I am a big fan of Kotter’s, 8-Step Process for Leading Change. I have seen it applied, and the system works. It should be a must read for anyone who has, or will, experience some sort of (work) change. This presentation outlines the 8-steps and key points in the process.

1. I am a big fan of Kotter’s, 8-Step Process for Leading Change. I
have seen it applied, and the system works. It should be a must
read for anyone who has, or will, experience some sort of (work)
change.
This presentation outlines the 8-steps and key points in the
process. Full details can be found on the author’s site.

2. Kotter’s 8-Step Process for Leading Change
1. Establish a Sense of Urgency
2. Form a Powerful Guiding Coalition
3. Create a Change Vision and Strategic Initiatives
4. Communicate the Vision
5. Empower Broad-Based Action
6. Generate and Celebrate Wins
7. Consolidate Gains and Produce More Change
8. Anchor New Approaches in the Culture
Source: Leading Change by John P. Kotter

3. Step 1: Establish a Sense of Urgency
Close to 50% of the companies that fail to make needed change make
their mistakes at the very beginning. Leaders may underestimate how
hard it is to drive people out of their comfort zones, or simply lack the
patience necessary to develop appropriate urgency.

4. Step 1: Establish a Sense of Urgency
Close to 50% of the companies that fail to make needed change make
their mistakes at the very beginning. Leaders may underestimate how
hard it is to drive people out of their comfort zones, or simply lack the
patience necessary to develop appropriate urgency.
Leaders who understand the importance of a sense of urgency are
good at taking the pulse of their company and determining whether the
state of the organization is:
• Complacency: It's a state where people fail to react to signs that
action must be taken, telling themselves and each other, “everything
is fine."
• False urgency: People are busy, working-working-working, but
their actions don't result in helping the business succeed in their
primary goals.
• True urgency: People are clearly focused on making real progress,
every single day.

5. Step 1: Establish a Sense of Urgency
Key Points:
• Help others feel a gut-level determination to move and win, now.
• Have open, honest and convincing dialogue about what's happening
in the industry, and with competitors.
• Develop a sense of urgency around the “need” for the change, and
get people talking. When employees are talking about the change,
the urgency can build and feed on itself.

6. You Can Fail or Succeed - Plan For It
Guaranteed to Fail:
• The problem in failed change initiatives is rarely that the case for
change is poorly thought out, or not supported with sufficient facts.
It’s that - a solid business case that has a theoretically "compelling"
rationale only appeals to people's head, and not their heart.
Guaranteed to Succeed:
• Leaders who know what they are doing will "aim for the heart." They
will connect to the deepest values of their people and inspire them to
greatness.
• They will make the business case come alive with human
experience, engage the senses, create messages that are simple
and imaginative, and call people to aspire.

7. Step 2: Build a Powerful Guiding Coalition
No one person, no matter how competent, is capable of single-
handedly: developing the right vision, communicating it to vast numbers
of people, eliminating all of the key obstacles, generate short term wins,
lead and manage dozens of change projects, and anchor new
approaches deep in an organization’s culture.

8. Step 2: Build a Powerful Guiding Coalition
No one person, no matter how competent, is capable of single-
handedly: developing the right vision, communicating it to vast numbers
of people, eliminating all of the key obstacles, generate short term wins,
lead and manage dozens of change projects, and anchor new
approaches deep in an organization’s culture.
Key Points:
• Bring together a coalition, or team, of influential people whose power
comes from a variety of sources.
• Convince people that change is necessary. This often takes strong
leadership and visible support. Managing change isn't enough - you
have to lead it.
• Once formed, your "change coalition" must have a significant level
of trust, and a shared objective. They will help build and maintain
momentum around the change; and the need for it.

9. Importance of Teams & Decision Making
In a rapidly changing world, complex organizations are forced to make
decisions more quickly and with less certainty than they would like, and
with greater sacrifice than they would prefer.
• Teams of leaders and managers, acting in concert, are the only
effective entities that can make productive decisions under these
circumstances.
• The team must develop a level of trust; this is the glue that makes
the team function well.
• Team building has to happen quickly. Typically, this occurs in an off-
site with carefully facilitated activities that allows for team members
to make connections between both hearts and minds.

10. Step 3: Create a Vision
The vision is part of a larger system that includes strategies, plans and
budgets. A good vision may demand sacrifices in order to create a
better future for everyone (e.g. employees, stakeholders).

11. Step 3: Create a Vision
The vision is part of a larger system that includes strategies, plans and
budgets. A good vision may demand sacrifices in order to create a
better future for everyone (e.g. employees, stakeholders).
Key Points:
• The vision must be focused, flexible and easy to communicate. If it
cannot be explained quickly in a way that makes intuitive sense, it
becomes useless.
• The vision must be seen as strategically feasible. To be effective, it
must take into account the current realities of the enterprise, but also
set forth goals that are truly ambitious. Great leaders know how to
make these ambitious goals look doable.

12. STEP 4: Communicate the Vision
Gaining an understanding and commitment to a new direction is never
an easy task, especially in complex organizations. Executives will use
every effective communication channel possible to broadcast the
vision. They turn boring and unread company newsletters into lively
articles about the vision. Ritualistic and tedious quarterly meetings are
turned into exciting discussions about (the change).

13. STEP 4: Communicate the Vision
Gaining an understanding and commitment to a new direction is never
an easy task, especially in complex organizations. Executives will use
every effective communication channel possible to broadcast the
vision. They turn boring and unread company newsletters into lively
articles about the vision. Ritualistic and tedious quarterly meetings are
turned into exciting discussions about (the change).
Key Points:
• Your message will have strong competition from other internal
communications, so you need to communicate it frequently,
powerfully; and embed it within everything that you do. Refer to it in
emails, in meetings, in presentations - the vision should be
communicated anywhere and everywhere.
• “Walk the Talk." What you do is far more important and than what
you say. Demonstrate the kind of behavior that you want from
others.

14. STEP 5: Empower Broad-Based Action
If you’ve followed the steps and reached this point in the change
process, you've been talking about your vision and building buy-in from
all levels of the organization. Hopefully, your staff wants to get busy and
achieve the benefits that you've been promoting. But are there
processes or structures that are getting in its way? Is anyone resisting
the change?

15. STEP 5: Empower Broad-Based Action
If you’ve followed the steps and reached this point in the change
process, you've been talking about your vision and building buy-in from
all levels of the organization. Hopefully, your staff wants to get busy and
achieve the benefits that you've been promoting. But are there
processes or structures that are getting in its way? Is anyone resisting
the change?
Actions:
• Put in place the structure for change, and continually check for
barriers to it.
• Remove obstacles. This can empower the people you need to
execute your vision, and help the change move forward.

16. Potential Barriers
• Many times the internal structures of companies are at odds with the
change vision. An organization that claims to want to be customer
focused finds its structures are fragmented. Companies that claim to
want to increase productivity and become a low-cost producer have
huge staff groups that constantly initiate costly procedures and
programs. The list is endless.
• Some employees or managers may inhibit change. They may not
actively undermine the effort, but they are simply not “wired” to go
along with what the change requires. Often enthusiastic change
agents refuse to confront these people. While that approach can
work in the early stages of a change initiative, by this step (#5) it
becomes a real problem.

17. STEP 6: Generate and Celebrate Wins
Nothing motivates more than success. Give your company a taste of
victory early in the change process. Within a short time frame (this
could be a month or a year, depending on the type of change), you'll
want to have some "quick wins" that your staff can see. Without this,
critics and negative thinkers might hurt your progress.

18. STEP 6: Generate and Celebrate Wins
Nothing motivates more than success. Give your company a taste of
victory early in the change process. Within a short time frame (this
could be a month or a year, depending on the type of change), you'll
want to have some "quick wins" that your staff can see. Without this,
critics and negative thinkers might hurt your progress.
Create short-term targets - not just one long-term goal. You want each
smaller target to be achievable, with little room for failure. Your change
team may have to work very hard to come up with these targets, but
each "win" that you produce can further motivate the entire staff.

19. STEP 6: Generate and Celebrate Wins
Wins:
• Provide evidence that the sacrifices that people are making are
paying off. This increases the sense of optimism of those who are
making the effort to change.
• Serve to reward the change agents by providing positive feedback
that boosts morale and motivation.
• Build momentum; and wins can turn neutral people into supporters,
and reluctant supporters into active helpers.
• Wins can undermine the credibility of cynics and self-serving
resistors. Clear improvements in performance make it difficult for
people to block the needed change. Likewise, wins will garner
critical support from those higher than the folks leading the change
(bosses, board, and shareholders).

20. STEP 7: Consolidate Gains & Produce More Change
Kotter argues that many change projects fail because victory is
declared too early. Real change runs deep. Quick wins are only the
beginning of what needs to be done to achieve long-term change.

21. STEP 7: Consolidate Gains & Produce More Change
Kotter argues that many change projects fail because victory is
declared too early. Real change runs deep. Quick wins are only the
beginning of what needs to be done to achieve long-term change.
Leadership is invaluable in surviving this step (#7). Instead of declaring
victory and moving on, these transformational leaders will launch more
and more projects to drive the change deeper into the organization.
They will also take the time to ensure that all the new practices are
firmly grounded in the organization’s culture. Managers, by their nature,
think in shorter timeframes. It is up to leaders to steer the course for
the long-term. Without sufficient and consistent leadership, the change
will stall, and succeeding in a rapidly changing world becomes highly
problematic.

22. STEP 7: Consolidate Gains & Produce More Change
In a successful change initiative, this is what you’ll begin to see:
• More projects being added
• Additional people being brought in to help with the changes
• Senior leadership focused on giving clarity to an aligned vision and
shared purpose
• Employees empowered at all levels to lead projects
• Reduced interdependencies between areas
• Constant effort to keep urgency high
• Consistent show of proof that the new way is working

23. STEP 8: Anchor New Approaches in the Culture
Finally, to make any change stick, it should become part of the core of
your organization. Your corporate culture often determines what gets
done, so the values behind your vision must show in day-to-day work.

24. STEP 8: Anchor New Approaches in the Culture
Finally, to make any change stick, it should become part of the core of
your organization. Your corporate culture often determines what gets
done, so the values behind your vision must show in day-to-day work.
New practices must grow deep roots in order to remain firmly planted in
the culture. Culture is composed of norms of behavior and shared
values. These social forces are incredibly strong. Every individual that
joins an organization is indoctrinated into its culture, generally without
even realizing it. Its inertia is maintained by the collective group of
employees over years and years.
Changes - whether consistent or inconsistent with the old culture - are
difficult to ingrain.

25. STEP 8: Anchor New Approaches in the Culture
Key Points:
• Make continuous efforts to ensure that the change is seen in every
aspect of your organization. This will help give it a solid place in your
organization's culture.
• It's also important that your company's leaders continue to support
the change. This includes existing staff and new leaders who are
brought in. If you lose the support of these people, you might end up
back where you started.

26. General Rules About Cultural Change
• Cultural change comes last, not first. You must be able to prove that
the new way is superior to the old.
• Success must be visible and well communicated.
• You will lose some people in the process.
• You must reinforce new norms and values with incentives and
rewards - including promotions.
• Reinforce the culture with every new employee.

27. Tradition is a powerful force. To embed change, you must
create a strong, new organizational culture. The Change Coalition
alone cannot root change in place - no matter how influential they
are. It takes the majority of the organization truly embracing the
new culture for there to be sustainable change.
Source: Leading Change by John P. Kotter

28. About Me
Even if I’m not directly involved in, or impacted by a change, I like to
observe the change “process.”
I have been a(n):
• Change Lead/Agent/Champion/Coach,
• Member of a Change Coalition,
• Impacted End User, and
• Stakeholder
I have played all of these roles, while working on a single change initiative.
As a Certified Change Lead, change is part of my job - it’s part of life.
www.jazzbi.com
www.jazzbi.wordpress.com

29. Author: John P. Kotter
Leading Change, With a New Preface by the Author
- November 6, 2012
Website