Leading Change from "The Heart of Change" by John Kotter & Dan Cohen

The book digs into the core problem people face when leading change, and how to successfully deal with the challenges during the process. The main finding is that the fundamental issue is never strategy, structure, culture, or systems. These elements are important but the core of the matter is always about changing the behavior of the people, and behavior changes in a highly successful situation mostly by speaking to people’s emotions. This is true even in organizations that are very focused on analysis and quantitative measurement, even among people who think of themselves as intelligent and smart. In a highly successful change effort, people find ways to help others see the problems or solutions in ways that influence emotions, not just thought. Feeling then alter behavior sufficiently to overcome all the many barriers to sensible large scale change. The book is structured around the eight steps because this is how people experience the process. The chapters follow the flow chronologically in the manner that prior steps reinforce the others.

Stories presented reveal a core pattern associated with successful change. See, people find a problem in some stage of the change process – too many of their colleagues are behaving complacently, no one is developing a sensible strategy, too many are letting up before the strategy has been achieved. They then create dramatic, eye-catching compelling situations that help others visualize the problem or a solution to the problem. Feel, the visualization awaken feelings that facilitate useful change or ease feelings that are getting in the way. Urgency, optimism, or faith may go up. Anger, complacency, cynicism, or fear may go down.  And lastly, Change, the new feelings or reinforce new behavior sometimes very different behavior. People act much less complacently. They may try much harder to make a good vision a reality. They don’t stop before the work is done, even if the road seems long.

The following steps outlined are the Eight Steps of The Heart of Change Process.

1. Increase Urgency – This step raises a feeling of urgency so that people say “Let’s go,” making a change effort well positioned.

What Works:

• Showing others the need for change with a compelling object that they can actually see, touch, and feel
• Showing people valid and dramatic evidence from outside the organization that demonstrates that change is required
• Looking constantly for cheap and easy ways to reduce complacency
• Never underestimating how much complacency, fear, and anger exists, even in good organizations 

What does not Work:

• Focusing solely in building a rational business case, getting top management approval, and racing ahead while mostly ignoring all the feelings that are blocking change
• Ignoring a lack of urgency and jumping immediately to creating a vision and strategy
• Believing that without a crisis or burning platform you can go nowhere
• Thinking that you can do little if you’re not the head of the person

2. Build a Guiding Team – Help form a group that has the capability – membership and method of operating – to guide a very difficult change process.

What Works:

• Showing enthusiasm and commitment to help draw the right people into the group
• Modeling the trust and teamwork needed in the group
• Structuring meeting formats for the guiding team so as to minimize frustration and increase trust

What does not Work:

• Guiding change with weak task forces, single individuals, complex governance structures, or fragmented top teams
• Not confronting the situation when momentum and entrenched power centers undermine the creation of the right group
• Trying to leave out or work around the head of the unit to be changed because he or she is “hopeless”

3. Create the Right Vision – Create the right vision and strategies to guide action in all of the remaining stages of change.

What Works:

• Trying to see- literally – possible futures
• Visions that are clear that they can be articulated in one minute or written up on one page
• Visions that are moving – such as commitment to serving people
• Strategies that are bold enough to make bold visions a reality
• Paying careful attention to the strategic questions of how quickly to introduce change

What does not Work:

• Assuming the linear or logical plans and budgets alone adequately guide behavior when you’re trying to leap into the future
• Overly analytic, financially based vision exercises
• Visions of slashing costs, which can be emotionally depressing and anxiety creating
• Giving people fifty-four logical reasons why they need to create strategies that are bolder than they have ever created before.

4. Communicate for Buy-In – Communicating change visions and strategies effectively so as to create understanding and guy level buy in

What Works:

• Keeping communication simple and heartfelt, not complex and technocratic
• Doing your homework before communicating, especially to understand what people are feeling
• Speaking anxieties, confusion, anger, and distrust
• Riddling communication channels of junk so that important messages can go through
• Using new technologies to help people see the vision

What does not Work:

• Under-communicating which happens all the time
• Speaking as though you are only transferring information
• Accidentally fostering cynicism by not walking the talk

5. Empower Action – Deal effectively with obstacles that block action, especially disempowerment bosses, lack of information, the wrong performance measurement and reward systems, and lack of confidence

What Works:

• Finding individuals with change experience who can bolster people’s self confidence with we-won-you-can- too anecdotes
• Recognition and reward systems that inspire, promote optimism, and build self confidence
• Feedback that can help people make better vision –related decisions
• “Retooling” disempowering managers by giving them new jobs that clearly show the need for change

What does not Work:

• Ignoring bosses who seriously disempower their subordinates
• Solving the boss problem by taking away their power (making them scared and mad) and giving it to their subordinates
• Trying to remove all barriers once
• Giving in to your own pessimism and fears

6. Create Short –Term Wins – Produce sufficient short term wins, sufficiently fast, to energize the change helpers, enlighten the pessimist, defuse the cynics, and build momentum for the effort.

What Works:

• Early wins that come fast
• Wins that are visible as possible to many people as possible
• Wins that penetrate emotional defenses by being unambiguous
• Wins that are meaningful to others – the more deeply meaningful the better
• Early wins that speak to powerful players whose support you need and do not yet have
• Wins that can be achieved cheaply and easily, even if they seem small compared with grand vision

What does not Work:

• Launching fifty projects all at once
• Providing the first win too slowly
• Stretching the truth

7. Don’t let up – Continue with wave after wave of change, not stopping until the vision is a reality, despite seemingly intractable problems.

What Works:

• Aggressively riddling yourself of work that wears you down- tasks that were relevant in the past but not now, tasks that can be delegated
• Looking constantly for ways to keep urgency up
• Using new situations opportunistically (as in “The Street’) to launch the next wave of change
• As always – show ‘em, show ‘em

What does not Work:

• Developing a rigid four year plan (be more opportunistic)
• Convincing yourself that you’re down when you aren’t
• Convincing yourself that you can get the job done without confronting some of the more embedded bureaucratic and political behaviors
• Working so hard you physically and emotionally collapse

8. Make the change stick – Be sure the changes are embedded in the very culture of the enterprise so that the new way of operating will stick.

What Works:

• Not stopping at step 7 – it isn’t over until the changes have roots
• Using new employees orientation to compellingly show recruits what the organization really cares about
• Using the promotions process to place people who act according to the new norms into influential and visible positions
• Telling vivid stories over and over about the new organization, what does, and why it succeeds
• Making absolutely sure you have the continuity of behavior and results that help a new culture grow

What does not Work:

• Relying on a boss or compensation scheme, or anything but culture, to hold a big change in place
• Trying to change culture as the first step in the transformation process

Organizational challenges will never cease. The best evidence says that winning organizations will continue to deal with this by following the eight-step process of adaptation and transformation. The single challenge in the process is changing people’s behavior. They key to this shift is less about analysis and thinking and more about seeing and feeling.

John Kotter and Dan Cohen 2002