Kotter'S Eight Steps To Effective Change Management

KOTTER’s EIGHT STEPS TO EFFECTIVE CHANGE MANAGEMENT
Over decades, Dr. Kotter observed the behavior and results of organizations and leaders at all levels
when they were trying to transform or execute their strategies. He identified and extracted the
success factors and combined them into a methodology, the 8-Step Process.
1. Establish a Sense of Urgency.Those who are most successful at significant change begin
their work by creating a sense of urgency among relevant people. Too much complacency,
fear or anger, all three can undermine change. A sense of urgency, developed by creative
means, gets people off the couch, out of a bunker, and ready to move.
2. Build the Guiding Coalition (team). With urgency turned up, more successful change agents
pull together a guiding team with credibility, skills, connections, reputations, and formal
authority required to provide change leadership. This group learns to operate, as all good
teams, with trust and commitment.Less successful rely on weak task forces and committees,
or complex governance structures, all without the stature and skills and power to do the job; ill
equipped to produce needed change.
3. Get the Vision Right (develop vision and strategy).Guiding team creates sensible, clear,
simple, uplifting vision and strategies. In less successful cases, there are only detailed plans
and budgets that are insufficient, or a vision that is not very sensible in light of what is
happening in world and in the enterprise. In unsuccessful cases, strategies are often too slow
and cautious for a faster-moving world.
4. Communicate for Buy-In (commitment, enlist volunteers).Communication of the vision and

strategies comes next—simple, heartfelt messages sent through many unclogged channels.
Goal is to induce understanding, develop a commitment, and liberate more energy. Here,
deeds are often more important than words. Symbols speak loudly. Repetition is key.In the
less successful cases, there is too little effective communication, or people hear words but
don’t accept them. People under-communicate or poorly communicate all the time without
recognizing their error.
5. Empower Action. Key obstacles that stop people from acting on the vision are
removed.Change leaders focus on bosses who dis-empower, on inadequate information and
information systems, and on self-confidence barriers in people’s minds. In less successful
situations, people are often left to defend themselves despite barriers all around. So
frustration grows, and change is undermined.
6. Create Short-Term Wins.With empowered people working on the vision, in cases of great
success those people are helped to produce short-term wins.The wins are critical. They
provide credibility, resources, and momentum to the overall effort.In other cases, wins come
slowly, less visibly, speak less to what people value, and have ambiguity as to whether they
really are successes.Without a well-managed process, careful selection of initial projects, and
fast enough successes, the cynics and skeptics can sink any effort.
7. Don't Let Up (consolidate gains, sustain acceleration). Change leaders don’t let up.
Momentum builds after the first wins. Early changes are consolidated. People shrewdly choose
what to tackle next, then create wave after wave of change until the vision is a reality. In less
successful cases, people try to do too much at once. They unwittingly quit too soon. They let
momentum slip to the point where they find themselves hopelessly bogged down.
8. Make Change Stick (anchoring new approaches in culture, institute change).Change

leaders make change stick by nurturing a new culture. A new culture—group norms and
shared values—develops through consistency of successful action over a sufficient period of
time. Here, appropriate promotions and skillful new employee orientation can make a big
difference.In other cases, changes float fragile on the surface. A great deal of work can be
blown away by the winds of tradition in a remarkably short period of time.
FLOW OF CHANGE
Evidence overwhelmingly suggests that fundamental problem in all stages is changing the
behavior of people.Core issue in step 1 is the behavior of people who are ignoring how the
world is changing, who are frozen in terror by the problems they see, or who do little but bitterly
complain.In step 2, the issue is the behavior of those in a position to guide change—especially
regarding trust and commitment.In step 3, core challenge is for people to start acting in a way
that will create sensible visions and strategies. For people who know how to plan but have
never devised a winning change vision, this behavior change is very big.In step 4, the issue is
getting sufficient people to buy into the vision via communication. In step 5, it’s acting on that
communication—which for some employees will mean doing their jobs in radically new ways.
And so on throughout the process.
Significantly changing the behavior of a single person can be exceptionally difficult work.
Changing 101 or 10,001 people can be a Herculean task. Yet organizations that are leaping
into the future succeed doing that. They succeed because their central activity does not center
on data gathering, report writing & presentations. Instead, they compellingly show people what
the problems are and how to resolve them.They provoke responses that reduce feelings that
slow and stifle needed change, and they motivate action. Motivation provides energy that
propels people to push along the change process, no matter how great the difficulties.

Kotter'S Eight Steps To Effective Change Management

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KOTTER’s EIGHT STEPS TO EFFECTIVE CHANGE MANAGEMENT

4. Communicate for Buy-In (commitment, enlist volunteers).Communication of the vision and

8. Make Change Stick (anchoring new approaches in culture, institute change).Change

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