Kotter’s (1995) ‘eight steps to transforming your organisation’ goes a little further than the basic machine metaphor. Kotter’s eight-step model derives from analysis of his consulting practice with 100 different organizations going through change. His research highlighted eight key lessons, and he converted these into a useful eight-step model. The model addresses some of the power issues around making change happen, highlights the importance of a ‘felt need’ for change in the organization, and emphasizes the need to communicate the vision and keep communication levels extremely high throughout the process (see box).
KOTTER’S EIGHT-STEP MODEL
- Establish a sense of urgency. Discussing today’s competitive realities, looking at potential future scenarios. Increasing the ‘felt-need’ for change.
- Form a powerful guiding coalition. Assembling a powerful group of people who can work well together.
- Create a vision. Building a vision to guide the change effort together with strategies for achieving this.
- Communicate the vision. Kotter emphasizes the need to communicate at least 10 times the amount you expect to have to communicate. The vision and accompanying strategies and new behaviours needs to be communicated in a variety of different ways.
- The guiding coalition should be the first to role model new behaviours.
- Empower others to act on the vision. This step includes getting rid of obstacles to change such as unhelpful structures or systems. Allow people to experiment.
- Plan for and create short-term wins. Look for and advertise short-term visible improvements. Plan these in and reward people publicly for improvements.
- Consolidate improvements and produce still more change. Promote and reward those able to promote and work towards the vision. Energize the process of change with new projects, resources, change agents.
- Institutionalize new approaches. Ensure that everyone understands that the new behaviours lead to corporate success.
Our view
This eight-step model is one that appeals to many managers with whom we have worked. However, what it appears to encourage is an early burst of energy, followed by delegation and distance. The eight steps do not really emphasize the need for managers to follow through with as much energy on Step 7 and Step 8 as was necessary at the start. Kotter peaks early, using forceful concepts such as ‘urgency’ and ‘power’ and ‘vision’. Then after Step 5, words like ‘plan’, ‘consolidate’ and ‘institutionalize’ seem to imply a rather straightforward process that can be managed by others lower down the hierarchy. In our experience the change process is challenging and exciting and difficult all the way through.
When we work as change consultants, we use our own model of organizational change , which is based on our experiences of change, but has close parallels with Kotter’s eight steps. We prefer to model the change process as a continuous cycle rather than as a linear progression, and in our consultancy work we emphasize the importance of management attention through all phases of the process.
STOP AND THINK!
Reflect on an organizational change in which you were involved. How much planning was done at the start? What contribution did this make to the success or otherwise of the change?