John Paul Kotter is the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus, at the Harvard Business School, an author, and the founder of Kotter International, a management consulting firm based in Seattle and Boston. He is a thought leader in business, leadership, and change.
In 2008, he co-founded Kotter International with two others, where he currently serves as Chairman. The business consultancy firm applies Kotter’s research on leadership, strategy execution, transformation, and any form of large-scale change.
Since early in his career, Kotter has received numerous awards for his thought leadership in his field from Harvard Business Review, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, Thinkers50, Global Gurus and others.
Kotter identifies 8 critical steps in a change process in his memorable article “Change Management”:
Develop a Sense of Urgency
For the planned change, it is necessary for the organisation to create a sense of necessity toward the change itself. It is then necessary to transparently explain what is happening in the marketplace and what needs to be done to maintain the position or improve it.
Build the Team that will drive the Change
Identify the “right people” who can help you on this journey (easy to say, so difficult to put in place), expand the team of people who will support the change management process as much as possible, the so-called “change agents”.
Create a Clear Vision
Remember that people need to see in a “practical manner” what you intend to do. Provide examples, use illustrations, try to get a clear picture of where you want to go. This symbolic image in literature is called “the postcard from the destination.”
Communication the Vision
It is not enough for the vision to be clear to you, it is critical to communicate it effectively to employees at all levels. This communication will need to stand out among the many communications that are made on a daily basis. That’s why it’s important to be reminded of the message frequently and sometimes forcefully.
Remove Obstacles
In this phase, you will need to publicly acknowledge the people who support the change (take care of you!), reinforcing positive behaviours. Conversely, you will also need to identify those who do not support it (the difficult part of the game) and try to understand the “reasons why”, talking about it openly and trying to solve any problems.
Create small, but immediate Successes
To keep people motivated, it’s important to design short-term goals (so-called quick wins) that have an immediate impact on visibility and results. Quick wins will help you keep the focus on change management and convince those who are still sceptical.
Don’t let up
Effective change needs time and ongoing support. If you are not satisfied with the results, then you will need to make sure that you have the time to achieve them. In this phase you will need to analyse each goal you have achieved while keeping track of what went well and what needs to be improved.
Make the Change take root
The last phase is the one that is often underestimated; however, it is essential to maintain the changes implemented in the future.
It is normal, in fact, that when you push a person to change (for example to adopt new methodologies, work in a different manner, use a new company function, etc) they will return to their original state if you don’t make sure that the change is “acquired”, that is, if you don’t internalise it as a real change within the corporate culture.