Leading Change

Change means taking people out of their comfort zone. Change is painful. Countless self-help books and score of motivational speakers would tell you to embrace change, and that change is good/what one needs to grow/ [substitute your own here]. May be, but all of that is just sugar coating. The best you can argue is probably that some change is less painful than the others. Some people have trouble changing from having two sugar in their coffee to one. You know it's good for you but it's a pain.

After studying large businesses, John P. Kotter deduced that any major organisational change must followed these 8 steps, and in sequence.

1.Establishing a sense of urgency
2.Build a group with senior management support
3.Developing a vision and strategy
4.Constantly communicate the change vision
5.Empower employee to take action, encourage employee to take calculated risk
6.Generate short-terms wins, celebrate wins to build momentum
7.Use increased credibility to propagate more change throughout the organisation
8.Don't stop. Keep pushing so the change can become a habit.

Kotter wrote that outstanding leaders takes a long term view, decades or even centuries can be meaningful time frames for major change. Some says the book is outdated. New forms of communication, and the Internet have change the way people interact with one another. I still like simplicity of the 8 processes. The problem is getting senior and middle management to buy into it. There are no shortage of company paying lip service to "empowering" employee or think communicating change as a half day training session, one time only. I do, however, believe a decade long change program is unrealistic.

Technical people hate words like vision and strategy. Weasel words like these are too easily regurgitated out when management have no idea. Kotter did a great job changing my perception by telling a story:

Three groups of people looking for a safe resting place during a rain-storm. The first leader gave order to his group to "Get Up and Follow Me, Now!", a few did. The 2nd leader provided detailed instructions for the group - stand up, march in this direction, two feet apart, stop before the tree...etc. In the 3rd group, someone tells the others: "It's going to rain. Why don't we go over there by the tree. We'll stay dry, and have fresh apples for lunch."

A vision serves 3 important purposes: to provide a clear general direction for change; to motivate people to take action in the right direction, even if its mean initial pain; to help align individuals and coordinate the actions of different people in an efficient way.

BUY THE BOOK! If your organizaiton is failing in its re-organization then read his book. He will describe in infinte deatil the correct steps that your organizational leaders must perform. He provides real life examples of success and failure.

Louis

This book is what I needed and I enjoy the book. I received fast service.

This is one of the founding titles in the field of Organizational Change Management. For those who are just entering the field, I recommend reading this book to gain a sense of what the field used to be like in the mid 1990s. It will help you to baseline your current insights and understanding about Organizational Change Management today. The book below is another must read, must understand for those just entering the field. Happy reading!

Managing Transitions: Making the Most of Change

John Kotter is a business professor at Harvard University who writes "Leading Change" as a guide to business leaders, helping them to transform their stagnant, ineffective, hierarchical companies into more effective, responsive, team-oriented ones. To help companies and leaders make this transition, he presents eight sequential steps that must be followed in order and done well.

These eight steps are:

1. Establish a sense of urgency (fight complacency)

2. Create a guiding coalition (both influential leaders and effective managers)

3. Develop a widely inspiring vision and strategy for achieving it

4. Communicate the vision, communicate the vision, and communicate the vision even more.

5. Give the employees authority to creatively experiment concerning how to best make the vision a reality

6. Make sure you point out things to celebrate as you make progress toward your goals; it rewards appropriate behavior and, besides, people need to celebrate once in a while.

7. Understand Bowen Family Systems Theory--that when you change one thing, everything else changes with it. Systemic change is difficult work that produces a whole lot of anxiety and unintended consequences.

8. Make sure that, once the changes are made, they become engrained in the new culture of he company; make them "the way we do things around here."

Kotter does get credit for being comprehensive and for being among the first to write a leadership book of this sort (copyright 1996). He appears correct in all of his arguments and this reader has difficulty finding flaws in his eight steps. He appropriately balances task-orientation and relationship-orientation and distinguishes between leading and managing. Furthermore, he is the only author I've come across that understands how Family Systems Theory plays out in an organization undergoing change.

However, the book is outdated. Newer authors like Jim Collins, John Maxwell, and Kouzes & Posner have refined Kotter's ideas and presented them in a more readable, more applicable, and more modern way (again, 1996 copyright).

Kotter limits his ideas and examples to the large, highly structured business world; other authors deliberately address leadership within smaller businesses, schools, non-profits, and other environments. Kotter writes before the internet was widely used; other books keep rapid communication advancements in mind. The obligatory quotes from people I've never heard of who praise the book say over and over again how highly readable Kotter's prose is; I found the prose dry and could cite many examples from this genre which are much more readable.

The ideas Kotter presents are not bad; in fact they're quite good and have blazed the trail for other leadership books. However, "Leading Change" could certainly use an updated edition. Other authors have taken many of Kotter's ideas, refined them, re-worked them, and present them in a manner much more helpful to a wider audience.

I neither recommend this book nor do I contest it. You would do well to read "Leading Change," but you would do better to read some of the authors listed above.