1. Change management in NOKIA
Table of Contents
1. Introduction.............................................................................................................................1
2. Organisational Change at Nokia...........................................................................................1
3. Impediment..............................................................................................................................4
4. Managing Impediment to Change.........................................................................................5
5. Conclusion ..............................................................................................................................5
References.......................................................................................................................................6
1. Introduction
Nokia has undergone a major organisational restructuring, in which it has revived its
organisational goal, vision, mission and objectives into clear and specific new strategies
as per the current retail requirements or competition (Amanda, 2013). In the past recent
years Nokia has lost its retail throne to its competitors Samsung and Apple, because
Nokia failed in adopting latest mobile technologies, because of which the team struggleed
to regain its profit and revive its retail top position again. This project thus focuses on how
Nokia has brought major organisational strategic change by adopting Windows Phone
Platform (Muhammad, 2010).
2. Organisational Change at Nokia
Change is an unavoidable process or a phenomenon. An organisational change can be
achieved only bringing behavioural changes in the individuals of the organisation. A
change in the organisation cannot be achieved by bringing changes in the group, teams
or team. An organisational change can only be achieved when individual changes (Kotze,
2006, p.17)
At Nokia Team the major organisational change happened along the initiation of “Booster
2. Curriculum” in the year 2008. The Booster Curriculum was introduced looking at the ever
changing customer aspirations and development of latest technologies among the
competitors. In the Booster Curriculum, the team restructured its nine business units into
four business units. Along the purpose to include rapid production and innovation, the
team also restructured all its manufacturing and development processes into just three
horizontal business units (Amanda, 2013).
The Booster Curriculum came up as a daunting organisational Change curriculum for
Nokia. This curriculum was brought in effective in just one week by providing 100 new
jobs. Along the onset of new jobs, the old Nokia employees jobs were saved and they
were not required to switch other jobs. The only change these employees faced was that
the teams to which they belonged were reconfigured. This reconfiguration of teams was
done along a mindset of skilfully and rapidly reconfiguring its human resources so as to
meet the ever changing customer needs and demands (v, 2010).
Along the implementation of team reconfiguration, the Nokia’s senior teams were totally
committed to deeply involve the employees into organisational strategies and
implementing the organisation’s structure based on projects. Now looking at the adoption
of latest technologies by the various competitors, Nokia shifted its strategic change
towards the development of technological platforms through which millions of people
worldwide can join together easily and rapidly. Thus the team long term success was
seen in its capacity of bringing innovations.
At the worst time of recession in 2009, the team innovative ideas of involvement and
constantly strategising were put on test. During this time the decision taken by Nokia was
to actively involve all its employees worldwide into the business transformations. At this
time the team whole focus was on its Retail business, which was a newly formed
enterprise whose focus was on retaining the customers and creating new and prompt
customer solutions. In the past years, Nokia’s major emphasis was on developing a
flexible and adaptive organisation by using the talents of its employees present in the
retail business. This was the time when the Team Nokia entered its Booster Curriculum
(Martin, 2010)
3. The origin of the Nokia’s Booster Curriculum was marked in the year 2008. This
curriculum began along a team comprising of Maximilian Kammerer and Ian Gee and two
other designers, whose aim was to boost the awareness and skills of each Nokia
employee by motivating the regional teams to work efficiently and effectively across
various functions. Another aim was to enhance the capacity of utilising and acquiring the
external resources so as to meet the organisational performance goals. The last aim was
to transform the whole business units from line based structure to an organisation where
all the competencies can be pooled through a pragmatic or a project structure. Nokia was
very ambitious for this program and thus it ensured to cover all the 5000 employees and
encourage the concept of cross-functional and cross-hierarchical working. Above all the
budget and time for this curriculum to be rolled was very less i.e. just three months and
Nokia successfully implemented this program alongin the decided timeline and budget.
The Nokia’s design team was very clear along the point that if they follow top to down
traditional approach in bringing the change then it will be a very slow process and will not
allow the timely involvement of employees being a part of the solution by using emerging
technologies. Along the rapid onset of social latest network technologies a new
environment has been created in which Nokia has to make a long term commitment for
its employees by involving them to play at a faster rate and come out along innovative
and critical thinking (Zell, 2003)
The team for Booster Curriculum decided working on two streams of activities. One was
two day face to face workshops along the team leaders and the second was creating
online social network community which ensures the broader involvement of all
communities. The two day workshops were designated to major location in the World like
Beijing, New York, London, Dubai and Paris where about 100 change leaders were
allotted to each workshop. These workshops were designed to teach the employees
about the major change the Team will be undergoing and to tell them why change is
important and how they will be benefitted so that minimum impediment come at the time
of implementation (Cameron, 2012)
After the completion of the workshops, around 700 employees returned back to their
teams and engaged themselves in the ongoing process of change. At this point the online
4. social committee created came into the picture. The design team along the specialist
partners or designers came up along an intranet site which was accessible to al the
employees of the retails business and workshop participants. This intranet site helped the
senior managers and change leaders to easily conversate and exchange ideas along the
experts and community members. Thus the combination of traditional workshop and
latest online community proved to be a success where 5000 employees joined the booster
curriculum and made the communication and interaction among the employees,
community members and senior managers a easy task.
3. Impediment
When the team announced for manufacturing windows based phone- Lumia, thousands
of employees protested as they were shocked that they might lose their jobs. They also
argues that Nokia Lumia phone is not capable of adapting different hardware. Along this
decision, there were waves of resignation by the top leaders like Chairman, vice
president, CTO (Culcmsralte, 2012).
Apart from employees Nokia saw the impediment from the retail and customers too
because they disliked the Microsoft and its offerings. Also the network operators were
against the Windows phone because they got worried along the skype (Yarow, 2012)
feature available at Windows phone which will risk their international calling business.
The shareholders also showed impediment because their share price drastically dropped
by 10% (Amanda, 2013)
5. 4. Managing Impediment to Change
Nokia can manage the impediment by adopting various strategies. It could have educated
the staff about the change and explained them why it is important and how they will be
benefitted. The staff could have got the support from their managers who timely educate
them about the change and help them to overcome their fear and anxiety. The
resignations could have controlled by offering incentives and benefits after implementing
the change. In case if employees are still not ready for change then forcefully they have
to make accept the change by threatening them to loss of their jobs (ADKAR, 2013).
5. Conclusion
The Nokia is really working hard in connecting its people. The best example we discussed
above is its Booster Curriculum. The team is bringing organisational changes to cope
along the competition but the employees are affected along such changes. The
effectiveness of change management is measured by how the stakeholder’s goals and
interests are satisfied (Paton, 2000).
Nokia’s decision to switch to Windows phone has been a controversial discussion. This
decision has been logical but was not totally nonsense. This decisionwas made in a rush
because of which all the stakeholders were shocked and lead to disastrous
consequences (Wall Street Journal, 2010).
Thus from the above project we can conclude saying that Organisation first should identify
the reason for change. In an Organisation there are different people working together
whose mindset and risk taking capacity is different. They have creative mindsets and
when the ideas get insufficient then comes the entry of brainstorming sessions. Thus we
can say that Organisational changes are good for the organisation if they are properly
planned, managed and executed. Although Nokia started its Booster Program to eliminate
the gap of communication at the time of change and initiated the workshop programs but
still its decision towards Windows Platform mobile application did not proved to be a
success.
6. References
ADKAR Change Management Model Overview. (2013). Change Management Learning
Center. Retrieved from : https://www.change-management.com/tutorial-adkar-
overview.htm
Amanda H.C. Lam. (2013). Change Management at Nokia. Retrieved from
https://dadablog.net/publications/ChangeManagementAtNokia.pdf
CAMERON, E. and GREEN, M. (2012). Making Sense of Change Management : A
Complete Guide to the Models Tools and Techniques of Organizational Change 3rd ed.
3rd ed. Kogan Page Ltd.
Culcmsralte. (2012). Change and impediment to change. Leading in a changing world.
Retrieved from https://culcmsralte.wordpress.com/2012/04/01/change-and-impediment-
to-change/
Kotze, R. S., 2006. Performance: The Secrets of Successful Behaviour. s.l.:Financial
Times Prentice Hall.
Muhammad Habibullah Khan. (2010). Project of Change Management on Nokia.
Retrieved from https://www.scribd.com/doc/27597324/Project-of-Change-Management-
on-Nokia#scribd
Martin. (2010). Inside Nokia’s Booster Curriculum. Maemo.org. Retrieved from
https://talk.maemo.org/showthread.php?t=42435
Paton, R and McCalman, J. (2000). Change Management: A Guide to Effective
Implementation. 2nd Edition, London: SAGE Publications Ltd.
Leading Change, Transition & Transformation. (2013). Retrieved from
:https://www.adelaide.edu.au/hr/strategic/leading_change_toolit.pdf
The Wall Street Journal. ( 2011). Full Text: Nokia CEO Stephen Elop’s ‘Burning Platform’
Memo. The Wall Street Journal, Dow Jones & Team, Inc. Retrieved from:
https://blogs.wsj.com/tech-europe/2011/02/09/full-text-nokia-ceo-stephen-elopsburning-
platform-memo/.
7. YAROW, J. (2012). Nokia's CEO Talks About How Skype Affects Carrier Relations.
Business Insider, Inc. Retrieved from: https://www.businessinsider.com/nokias-ceo-says-
carriers-hate-skype-and-its-affecting-windows-phone-sales-2012-5.
ZELL, D., (2003). Organizational change as a process of death, dying, and rebirth. The
Journal of Applied Behavioural Science, vol. 39, no. 1, pp. 73-96 ABI/INFORM Global.
ISSN 00218863.
