Leading Change
By John P. Kotter Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA, 1996

Globalization continues to increase the pressure on organizations to reduce costs, increase productivity, improve the quality of products and services, and create new opportunities for growth. Clearly these pressures will only increase over the years ahead. Successful managers will need the skills to understand and lead change as a normal state of business.

After participating in dozens of organizational change efforts over the years such as reengineering, downsizing, quality programs, and cultural renewal projects, the author observed that failure to alter human behavior was the primary cause for these projects to routinely fail or fall short. This problem is linked to the fact that today’s leaders face different challenges than those that existed in their formative years, while “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” was a ruling motto. Change occurred incrementally and infrequently during that time giving managers little or no transformation experience to guide them in today’s global economy that simultaneously creates both hazards and opportunities. Not knowing how to deal with this new paradigm, many managers concluded that changing or changing at a faster pace was not a priority. At the same time, they ignored the increasing number of dramatically successful transformation stories published about other organizations that should have attracted their attention.

Closer examination of these successful organizations by the author revealed two common important patterns that became the foundation for the book. One is that useful change tends to be associated with a multi-stage process to create power and motivation sufficient to overwhelm all the sources of inertia running against change. The other is such a multi-stage process was never employed effectively unless it was driven by high-quality leadership.

The author analyzes eight common errors and their consequences undermining transformational efforts to create The Eight-Stage Process of Creating Major Change.

1. Establishing a Sense of Urgency
2. Creating the Guiding Coalition
3. Developing a Vision and Strategy
4. Communicating the Vision and Strategy
5. Empowering Employees for Broad-Based Action
6. Generating Short-Term Wins
7. Consolidating Gains and Producing More Change
8. Anchoring New Approaches in the Culture

The first four steps help defrost a hardened status quo, steps five through seven introduce new practices, and the last stage grounds the changes in the corporate culture to make it stick. Insight is also provided into the organization of the future and the need for leadership and lifelong learning to assist organizations in leading change rather than thinking about this in terms of managing change.

Leading Change addresses the needs of organization and individual in today’s rapidly changing business environment and the ideas presented are easily transferable to any company, large or small. It is no surprise that Professor Kotter’s book is in use as a text book for numerous MBA programs throughout the U.S. including Syracuse University. The book lists for $24.95 and can be purchased at your favorite source for books.