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Case study: Building change management competency at Ashland
Prosci
Business resulted in a nearly broken organization out
there. We had a temporary shut down of west coast
operations because we had done such a poor
implementation.”
Case Study Series
Building change management
competency at Ashland Inc.
The following case study and associated interviews
follow Ashland’s deployment of change
management through the eyes of their key business
leaders and change practitioners.
Ashland Inc. is a FORTUNE 500 diversified
chemical company providing innovative products,
services and solutions to customers around the
globe. Ashland has sales and operations in the
United States and in more than 100 countries
worldwide. Ashland Inc divisions include: Ashland
Performance Materials, Ashland Distribution,
Valvoline and Ashland Water Technologies.
Background
In 2002, Ashland earnings were off track, operating
costs were high and redundancy was present
throughout the business groups. The net result was
lower than expected share value. Ashland’s then
Senior VP of HR believed the root cause was a
change-averse organization. “We didn’t have
capability, competency or desire. Change was not
something we did well. We would mandate that we
would do something different and call that change.”
Between 1998 and 2003, Ashland had sold their oil
exploration business, joint ventured marketing and
refining, sold their coal business, restructured resource
groups and relocated the corporate headquarters. “And
in the process,” according to Dwight King, Vice
President of HR for Ashland’s Chemical Sector, “we
left a tremendous amount of rubble along the way,
including unwanted turnover and dips in performance.
By 2003, we recognized that we did not do this
change of direction as well as we could have. In fact,
our first ERP implementation in the Distribution
© Prosci 2008
Frustrated with repeated examples of poorly managed
change, Dwight...