Leading Change

"The Eight Steps to Transformation"

In this context, John P. Kotter lists the most general lessons to be learned from both (I) the more successful cases and (II) the critical mistakes as follows:

I. Lessons from the more successful cases:

1. Establishing a sense of urgency

* Examining market and competitive realities

* Identifying and discursing crises, potential crises, or major opportunities

2. Forming a powerful guiding coalition

* Assembling a group with enough power to lead the change effort

* Encouraging the group to work together as a team

3. Creating a vision

* Creating a vision to help direct the change effort

* Developing strategies for achieving that vision

4. Communicating vision

* Using every vehicle possible to communicate the new vision and strategies

* Teaching new behaviors by the example of the guiding coalition

5. Empowering others to act on the vision

* Getting rid of obstancles to change

* Changing systems or structures that seriously undermine the vision

* Encouraging risk taking and nontraditional ideas, activities, and actions

6. Planning for and creating short-term wins

* Planning for visible performance improvements

* Creating those improvements

* Recognizing and rewarding employees involved in the improvements

7. Consolidating improvements and producing still more change

* Using increased credibility to change systems, structures, and policies that don't fit the vision

* Hiring, promoting, and developing employees who can implement the vision

* Reinvigorating the process with new projects, themes, and change agents

8.Institutionalizing new approaches

* Articulating the connections between the new behaviors and corporate success

* Developing the means to ensure leadership development and succession

II. Lessons from the critical mistakes:

1. Not establishing enough sense of urgency - A transformation program requires the aggressive cooperation of many individuals. Without motivation, people won't help and the effort goes nowhere.

2. Not creating a powerful guiding coalition - Companies that fail in this phase usually underestimate the difficulties of producing change and thus the importance of a powerful quiding coalition.

3. Lacking a vision - Without a sensible vision, a transformation effort can easily dissolve into a list of confusing and incompatible projects that can take the organization in the wrong direction or nowhere at all.

4. Undercommunicating the vision - Transformation is impossible unless hundreds or thousands of people are willing to help, often to the point of making short-term sacrifices.

5. Not removing obstacles to the new vision - Sometimes the obstacle is the organizational structure: narrow job categories can seriously undermine efforts to increase productivity or make it very difficult even to think about customers. Sometimes compensation or performance-appraisal systems make people choose between the new vision and their own self-interest. Perhaps worst of all are bosses who refuse to change and who make demands that are inconsistent with the overall effort.

6. Not systematically planning and creating short-term wins - Creating short-term wins is different from hoping for short-term wins. The latter is passive, the former active. In a successful transformation, managers actively look for ways to obtain clear performance improvements, establish goals in the yearly planning system, achieve the objectives, and reward the people involved with recognition, promotions, and even money.

7. Declaring victory too soon - Instead of declaring victory, leaders of successful efforts use the credibility afforded by short-term wins to tackle even bigger problems.

8. Not anchoring changes in the corporation's culture - Change sticks when it becomes "the way we do things around here," when it seeps into the bloodstream of the corporate body. Until new behaviors are rooted in social norms and shared values, they are subject to degradation as soon as the pressure for change is removed.

Finally, John P. Kotter writes, "There are still more mistakes that people make, but these eight are the big ones. In reality, even successful change efforts are messy and full of surprises. But just as a relatively simple vision is needed to guide people through a major change, so a vision of the change process can reduce the error rate. And fewer errors can spell the difference between success and failure."

Highly recommended.

Make Change Irresistibly Attractive

On the other hand, if you have not seen this done successfully before, you may need more detailed examples than this book provides or outside facilitators to help you until you have enough experience to go solo. I suspect this book will not be detailed enough by itself to get you where you want to go.

Here's a hint: The Harvard Business Review article by Professor Kotter covers the same material in a much shorter form. You can save time and money by checking this out first before buying the book.

I personally find that measurements are very helpful to create self-stimulation to change, and this book does not pay enough attention in that direction. If you agree that measurements are a useful way to stimulate change, be sure to read The Balanced Scorecard, as well, which will help you understand how to use appropriate measurements to make more successful changes.

If you want to know what changes to make, this book will also not do it for you. I suggest you read Peter Drucker's Management Challenges for the 21st Century and Peter Senge's Fifth Discipline.

Good luck!

Eight-stage process for transformation programs

The book is split up into three parts. In the first part - The Change Problem and Its Solution - Kotter discusses the eight main reasons why in many situations the improvements have been disappointing, with wasted resources and burned-out, scared, or frustrated employees. Each of these eight errors are discussed in detail, using simple, clear examples. "Making any of the eight errors in common to transformation efforts can have serious consequences." But Kotter argues that these errors are not inevitable. And this is why Kotter has written this book. "The key lies in understanding why organizations resist needed change, what exactly is the multistage process that can overcome destructive inertia, and, most of all, how the leadership that is required to drive that process in a socially healthy way means more than good management." In Chapter 2, Kotter discusses the reasons why organizations (can) need changes and improvements. Although some people suggest otherwise, Kotter believes that organizations can implement change successfully. "The methods used in successful transformations are all based on one fundamental insight: that major change will not happen easily for a long list of reasons." Kotter introduces an eight-stage process for creating major change.

This eight-stage process is discussed in Part Two of this book:
(1) The first stage of the process involves the establishment of a sense of urgency, which is required to overcome complacency. The nine sources of complacency are discussed, whereby Kotter emphasizes that "a good rule of thumb in a major change effort is: Never underestimate the magnitude of the forces that reinforce complacency and that help maintain the status quo." He further discusses methods for raising urgency levels, the role of crises, and the role of middle and lower-level managers.
(2) The second stage involves the creation of a guiding coalition. "A strong guiding coalition is always needed - one with the right composition, level of trust, and shared objective." According to the author the four key characteristics to effective guiding coalition are position power, expertise, credibility, and leadership. And he emphasizes that management and leadership must work in tandem, teamwork style.
(3) The third stage requires the development of a vision and strategy. Good vision clarifies the general direction for change, motivates people to take action in the right direction, and it helps coordinate people's actions. The characteristics of an effective vision are imaginable, desirable, feasible, focused, flexible, and communicable. But vision alone is not enough. "This is where strategy plays an important role. Strategy provides both logic and a first level detail to show how a vision can be accomplished."
(4) The power of a vision is most powerful when all people within an organization have a common understanding of its goals and direction. Although the general myth is that failures to communicate vision are attributed to either limited intellectual capabilities among lower-level employees or a general human resistance to change. But that is not really the problem. The vision needs to be communicated in a clear, simple message (focused and jargon-free). Kotter discusses each of the seven key elements in the communication of vision.
(5) Empowering employees for broad-based action - "Discouraged and disempowered employees never make enterprises winners in a globalizing economic environment. But with the right structure, training, systems, and supervisors to build on a well-communicated vision, increasing numbers of firms are finding that they can tap an enormous source of power to improve organizational performance. They can mobilize hundreds or thousands of people to help provide leadership to produce needed changes."
(6) Major change takes time and it is therefore advisable to pay serious attention to short-term wins. Short-term wins should be visible, unambiguous, and related to the change effort. Short-term wins play various roles in a change effort, most notably building the necessary momentum.
(7) Many forces can stall a change process short of the finish line. And we should be aware that irrational and political resistance to change never fully dissipates. We should not let the celebration of short-term wins allow complacency back into the organization. We should also be aware that progress can slip away for two reasons: corporate culture (see more in the next stage) and increased interdependence as a result from interconnections.
(8) "Culture refers to norms of behavior and shared values among a group of people." In large organizations, there are some social forces (corporate culture) that affect everyone. Corporate cultures have a powerful influence on human behavior, since it is almost impossible to change and invisible. Kotter believes that "culture is powerful for three reasons: (i) Because individuals are selected and indoctrinated so well. (ii) Because the culture exerts itself through the actions of hundreds or thousands of people. (iii) Because all of this happens without much conscious intent and thus is difficult to challenge or even discuss." He provides with one other important warning: "most cultural change happens in stage 8, not stage 1."

Part III - Implications for the Twenty-First Century - consists of two chapters. In the first chapter, Kotter discusses the organization of the future. In particular, the impact of the future on the eight stages in the change process. There is an interesting table, which compares the differences in structure, systems, and culture between 20th-century and 21st-century organizations. "The key to creating and sustaining the kind of successful 21st-century organization is leadership - not only at the top of the hierarchy, with a capital L, but also in a more modest sense (l) throughout the enterprise." These two notions are discussed in detail in the final chapter of the book.

Yes, this is an excellent book on controlling change. The book provides an extremely useful framework for a change process and should be kept as a checklist. Although the process looks rigid, the stages are flexible and take place concurrently. I recommend this book to all people involved in a major change process within larger organizations. The author uses simple business US-English.

Clear and direct to the point guide for management success.