Leading Change
JOHN P. KOTTER
Reviewed by Jack
After 9/11, our business hit a speed bump, as did many others. The shake-up altered the typically positive atmosphere of our book company; at the same time, there wasn’t much we could do to fight the slowdown in the market. I brought in a consultant to introduce a change initiative that would get us all working together again. The change initiative failed to catch on, however, despite being embraced by the employees in its initial push. John Kotter’s Leading Change reveals why. A change initiative is like redirecting a river. Build a wall of rocks on the riverbed and still the water will rush around and over—and eventually through—it, determined to continue on its natural path. Thus, to change the course of a river requires constant maintenance. The payoff from this book is that Kotter shows us how to change the course of a company permanently.
Kotter named the book Leading Change because he believes that for change initiatives to succeed, a company needs leaders, not managers. In fact, he asserts that successful change requires 70 to 90 percent leadership and 10 to 30 percent management. Many organizations don’t have enough leadership bandwidth for this to work. Contemporary organizations have institutionalized management at the expense of leadership, which only adds to the change woes. Reflecting on my company’s dilemma, I can now easily see that while I knew change was imperative—and indeed, I was the one who called for it—I regarded it as a managerial mandate and didn’t realize that I needed to lead the change, to be the first to put change into action.
The book is built around “The Eight-Stage Change Process.” The first process is “Establishing a Sense of Urgency.” Sounds simple enough, but as Kotter states: “In an organization of 100 employees, at least two dozen must go far beyond the normal call of duty to produce significant change. In a firm of 100,000 employees, the same might be required of 15,000 or more.” Because my company uses open-book management, I felt that showing our employees the numbers was enough to inspire such urgency, but the numbers, nebulous “factoids” for most employees, were not enough to jolt us out of our complacency.
Kotter’s discourse on complacency reveals how the “but” in a conversation about change dooms any change initiative. His chart of ways to raise the urgency level is loaded with practical examples on how to motivate people. With suggestions that include setting targets so high that success can’t be reached by conducting business as usual, and sending more data about customer satisfaction and financial performance to more employees—especially information that demonstrates weakness vis-à-vis the competition—Kotter shows how to help people understand the seriousness of the problem management faces. I am quite aware now that I missed an opportunity to make the company’s challenges real for my employees.
“Enterprises everywhere will be presented with even more terrible hazards and wonderful opportunities, driven by the globalization of the economy along with related technology and social trends.”
“Creating the Guiding Coalition” is another process Kotter advocates, asserting that the solo CEO is destined to fail in promoting change because the initiative needs a well-rounded team for success. Kotter suggests characteristics needed for the guiding coalition: position power, expertise, credibility, and leadership, with trust and sincerity as the glue to keep the team together. He emphasizes that “[y]ou need both management and leadership skills on the guiding coalition, and they must work in tandem, teamwork style. The former keeps the whole process under control, while the latter drives the change.” In our case, I was struggling to maintain the change against the stronger current of complacency and had not created a solid team to continue the push toward making the change habitual.
As I have learned, change is easy to start, difficult to grow, and really hard to sustain over the long haul. Whether you are trying to energize a company, save a failed strategy, or reorganize teams, you’ll find value in what Kotter has done in Leading Change, presenting ways to redirect the river by providing us with sandbags and step-by-step instructions on where to place them for maximum, lasting effect. JC
Leading Change, Harvard Business School Press, Hardcover 1996, ISBN 9780875847474
WHERE TO NEXT?
Here for
how the future is all about change
Here for
a zealot’s version of change
Here to
choose your approach to change |
EVEN MORE: Our
Iceberg Is Melting by John P.
Kotter; Managing at the Speed of
Change by Daryl R. Conner;
Managing Transitions by William Bridges