Leading change - an overview of Kotter’s eight stages
Earlier this year I published a series of posts on LinkedIn looking at the eight stages of change management as described by John Kotter in his book Leading Change. My intent in this particular blog is to collate those posts into a single location for convenience sake. Reading this blog is not intended to be a replacement for reading the book, but simply a refresher, if you’ve read it before, or an appetizer if you haven’t. Since management of change is crucial to the success of any transformation effort, I encourage you to consider Kotter’s eight stage process as you plan for change.
Stage One - Establishing a sense of urgency
“Without a sense of urgency, people won’t give that extra effort that is often essential. They won’t make needed sacrifices. Instead they cling to the status quo and resist initiatives from above.”
Most people who have been involved in guiding a change management effort probably have their own favorite change “system” or “strategy.” In my opinion, John Kotter’s eight-stage process for creating change as presented in his book Leading Change is very helpful.
In Kotter’s eight-stage approach, the first stage is focused on creating a sense of urgency for change within an organization. He submits that smart and capable leaders can often overestimate their ability to drive sustainable change. But sustainable change is not a one-person initiative – it requires the active support from both leaders and front-line workers. Getting this many people to buy-in to the change journey demands reasons for change.
Identifying and addressing the reasons for complacency within the business is how a healthy sense of urgency is created. Kotter suggests several reasons why organizations might be complacent regarding change. Those reasons include the absence of a visible crisis, low performance standards, lack of external performance feedback, and senior management “happy talk” amongst others.
Many of us will be involved in change management efforts this coming year. As you begin, ask yourself if your organization/department/team has the appropriate sense of urgency to support a sustainable change initiative. If not, what can be done to generate a healthy sense of urgency without creating anxiety?
Stage Two - Creating the guiding coalition
“Individuals alone, no matter how competent or charismatic, never have all the assets needed to overcome tradition and inertia except in very small organizations. Weak committees are usually even less effective.”
What individuals in an organization are best suited to lead change?
Even the best plans can fail if they are not guided by the right people. Kotter warns against change initiatives that are led by a single charismatic leader or by ineffective committees. Both of these are futile when it comes to battling the status quo of a longstanding company culture. It turns out that the “muscle memory” of an organization is hard to change.
Kotter submits that change initiatives should be led by a team of qualified individuals. He refers to this as the “guiding coalition.” The guiding coalition should be made up of the right mix of managers and leaders. The team members should also have the right characteristics – positional power within the organization, expertise on the subject at hand, credibility at all levels of the organization, and proven leadership ability.
A team willing put their full weight of positional authority and organizational credibility into guiding a change effort that is informed by the appropriate subject matter expertise is a team well-positioned to find success leading change in an organization.
As you plan for future change initiatives, ask yourself: What does my guiding coalition look like?
Stage Three - Developing a vision and strategy
“Without an appropriate vision, a transformation effort can easily dissolve into a list of confusing, incompatible, and time-consuming projects that go in the wrong direction or nowhere at all.”
How do you align a diverse group of stakeholders to work together and achieve a goal?
Kotter submits that a vision is a critical component to motivating synchronized movement towards a common objective within an organization. He defines vision as “a picture of the future with some implicit or explicit commentary on why people should strive to create that future.”
Kotter goes on to identify three purposes for a vision:
Clarify the general direction for change
Motivate people to take action in the right direction
Help coordinate the actions of different people
Simplicity is key, but a vision should also be realistic given the circumstances surrounding the change. It should acknowledge the sacrifices required to make the change, but show why those sacrifices are worth it. A vision should also be focused, but flexible enough to adapt to changing conditions. Finally, it should be straightforward enough to communicate to others quickly.
I often work with clients who do not see their process management implementation project as “leading change.” This is a mistake. Process management efforts, except those with the most narrow of scopes, will benefit from following a proven change strategy – which includes the crafting and articulation of a clear vision.
So, what does your transformation vision look like? Can you communicate it in an understandable way in just a few minutes?
Stage Four - Communicating the change vision
“Communication comes in both words and deeds. The latter is generally the most powerful form. Nothing undermines change more than behavior by important individuals that is inconsistent with the verbal communication.”
We’ve all heard (and maybe said) this line before: “Do as I say, not as I do.” But in reality, our actions – what we “do” – are a form of “saying.” Instead of using our voice to speak, we use our time, our energy, and our influence.
When it comes to creating change within an organization, our physical speech must be closely aligned with our verbal speech. Of course there will be some disparity between what we say and what we do, but in general, there must be consistency. Without it, stakeholders in the business will quickly recognize that this change – not unlike others that came before – can be ignored until it simply disappears.
This point – leader action being inconsistent with the change vision – is one of three patterns of ineffective communication noted Kotter in Leading Change.
The other two points of failure regarding vision communication noted by Kotter are:
Low utilization of available communication channels (staff meetings, memos, newsletters, conferences, team huddles, etc.)
Small number of people assisting in communication (only one or two leaders, few middle-managers or front-line workers)
But the biggest barrier to effective vision adoption is leader action that is inconsistent with the verbal communication.
A necessary question to ask at this point: Are you expecting others to change, but are not willing to model that change for them? Where is your action inconsistent with your professed priorities? If nothing stands out right away, ask a trusted colleague for some feedback. Bolster your change efforts by aligning your actions with your change vision.
Stage Five - Empowering broad-based action
“New initiatives fail far too often when employees, even though they embrace a new vision, feel disempowered by huge obstacles in their paths.”
This stage is focused on removing the barriers that will keep the workforce from taking needed action to solidify change.
Kotter identifies four common barriers to truly empowering the workforce: Structures – Systems – Skills – Supervisors
Legacy organizational structures can be so siloed as to discourage cross-functional collaboration. When these silos prohibit or slow down needed teamwork to adopt new behaviors consistent with the change vision, they must be modified.
Kotter’s description of systems is analogous to business processes – especially HR processes. Do existing development, review, compensation, and promotion processes support the new change vision, or do they reinforce old habits? If organizations want employees to change their behavior, redesigning these key processes to encourage the new behaviors is necessary.
Few things are as frustrating for employees as being held accountable for something without being given the necessary skills (training, resources, or support) to be successful. These skills are not limited to technical areas, but can also include social and relational skills. Organizations serious about change will enable their employees with the proper skills to support the change.
Even with all of the other barriers removed, a bad supervisor can undercut adoption of change. These types of managers punish and even ridicule their direct reports for implementing the new behaviors. Supervisors like this must be identified and dealt with – sometimes that may mean moving them out of the organization. Remember – if important people are allowed to contradict the change vision by their behavior, sustainable change cannot be reasonably expected.
We all have heard the definition of insanity – doing the same thing and expecting a different result. This stage of change helps bring some sanity to the process. It is about doing the required things to achieve the desired result.
Stage Six - Generating short-term wins
“Most people won’t go on the long march unless they see compelling evidence within six to eighteen months that the journey is producing expected results.”
The executive sponsor of a change initiative I was leading several years ago told me: “Matt, you have to create time and space.”
What he meant was the stakeholders of the change initiative needed to see some short-terms wins, and that those short-term wins would create more “time and space” for me to continue implementing the change initiative. At the time, generating small wins to satisfy the stakeholders seemed like more trouble than it was worth – but the executive sponsor was right.
Looking at the sixth stage of Kotter’s change process we see this same “time and space” principle played out. Kotter comments that complex change efforts are often too long and drawn out to be successfully completed without having small victories to celebrate along the way. People simply lose interest and complacency sets in.
To protect against this, those leading the change effort must strategically plan for and achieve incremental small wins along the way. Kotter suggests that targeting small wins within six to eighteen months of the change journey is best. He also provides three characteristics of legitimate short-term wins:
They are visible. Many people in the business can see the change and judge for themselves its legitimacy.
They are unambiguous. There is little dispute over the value.
They are clearly related to the larger change effort.
Finally, Kotter draws a distinction between short-term wins and short-term gimmicks. The former are powerful tools to maintain momentum and gain traction for further change. The latter are simply manipulation tactics that will erode trust and undermine the change effort.
If you are currently leading a change effort, I encourage you to identify several visible, unambiguous, and related short-term wins that you can use to help build change momentum.
Stage Seven - Consolidating gains and producing more change
“Until changes sink down deeply into the culture, which for an entire company can take three to ten years, new approaches are fragile and subject to regression.”
When my wife and I were new parents about eight years ago, we struggled to get our newborn daughter on a regular sleep schedule. As a result, all three of us were worn out and tired. Thankfully, we had an experienced mom in our life who was able to offer us some timely tips and tricks to help us establish a healthy sleep routine for our daughter.
As this mom was walking us through some of the techniques she had found success with, she mentioned something to us that changed the way I thought about babies and sleeping. She said: “Sleep begets sleep.” In other words – the more our baby sleeps, the more she will sleep! And this Mom was right – it turns out that our newborn daughter was severely over-tired and this was keeping her from falling asleep when we put her down.
As we corrected some of our bad habits, our daughter was suddenly sleeping more often and for longer durations. We then built upon this success by establishing more defined sleep routines for her. The result was a well-rested child (and parents) who was in a much better mood during the day.
What does this have to do with organizational change? Well, simply put, change begets change. As our daughter had a better nap here and a better night of sleep there, we didn’t rest on our laurels. We used those successes to create more.
This leads us into our look at the seventh stage of generating meaningful change. In this stage Kotter warns against declaring victory too soon, losing momentum, and slipping back into the status quo. Instead he encourages the change leader to strategically use the credibility gained by the generation of short-term wins in the sixth stage to take on additional change projects that will further embed the change into organizational culture. As these additional projects are completed and new routines are established, the organization is now better positioned to maintain the change that has been made.
As you are leading change in your organization, refuse to be satisfied with the first signs of success. Yes, celebrate those wins, but also use them as a catalyst for more change. Overcoming organizational tradition and the status quo to create meaningful change will almost always require sustained success that builds upon previous wins without resting on them.
Stage Eight - Anchoring new approaches in the culture
“Changes in a work group, a division, or an entire company can come undone, even after years of effort, because the new approaches haven’t been anchored firmly in group norms and values.”
What is the culture of an organization and how can changes be firmly anchored in it? These are the questions that John Kotter seeks to answer in the eighth and final stage of change. He asserts that existing work cultures are so powerful that even after years of a new practice being implemented, old habits and norms can take over and render the change null and void.
So what is organizational culture? Kotter describes culture as “norms of behavior and shared values among a group of people.” Essentially, a work culture is defined by patterns of group behavior and the common concerns and goals that drive that behavior. Organizational culture is the invisible force that underlies everything that goes on in a business from the hiring of new candidates, to strategy development, to training programs.
Kotter goes on to explain why the culture of an organization is so powerful:
Because of the culture’s influence on hiring and training practices
Because it culminates in the action of hundreds or thousands of people
Because it exerts itself without much (or any) conscious intent, making it difficult to challenge
So how can we attempt to anchor new practices in a culture if that culture is so powerful and nearly impossible to put our finger on? Well, Kotter suggests that we must be intentional about showing how new behaviors and attitudes (our new practices) have directly improved work performance. Secondly, we must take sufficient time to ensure that promotion criteria and succession planning are in line with the change vision.
As employees see the clear benefits of the new practices, they will be more likely to persevere in them. Also, as individuals who clearly personify the new practices step into leadership and management roles, the changes will have strong support from the top of the organization. Essentially, anchoring new approaches into the work culture requires a bottom-up and top-down approach.
I hope this blog post has encouraged you in your own change management journey. If you have not already, I suggest you pick up Kotter’s book Leading Change, give it a read, and put it into practice. I am sure you will find some value in it.
