Transitions at Work

Harvard Business School professor John P. Kotter outlined an eight-stage change management process in his 1996 book, Leading Change. This framework has been embraced by many as an accurate representation of the steps needed to effect major change within an organization.

COMMENTARY from D. Quinn Mills, professor emeritus, Harvard Business School, on Kotter’s change model:

Kotter’s Eight Stage Change Management Process is a useful approach. Followed carefully, it will produce good results. That said, it requires some care in application.

The eight steps aren’t of equal importance, nor should a leader spend equal amounts of time, effort and resources on each. The first stage is crucial–people must understand that there is a problem that needs to be solved, or an opportunity that it is important to seize. They must also be helped to believe, if it is true, that they will gain, not lose, from the change.

If people don’t accept the need for a change, and if they believe they are going to suffer from it, then resistance will mount and Kotter’s eight stages will need to be extended to several more, under the heading, “Overcoming resistance to change.” But if the first of Kotter’s steps is done correctly, then resistance can be avoided, and there will be no need for an extended effort to overcome resistance to change. This is the most important observation to be made about Kotter’s model– how important it is to focus on step one and get it right before moving on.

The second stage of the process reveals it as a highly political approach–not in the negative sense of politics, but in the positive–that it involves a number of people working together to accomplish a purpose. Kotter advises us to form a guiding coalition to direct the change process. It’s a coalition because he thinks we should have the various stakeholders included.

Finally, the process Kotter describes shouldn’t really be considered a management approach, per se. Instead, it’s a process for leading, not managing, change. Managerial approaches focus on clearly defining objectives, making detailed plans, setting time tables, assigning responsibilities, and monitoring progress via supervision and metrics; and finally, intervening when things are going well.

In contrast, leadership approaches focus on energizing other people to take action. Kotter’s process is a method of energizing others around a goal. Hence once a need for change is established via the first stage, then developing and communicating a vision and empowering others to act on the vision become crucial. These are leadership activities.

Why does Kotter recommend a leadership process rather than a management approach? Presumably because he thinks it is more likely to be successful. Probably that is true. Nothing is more difficult than to achieve a change in the culture of the organization (Kotter’s final stage) by using managerial methods. People have to be brought to welcoming change via leadership; since they can rarely be put in that position by direction and orders.

For information on MindEdge’s online self-paced “Leading and Managing Change” course, please click here.

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