Leading Change - Hbr

Leading Change

The article “Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail” by John Kotter, details the necessary steps to make change a success in a company. Each step must be examined and executed. Kotter says, “Skipping steps creates only the illusion of speed and never produces a satisfying result” (2011, p. 1). The steps are necessary to make the change part of the culture.

The first phase is establishing a sense of urgency. In this phase, you are convincing a majority of your management, doing nothing is more dangerous than doing something. The second phase is empowering a guiding coalition. In this phase, the empowered team should work outside the normal day to day operations. The third phase is creating the vision. A clear concise vision of the change effort that can be communicated in under five minutes is necessary. The vision should not be too complicated or too vague.

The fourth phase is communication of the vision. The vision must be communicated by the management to the employees. This communication should flow on every media available to the company. The fifth phase is empowering others to act on the vision. In this phase, the company should encourage risk taking and remove any systems that do not line up with the vision. The sixth phase concerns planning for short term wins. Short term wins allow teams to be motivated during a long change process. The seventh phase involves producing more change. The short-term wins show the team change is possible. This allows the company to push for more change.

The final phase is making the new approach a company standard. This new change process should be part of the company’s DNA going forward. One major pitfall in this step is promoting others that do not share this new change philosophy method. These eight phases are the main errors on the path to transformation.

At my company, this change management process is not used. There are examples year after year of failed change attempts.