Business improvement and creativity for PUMA company Essay

Business improvement and creativity for PUMA company - Essay Example The PUMA company owns the brands Tretorn, Cobra Golf and the brand PUMA. The company, which was incepted in 1948 distributes its services in over 120 countries, staffs more than 11000 workers and has headquarters in Hong Kong, Boston and Herzogenaurach in Germany. This paper applies Kotter’s 8 Stage Change Model approach to summarize business improvements of PUMA Company. A focused and informative analysis of the theory is done with the aid of a diagram analysis. The analysis of the theory is based on its weaknesses and strengths and case analysis of PUMA organization. Challenges, impact sustainability, resistance, current strategy, turnover, profit and audit are key points discussed in the paper in respect to PUMA’s case study. Finally, the paper provides recommendations in view of what the company should do to support sustained improvement and success. Focused and Informative Theory Analysis Kotter’s 8 Stage Change Model: Step one of this model stresses on the need to create urgency. In order for change to occur, in an organization, the entire management must embrace the change (Schacter, 2002). Developing a sense of urgency around the needed anticipated change helps in sparkling the motivation to have things done (Katzenbach and Smith, 1993). This step encompasses identifying potential threats and developing scenarios, which indicate what, is likely to happen in the future, examining opportunities to be exploited, requesting support from customers, and stakeholders and providing dynamics and reasons to get people thinking and talking. In order for the change to be effective, 75 percent of the management need buy into the idea. Therefore, significant energy and time is required for building urgency prior moving to the next stage. Stage two is the form of a powerful coalition, which involves convincing participants that change is necessary. This point requires visible and strong leadership from senior people within the organization. Tom (1 982) argues that to effect change, bringing together influential people or a coalition from various professions remains critical. After the formation of the coalition, it should operate as a team by continuing to build momentum and urgency around the need for change (Hersey and Blanchard, 1977). Step three demands creation of a vision necessary for change. Solutions and great ideas should be linked to an overall vision, which people can easily remember and understand (Madaza and Agere, 1999). A central vision helps members to understand the importance of their contribution (Deal and Kennedy, 1982). The leaders should therefore establish the values, which are crucial to the change, develop a summary, which captures the organization’s vision, practice the vision speech, create a strategy to implement the vision and ascertain the member fully comprehend the vision. Stage four is centered on communicating the vision. Communicating the vision frequently is indispensable at the sli ghtest opportunity that arises (Hammer and Stanton, 1995). The newly created vision should be applied daily to solve problems and when making decisions. This helps member to remember to the contents of the vision and apply in their departments. For the leaders, walking the talk is critical in demonstrating