Leading Change: the Eight Steps to Transformation
Leading Change: The Eight Steps to Transformation by Kotter (1999)
Kotter’s article “Leading Change: The Eight Steps to Transformation� focuses his efforts on analyzing large scale changes within organization that take place over the course of 1 to 10 years. Kotter is referring to massive organizational change when he highlights his 8 most common errors in this article. He sites them as follows:
- Not Establishing enough sense of urgency
- Not creating a powerful guiding coalition
- Lack of vision
- Under communicating the vision by a factor of ten
- Not removing obstacles to the vision
- Not systematically planning and creating short term wins
- Declaring victory too soon
- Not Anchoring changes in corporations culture
It is almost out of my grasp to understand the massive organizational change that Kotter is referring to. I wish that he would have walked the reader through an example of a massive organizational change that the reader could reference. The only thing that I could compare it to was trying to create positive change on a societal level, and that only comes to mind due to my study of the Civil Rights Movement. The similarity being that Dr. King and other Civil Rights Leaders created a sense of urgency that forced our government to change by creating a law that forced people to adapt, whether they wanted to or not. This change then embedded itself as a value within American culture.
Kotter tries to walk the reader through 8 steps to success as it relates to creating change in an organization and presents it almost as a hierarchy. Step one is urgency, step two is coalition, and so on and so fourth. While creating this hierarchy as a solution to creating organizational change he contradicts himself by framing it in the context of errors. For example the first step for making change is to “not establish a sense of urgency� better framed it would be stated “establish a sense of urgency�. The answer for creating any type of change must be rooted within a positive frame of reference.
I believe that this article would more deeply impact the reader if his eight points were restated as follows:
- Establish a sense of Urgency
- Create a guiding Coalition
- Have a vision
- Over communicate the vision
- Remove obstacles to the vision
- Create short term wins
- Be patient
- Anchor the changes in the corporation’s culture
To make this list of action steps applicable to my work I would also challenge the order and restructure the steps that he suggests as follows:
Layer 1: Find people above you and below you who support this vision before you present it to the larger management team. Layer 2 Communicate this vision to your management team with the support of both people above and below you. And communicate this vision to them by creating a sense of urgency. Layer 3: Once people around you have bought into your vision create a strategic plan to remove obstacles that would prevent you from attaining this vision while also creating within it many short term wins for your staff, clients, and supervisors. Layer 4: Reward excellence, be patient because change is slow, and turn these changes into organizational values so that they will be embedded in your organizations culture.
These layers create a foundation for success while acknowledging the complex interdependent relationship of actions needed within each level of support. While I greatly support and appreciate the concepts that Kotter proposed in this reading I found it most useful when I translated them into the above model. By combing some of these steps together and framing them in a more positive light, I am more likely to use them in my workplace.
Comments
Your posting reveals you possess at least three strong capabilities of leadership that are described by Crosby & Bryson in Leadership for the Common Good: you are visionary in seeing the larger context; you know how to keep a team motivated; and you are thinking like an entrepreneur by valuing small wins.
Later tonight, I will finally post my reflection about Terry's article. He took me on an odyssey of leaderly learning, as described by Vaill, and led me to a few truths along the way.
The most profound learning I drew from Terry is the value of theory and practice in combination for effective leadership. It's as if I never really put that together before. In 25 years of work, the organizations I affiliated with were far more concerned with DOING than LEARNING. And therefore, we suffered the consequences internal to the organization and in our interaction in the world. Analyses tended toward the negative, just like Kotter's did. I, too, was uncomfortable with his word choices, but didn't think to turn them inside out like you did.
I like your list of positive rewrites, and personally do not believe anything was lost in that conversion. The negative attributes read like management to me, not leadership.
Regarding your distillation of four initiatives from the original, longer list, I believe you are emulating what Terry wants us to achieve as scholar/practitioners. Go ahead and be the better leader with your communication ability and persuasion (and maybe a better action plan), and cite Kotter as a research-based source.
I have an extra copy of Leadership for the Common Good if you'd like to borrow it. Off to caucus -- Wendy Wustenberg
Posted by: Wendy Wustenberg | February 5, 2008 06:52 PM
Wendy's comment that "the negative attributes read like management to me, not leadership" struck home for me. That closely describes how I feel about, what some call, "leading by the nose." You may be able to lead the horse to water, but making him drink is another matter. Persuading the horse to want a drink or to believe he really needs a drink provides a much different picture.
I'm not sure I would label the negative approach as "management" -- there are positive approaches to management. However, I think I know what she was getting at...I call it "powerdom". The "don't do this" paradigm tends to promote defensiveness and even manufactured stands that otherwise wouldn't surface.
I give you, as an example, the current highly charged Presidential race, with two opposite factions having strongly held convictions. Republicans telling Democrats that the act of denying an embryo (regardless of circumstances) a chance at life is murder would most likely results in throngs with fists in air, emitting all sorts of reasons why that edict is not fair to women, parent circumstances, stem cell research, etc. However, if that same Republican conviction was presented in a positive light (for example, "It's important for parent circumstances to be evaluated carefully along with healthcare professionals before decisions are made to terminate the possibility of life"), it would provide a more positive position that may avoid conflict altogether and instead construct a "meeting of the minds" or, at the very least, a reason for reflection before response.
Defensiveness is the quiet enemy to avoid. Once that demon is exposed, all bets are off for effecting positive change.
Posted by: Cheri Ptacek | February 7, 2008 11:10 PM
I agree with Bryan’s condensed realignment of Kotter’s steps. While his focus is on the corporate world, I live within the University world. The freedoms and limitations within those worlds are not the same. So while I think Kotter’s premise is sound, being in the midst of transformation, I find the revised version more representative of the processes my team and I have been moving through for the past eight months.
The limitations I’ve met most often are the result of the administration’s directive that we achieve alignment with the stated goals of the University. From the outset there are boundaries. The ability to make changes that impact the University’s culture as a whole are extremely limited. A second set of limitations falls under “Planning for and Creating Short-Term Wins�. Here again lie impenetrable boundaries – the myriad of rules and regulations that govern our ability to reward creativity and performance improvements.
That said, it is possible to turn these limitations, or barriers, to an advantage. While the mandate from the top is to achieve University wide alignment, this can serve as a core from which outward growth is possible. To mix in a bit of Terry’s influence, in a sense the structure backing the alignment requirements provides and provokes authenticity in transformation. It frees those attempting change to focus most closely on the changes over which they have control, in which they have a day to day stake. This reinforces the personal value of transformation and lends urgency to the process.
The second barrier, the employment system, loses its rigidity because the safety net inherent in the system minimizes participants’ concerns over job security and instead allows them to put their energy into the transformation process. If the rewards and recognition can rarely be financial, it behooves those charged with overseeing the transformation to find more creative ways to express appreciation and congratulations.
I particularly enjoyed Kotter’s article because it was directly applicable to my situation. I found myself thinking through the process we’ve undergone thus far and looking for ways to keep it vital and moving forward. The article provides a map, and even though I think the map needs a bit of refinement before I can use it, it is a terrific start.
Sarah W.
Posted by: Sarah Waldemar | February 11, 2008 09:43 PM