreezing means that at last change takes place and it has now become the part of day-today process.

The steps suggested for making an effect change management practices are divided into three. First, it is important to the define the requirement of change, second, a clear vision should be developed about the outcomes of the change process, third, the team of employees must be empowered to design strategies and conduct test to check the effectiveness of change, fourth, incorporating the change process with the organizational culture to make it last for longer and lastly, the requisite attributes and skills need to be developed for the success of the change process (Frankland et al., 2013).

Leader is a person who has the authority to control a group of people and make th goal achieve by putting them to effective work. A leader has an vision towards the welfare of the firm and the quality through which he leads the team is called leadership. An effective leadership is possible only by optimizing the basics traits of leadership. They are ambition, realism, self confidence, drive and tenacity, appetite for learning, psychological openness, fairness, creativity and dedication (Dinh et al., 2014). A leader become effective in he can portray three character simultaneously, i.e., an architect, a teacher and a steward.

Effective leadership in an organization is possible by considering persistence as a key to success for any leader. The attitude towards work and task oriented leadership, like that of Steve Job can bring effectiveness in leadership. Further, effective leadership is possible by considering innovation as one of the strategy where the leader involves his team in making important decision (Daft, 2014). The leadership becomes effective by the majored attitude of the leaders that develop a sense of ownership among the members of the team and motivates them to work efficiently.

Kurt Lewin’s Force-Field Analysis Change Model

Kurt Lewin’s force-field analysis model is one of the most powerful and effective strategic tools that help to understand what is required for change in organizational environment. It explains the forces for and against a change which is defined as driving and restraining forces (Daft, 2012). Driving forces are those that promote change and restraining forces are those that maintain a status quo and do not want change. A balance is to be maintained between the two opposing forces to make the change happen.

Figure 1: Force Field Analysis – Kurt Lewin

Source: Author

The figure 1 shows the force field analysis explained by Kurt Lewin. It highlights the two forces, one is driving forces which are the positive forces for change in an organization and other is the restraining forces which are the obstacles for change. Before the change takes place, there exists a quasi-stationary social equilibrium where there is equilibrium between the forces which desires the change and those forces which does not want the change (Cummings & Worley, 2014).  If the organization has to change then this equilibrium must be disturbed by changing the favourable or resisting forces. Either new things are added in favourable conditions or few things are removed from resisting conditions to create the disturbances in the equilibrium. If the driving forces are stronger than the resisting forces then change in management will take place otherwise the change is not possible (Northouse, 2015). The driving forces makes the change desirable to the people and they desire to accept the change whereas the restraining forces makes the changes undesirable to the people and they do not want the change (Chemers, 2014). The restraining forces weaken the change process and the driving forced encourages the change process. The theory basically integrates with the concept of unfreezing the current equilibrium state, moving forward to accept the change and again refreezing the desired equilibrium state and makes the change management possible.

Apple, has been successful due to it’s believe in change management practices. It has adopted the strategy to change whenever the requirement was felt in the organization. However, the company has changed according to its own innovative practices and technological advancement and has not changed to follow other firms’ strategy. The company has taken out innovative products and did change management in the organization to make the product run successfully in the market (Cameron et al., 2014). It takes proper care for the forces that restrain the change management and tries to weaken them by increasing the strength of the driving forces.

Brief of Key theories on best practices in leadership and change management

There are several theories developed on change management and leadership practices. One of the theories is ADKAR model which has been developed by Prosci. The term is abbreviated as Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability and Reinforcement. The theory says that to make the change management successful  what is required is awareness of the need to change, take part in change , support it, gain knowledge for how to change, the required skills and behaviour to be implemented and lastly ability to make the change sustainable (Burke,2013). The theory explains that these changes are required at the individual level i.e. at the leadership level to make the organization achieve the change. With the help of the model, change management activities can be planned and gaps can be diagnosed, which can then be corrected through effective measures and support from the efficient leaders.

The other famous theory is Kotter’s 8 Step Change Model that has introduced 8 steps which are inevitable for bringing the transformation in the organization. The steps are as follow:

• To develop a sense of urgency among the employees that help to feel the need of change by other people in the organization and persuade them to accept the change
• A group has to be created which acts as a guide for everyone (Miner, 2015). The group must act as a team and must assemble together to create the power for making the change happen.
• A vision should be created that helps to direct the ways towards the change and strategies should be developed to achieve the vision and goals of change management.
• To assure that maximum number of people understand the strategy and accept the vision of the team for change management through good communication between the team and the people.
• The obstacles to change should be removed, especially the obstacles that obstruct the vision and the strategy, should be removed. Further, the risk taking and advance ieas should be encouraged for change management (Hill, Jones & Schilling, 2014).
• Planning should be made in such a way that there are short term targets to be achieved and the employees involved in making the target achieved should be rewarded and recognized.
• There should be continuous hiring, promoting and development of the employees to make the change possible with adoption of new projects and themes
• The change should be incorporated in the culture of the organization for its sustainability

Another key theory is the Change curve which was developed by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross in 1960 which explained the grieving process. The model shows the stages of transition at the personal level that is required to make possible the change management. It explains the people’s reaction towards change, their support and need and other behavioural aspects that affect the change management in an organization (Bryman, 2013).  The stages defined here are Status Quo, Disruption, Exploration and Rebuilding and the reaction at each stage is shock or denial, anger or fear, acceptance and then commitment. The model helps to remove the negativity towards change management and makes the employees accept it quickly.

Figure 2: Conceptual Model

Source: Author

Recommendation

The recommended model is ADKAR model for Apple as it takes care of all the strategies required for a successful leadership and change management practices. It explains the changes required at the leadership level which if incorporated in the managers of Apple Company, then the company will raise further in terms of revenue and profit.

Conclusion

The paper shows the leadership and change management system with reference to Apple. It gives a brief on its leader Tim Cook and its leadership. The paper also explains the change issues of Apple and review the literature on best leadership and practices of change management. Further, the Kurt Lewin’s Force-Field Analysis Change Model is reviewed and key theories are briefed for the best practices in leadership and change management.

Several leadership lessons were learned from Tim Cook, like to be patience, to take risk, listen to the people and give  them chance to come out of new ideas. Apple success is based on unique leadership strategies. One of those were the company followed its own release cycle of products and does not release the products just to beat its competitors or other industry.

The review of literature explains the concept of effective leadership and change management practices and further several key models like change curve, Kotter’s 8 Step Change Model, ADKAR model and Kurt Lewin’s Force-Field Analysis Change Model has been explained to show the effectiveness of leadership and change management practices.

References

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