Leading Change

LEADING CHANGE: WHY TRANSFORMATION EFFORTS FAIL

John Kotter (who teaches Leadership at Harvard Business School) has made it his business to study both success and failure in change initiatives in business. "The most general lesson to be learned from the more successful cases is that the change process goes through a series of phases that, in total, usually require a considerable length of time. Skipping steps creates only the illusion of speed and never produces satisfactory

results" and "making critical mistakes in any of the phases can have a devastating impact, slowing momentum and negating hard-won gains". Kotter summarizes the eight phases as follows.

1) ESTABLISH A SENSE OF URGENCY

Talk of change typically begins with some people noticing a vulnerability in the organization. The threat of losing ground in some way sparks these people into action, and they in turn try to communicate that sense of urgency to others. Kotter notes that over half the companies he has observed have never been able to create enough urgency to prompt action. "Without motivation, people won’t help and the effort goes nowhere….

Executives underestimate how hard it can be to drive people out of their comfort zones". In the more successful cases the leadership group facilitates a frank discussion of potentially unpleasant facts: about the new competition, flat earnings, decreasing market share, or other relevant indicators. It is