Knowledge Management

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.”

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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...