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"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.

Click here to see more reviews for: Leading Change

Show Time!

Pine & Gilmore explain The Experience Economy; Wolf calls it The Entertainment Economy. Schmitt suggests that Experiential Marketing creates or sustains demand for this New Economy, however it is named. For all of these authors, "work" should be viewed as "theatre" and every business should be viewed as a "stage." If they are correct (and I believe they are), the quality of sensory experience is critically important. That is to say, it is no longer sufficient to offer high-quality goods or services for sale at competitive prices. Most (if not all) goods and services have become commodities. Competing on price alone seldom succeeds...especially against those which have superior purchasing power. Competing on quality alone succeeds only for those who offer what no one else has. The challenge is to achieve differentiation. According to Pine & Gilmore, this challenge is best met by understanding what the Experience Economy is (and isn't) as well as how it works; only then, thus informed, can an organization (almost literally) function as a theatre company: formulating a script which has both an exciting story line and interesting characters; assigning roles to those who have the appropriate talents; and then conducting rigorous rehearsals. Finally, it's "show time"!

Pine & Gilmore observe, "Since all commerce is moral choice, every business is a stage for glorifying something. Who or what does your business glorify? Your answer may not help you accept what is next, but it will certainly help guide what you do today." At its best, live theatre can delight, amuse, excite, inform and even inspire those who experience it. Why cannot it also be true of business relationships? Of course it can. It is certainly true of those organizations which prosper. Southwest Airlines is but one example. Its CEO once observed:

"I keep telling [those interested in Southwest Airlines] that the intangibles are far more important than the tangibles in the competitive world because, obviously, you can replicate the tangibles. You can get the same airplanes. You can get the same ticket counters. You can get the same computers. But the hardest thing for a competitor to match is your culture and the spirit of your people and their focus on customer service because that isn't something you can do overnight and it isn't something you can do without a great deal of attention every day in a thousand different ways. That is why I say that our employees are our competitive protection."

Kelleher's comments are relevant to virtually all organizations which now struggle to succeed in the New Economy (however it is named). To understand this economy, to understand what it requires of your own organization, I urge you to read The Experience Economy...as well as The Entertainment Economy and Experiential Marketing.

Click here to see more reviews for: The Experience Economy

Becoming an analytic competitor

Worth the time to read...then pass it on.

However, I was told that the book focused this time more on the behavior changes of people that are needed to make change successful...and from experience, I knew that getting employees to really want to make a change makes all the difference to a successful change effort.

The book uses stories to describe how to educate and motivate others to accept change through the 8-step process. If you just look at the eight steps, they appear dry and built on well-worn cliches. Increase Urgency, Build the Guiding Team, Get the Vision Right, Communicate for Buy-In, Empower Action, Create Short-Term Wins, Don't Let Up, and Make Change Stick. Certainly, anyone that has led change can figure this out.

However, I found the stories to be very practical in describing the concept of See, Feel, Change that is needed by all employees to really embrace the change emotionally and not just logically. They have to want to change their own behaviors, not just for the project, but forever. The story I could relate to the most was "The Boss Goes to Switzerland". I have seen this happen numerous times for others and myself.

This book has practical content that can be referred to over and over again...I will use this book each time a new change initiative gets underway. Recommended for all business leaders.

Click here to see more reviews for: The Heart of Change

A Collection of the best articles from the HBR magazine.

The eight articles selected for this book are 'The Brand Report Card', 'Bringing a Dying Brand Back to Life', 'How to Fight a Price War', 'Contextual Marketing: The Real Business of the Internet', 'The Lure of Global Marketing', 'Are the Strategic Stars Aligned for Your Corporate Brand', 'Torment Your Customers (They'll Love It), and 'Boost Your Marketing ROI with Experimental Design'.

My favorite article was the first one 'The Brand Report Card'. This article in just a few pages cuts to the core of how to evaluate the strength of your brand using a very logical approach.

The article on Contextual Marketing about the Internet is very interesting since it was written in late 2000 and makes predictions about how the Internet will change by the end of 2003 to 2005. But even the basic predictions haven't come true regarding how ubiquitous the authors predict the Internet will become. Yes, we have access to the Internet through wireless devices but they are not very profitable for businesses right now. Of course, the current economic conditions are influencing the predictions quite significantly.

Overall, this is indeed an excellent collection of articles relating to Marketing and the book is priced well since it is far more expensive to buy the same collection of articles directly from Harvard Business Review online (almost 5 times more expensive).

I have been reading several books on marketing over the last few years to apply in my small business and this book is one of the best I have read. It is less than 200 pages long and makes for a very quick yet powerful read. Enjoy reading and benefiting from the book!

Click here to see more reviews for: Harvard Business Review on Marketing

An antidote to sink or swim

Great Book, Title [Stinks]

"Primal Leadership" is written to help leaders become better leaders by improving their emotional intelligence. The book gives insight into the collective feeling of an organization, or its emotional climate, and how this is influenced by the people at the top of the organization and the leadership methods adopted by the organization.

The authors identify four key aspects of personal competency in emotional intelligence:

* Self-Awareness
* Self-Management
* Social Awareness
* Relationship Management

The stronger a person is in these, the better leader he or she will become. Unless we are aware of our own emotions, we won't know how to control them. For example, if you make a unintentional, snide remark to an employee, because you're frustrated with the employee, the employee will probably not benefit, nor will the work environment. But, to prevent such a remark means you first must accept that you're feeling frustrated and, secondly, control that emotion.

Being socially aware means that you understand the power structure of the organization and it means you have empathy. As an extreme case of lack of empathy, suppose an employee's wife just dumped him and you enter his office and say, "Hey, Jack. Won't ask about the wife. Ha, ha. Just kidding. But, I need that report today, so focus. Don't worry about your personal, little life."

Obviously, that wouldn't go over too well! A great film of unmotivating leadership is "Office Space." The CEO is too funny. He walks around talking in monotone and he doesn't hear what the employees are saying. Again, an extreme case.

A leader must understand the emotional state of his/her employees and take it into consideration. That doesn't, of course, mean you must agree or tolerate unacceptable behavior.

After discussing these core competencies, the authors discuss different leadership styles, including:

* Visionary
* Coaching
* Pacesetting
* Democratic
* Commanding

The authors argue that visionary, coaching, and democratic leadership styles are beneficial to an organization. But, many leaders rely upon the more tenuous pacesetting and commanding methods of leadership, which can backfire or be overdone. For example, a pacesetting, commanding leader often makes people feel irrelevant and stressed out. That makes them less effective and motivated.

And, stress isn't good personally. Quoting the authors: "When stress is high and sustained, the brain reacts with sustained cortisol secretion, which actually hampers learning by killing off brain cells in the hippocampus that are essential for new learning." (Well that [stinks]!)

However, there is hope for stressed-out leaders or followers. Quoting the authors again: "Human brains can create new neural tissue as well as new neural connections and pathways throughout adulthood."

The authors argue that most leadership training fails because it teaches the neocortex brain or the learning brain. But, leadership skills require more limbic learning. The limbic part of the brain is the more emotional part that learns via repetition and personal experience. The authors compare learning leadership to learning to play the slide guitar. You must practice good habits.

To motivate oneself to improve as a leader, the authors suggest forming an image of your ideal self, acquiring a realistic image of your present self, and then practicing behaviors (until they become automatic) that have you act more like your ideal self.

The authors argue that this is the best way to improve, because it's a positive way of seeing yourself in the future and seeing a positive goal. Plus, as you improve your EI skills, not only will your leadership skills be enhanced, but so too will your personal relationships. Don't look at your weaknesses as 'gaps' that need to be improved.

The authors write: "Emphasis on gaps often arouses the right prefrontal cortex--that is, feelings of anxiety and defensiveness. Once defensiveness sets in, it typically demotivates rather than motivates, thereby interrupting, even stopping, self-directed learning and the likelihood of change."

Focusing upon how good you can become versus fixing gaps seems akin to looking at the glass half full versus half empty, but apparently that makes all the difference.

Peter Hupalo, Author of "Thinking Like An Entrepreneur."

Click here to see more reviews for: Primal Leadership

Value Innovation - strategy book of the year 2005?

A MUST-READ FOR EVERY DECISION-MAKER WITHOUT EXPERTISE IN FINANCE.