Leading Change John P. Kotter

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Leading ChangeJohn P. Kotter

• The rate of change is not going to slow
• Down anytime soon. If anything, competition
• In most industries will probably speed up
• Even more in the next few decades.

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Leading the Change Process
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Creating Major Change
The 8 Stage Process of Creating Major Change
1. Establishing a Sense of Urgency 2. Creating a
Guiding Coalition 3. Developing a Vision
Strategy 4. Communicating the Change Vision 5.
Empowering Broad-Based Action 6. Generating
Short-Term Wins 7. Consolidating Gains
Producing More Change 8. Anchoring New Approaches
in the Culture
Source Leading Change, John P. Kotter, 1998
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Creating Major Change

• Concepts
• Create a crisis highlight major weaknesses,
  allow errors to compound
• Eliminate obvious examples of excess (company
  facilities, services,etc
• Set goals targets unrealistically high
• Distribute company-wide performance data
  highlighting deficiencies to more employees
• Force interaction with unsatisfied customers,
  suppliers, shareholders.
• Use consultants to force more relevant honest
  appraisals
• Bombard people with information on future
  opportunities, rewards for capitalize on those
  opportunities, potential lost opportunities.

Source Leading Change, John P. Kotter, 1998
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Creating Major Change

• 4 Key Characteristics of Guiding Coalition
• Positional Power Are enough key players on
  board, especially the main line managers, so
  those left out can not easily block progress?
• Expertise Are the various points of view,
  relevant to the tasks at hand, adequately
  represented so that informed, intelligent
  decisions can be made?
• Credibility Does the group have enough people,
  with good reputations, that its pronoucements
  will be taken serious by the other employees?
• Leadership Does the group include enough proven
  leaders to be able to drive the change process?

Source Leading Change, John P. Kotter, 1998
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Creating Major Change

• Characteristics of an Effective Vision
• Imaginable Conveys a picture of what the future
  will look like
• Desirable Appeals to the long-term interests of
  employees, customers, stakeholders.
• Feasible Comprises realistic, attainable goals
• Focused Is clear enough to provide guidance in
  decision making
• Flexible Is it general enough to allow
  individual initiative alternative responses in
  light of changing condition.
• Communicable Is easy to communicate, can be
  successfully explained within 5 minutes.

Source Leading Change, John P. Kotter, 1998
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Creating Major Change

• Key elements in communicating the vision
• Simplicity. All jargon technobabble must be
  eliminated.
• Metaphor, Analogy Example. A verbal picture is
  worth a thousand words.
• Multiple Forums. Big meetings small, memos,
  newspapers, formal and informal meetings.
• Repetition. Ideas sink in only after they have
  been heard many times
• Leadership by Example. Behavior by important
  people that is inconsistent with the vision
  overwhelms other forms of communication.
• Explanation of Seeming Inconsistency. Unaddressed
  inconsistencies undermine the credibility of all
  communications.
• Give Take. Two way communication is always more
  powerful and one-way communication.

Source Leading Change, John P. Kotter, 1998
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Creating Major Change

• Empowering People to Effect Change
• Communicate a sensible vision to employees.
• Make sure structures are compatible with the
  vision.
• Provide the training employees need.
• Align information and personnel systems to the
  vision.
• Confront supervisors who undercut needed change.

Source Leading Change, John P. Kotter, 1998
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Creating Major Change

1. Provides evidence that sacrifices are worth it.
2. Reward change agents.
3. Helps fine-tune vision strategies.
4. Undermine cynics and self-serving registers.
5. Keep bosses on board.
6. Build Momentum.

Source Leading Change, John P. Kotter, 1998
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Creating Major Change

• More change, not less. The guiding coalition uses
  the credibility afforded by the short-term wins
  to tackle additional and bigger change projects
• More Help. Additional people are brought in,
  promoted and developed to help with all the
  changes
• Leadership from Senior Management. Senior people
  focus on maintaining clarity of shared purpose,
  keeping urgency levels up.
• People management leadership from below. Lower
  ranks in the hierarchy provide both leadership
  management for specific projects.
• Reduction of unnecessary interdependencies. To
  make change easier in both short/long-term,
  managers identify and eliminate unnecessary
  organizational interdependencies.

Note Resistance is always waiting to reassert
itself!
Source Leading Change, John P. Kotter, 1998
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Creating Major Change

• Anchoring New Approaches in the
  Culture
• Creating better performance through customer-
  productivity oriented
• behavior, more and better leadership, more
  effective management
• Articulating the connections between new
  behavior organizational success
• Developing means to ensure leadership
  development succession

• Concepts
• Culture changes come last, not first. Most
  alteration in norms shared values come at the
  end of the transformation process
• Results matter. New approaches usually sink into
  a culture only after it is very clear that they
  work and are superior to the old methods.
• Requires a lot of talk. Without verbal
  instruction and support, people are reluctant to
  admit the validity of new practices.
• May involve turnover. Sometime the only way to
  change a culture is to change key people.
• Makes decision on succession crucial. If
  promotion processes are not changed to be
  compatible with the new practices, the old
  culture will reassert itself

Source Leading Change, John P. Kotter, 1998