By William Seidman
It’s amazing to me how much insight into today’s organizations’ problems retired Harvard professor John Kotter had nearly fifteen years ago, when he published “Leading Change: Why Transformational Efforts Fail.” Looked at it another way – how little things have changed. One of Kotter’s most important points is that transformation is a process, not an event.
Kotter lists the biggest errors organizations make, and then the antidotes – his 8 steps to successful change.
- Create urgency
- Form a powerful guiding coalition
- Create a vision for change
- Communicate the vision
- Empower others to act on the vision by removing obstacles
- Create short-term wins
- Don’t declare victory too early; build on the change
- Anchor the changes in corporate culture
We’re very much in line with Kotter’s approach, and benefit from the addition of recent breakthroughs in the neuroscience of learning. The leaders we work with understand these now-classic 8 Steps to Change, but managers have a harder time with them. It’s our challenge to convey the importance of each step.