Introduction
Change model theories are concerned with improving a commercial company’s performance by altering the system of management and employees behavior. One of the most prominent change theories was proposed by John P. Kotter, a renowned expert on leadership and change. Kotter suggests eight steps that would allow to manage a company more efficiently and escape fatal errors.
Main body
According to Kotter (2012), first of all, it is essential to create a “sense of urgency” (p. 37). Then, a manager should form a guiding coalition, develop a firm’s strategy and vision, and think of how to change a company’s image for the better (Kotter, 2012). In the following step, employees should be granted the power to undertake broad-based action (Kotter, 2012). The ensuing generation of short-term wins will help keep the staff members motivated (Kotter, 2012). The two final steps proposed by Kotter (2012) are the consolidation of gains and production of more changes and fixing the result in a company’s culture.
Adherence to Kotter’s model could be beneficial for the implementation of a quality change project. The critical aim of such a project is to identify a problematic issue, analyze it, and implement a specific intervention that would improve service quality. The quality change project could also be divided into eight of Kotter’s steps. More precisely, a manager should realize that the quality of services negatively affects a hospital’s image. Afterward, a person in charge should consider how to improve the quality and appoint responsibilities for the subordinates. It is also essential to make the medical personnel understand that quality, to a large extent, depends on them. Finally, by implementing a quality change, a manager could create a path that a hospital should follow if it wants to perform some other changes in the future.
The first benefit of Kotter’s model is that it perfectly fits companies with the traditional organizational structure. Most hospitals exemplify this structure. This change model implies that the decision to implement a change is created at the top of the hierarchy, and then it comes down to the lower layers of the organizational structure. Therefore, this model enables a manager to escape chaos, duplication of responsibilities, and misunderstanding.
The second benefit of Kotter’s model to frame quality initiatives stems from the first one. Namely, Kotter greatly emphasizes the role of the leader in the implementation of any change. Van Dam, Oreg, and Schyns (2008) write that, commonly, employees are afraid of changes and could become alienated if they do not trust their leader. Consequently, the strong side of Kotter’s model is that it transfers responsibility for the implementation of change from employees to senior management. This, in turn, increases the chances for successful implementation.
Without a doubt, the role of the healthcare executive in this model should not be underestimated. The primary reason for this is that the healthcare executive is responsible for controlling the quality of services provided to the patients. Hence, this person could initiate a quality change project based on the obtained observations. Furthermore, a healthcare executive commonly educates the community on health issues. From this, it could be inferred that a change could become anchored precisely through this specialist. At the same time, a healthcare executive cannot replace the senior manager in the project implementation process because each of them has nonoverlapping responsibilities. The former hospital’s employee is responsible for the theoretical part of a quality change project, whereas the latter should control the project’s technical aspects.
Conclusion
To conclude, Kotter’s change model is applicable for implementing quality change in any organization, including hospitals. The adherence to the mentioned model will allow the senior management to escape the chaos, keep employees motivated, and fix the newly introduced change in a company’s culture. A Healthcare executive plays a critical role in changing the medical organization’s quality of services because this specialist could help specify what should be changed and how the alterations could be achieved.
References
Kotter, J. (2012). Leading change. Harvard Business Review Press.
Van Dam, K., Oreg, S., & Schyns, B. (2008). Daily work contexts and resistance to organisational change: The role of leader–member exchange, development climate, and change process characteristics. Applied psychology, 57(2), 313-334. Web.