Managing Change-My Take on making Kotter’s 8 Step Change Management Model Work for You

Introduction

I have been involved with numerous projects in my years of work. I had a junior role when I formerly started working in corporate Lesotho nearly 11 years ago, and the span of control as a change agent has steadily increased over the years until now, where I head company strategic projects. I say all this to point out, that the art of managing change for me has steadily changed over the years. While I still use change models and change management prescripts, I have begun to use my experiences to put a spin on them, in order to make them work for me, and help me decrease my change roll-out failures.

I decided to revisit the 8 Step model by John Kotter (1995), with specific learnings I have gained under each step. The steps have been interpreted in an earlier essay I wrote during my studies, on leading innovation and change in general.

STEP 1: Establish a sense of urgency – the need to change.

We definitely need to make the current situation in the business undesirable and begin showing people the promise of some alternate universe, one that is perceived as better for them. What I have noted is that when someone is in shock (with reference to the personal change curve by Kubler Ross), a sense of urgency can propel them into panic. So there has to be a delicate balance between forced communication from the top, and enough communication to set the tone of the change and show that there is leadership buy-in.

My advice here is, please don’t use a staff emailer. Not only is it impersonal, but we all know we don’t read the general staff emails. In-person interaction can help you gauge where people are, and whether you and your message are resonating. While I do not advocate for roadshows…regular zoom calls with affected business areas, that have a mix of emotive messaging and the actual change mechanics will go a long way.

Follow this up with individual emails, asking people to be open about what worries them about the change. This can come off as a good indication that feedback is welcome, while also acting as input into how you structure the change elements to address those fears.

STEP 2: Create a guiding coalition – with authority and credibility.

It is all about power, legitimacy and relevance. While Kotter reserved this for senior management, in your space as a junior change agent or middle manager, there needs to be a group of people who you know have the associative power to boost your own personal power and who can give you legitimacy as the change agent.

When these individuals have been identified, my advice is to delegate elements of the change effort to them. If we look at Kubler Ross’s model in particular, these people can help tremendously to rally the troops when depression sets in. They can speak the language of those affected enough to create the necessary alignment and reduce denial or frustration. Finally, they can act as feedback funnels, helping you understand the most pressing issues to address about the change to make it palatable and foster eventual acceptance. 

STEP 3: Develop a vision and strategy – a clear aim and way forward.

What I have realized is that the overall change vision can be different from the change itself. We tend to think the change(project) is the end goal and this is not the case with a change effort. HOW the project was rolled out, what resistance levels were experienced and how emotions and communication were managed are actual change goals and should be encapsulated in their own change vision.

So as an agent of change, ask yourself the following to help clarify your vision and goals

1. What is your vision for the change effort itself? In other words what does good change management practice look like for your organization?
2. What will act as your lead measures throughout the change roll-out?
3. What corrective action is available to you to change course?
4. What is the final lag measure and how will you monitor it?

Why do I ask you to shift focus from “on time, on budget, on specification?” Because frankly we don’t always make the changes. We are chosen as custodians of their role-out. While you need to know that you are moving from system x to z, you won’t know every minute detail because those decisions do not sit on your desk. What does sit on your desk are the elements of the change itself. This is why focusing on the change vision then allows you to have more control of HOW you bring things about in your organization.

STEP 4 :Communicate the change vision – promote understanding and commitment.

You have the vision for how the change will go, great! Now the job is to sell it. I remember listening to a podcast that talked about being a salesperson no matter your role and I agreed furtively. We are all salespeople of various changes. Some of us are good, and some of us require some pointers. The most important one I can give is this:

Sell change like you mean it. Like it has a personal resonance with you. It is about using inclusive words like we and not you. It is about being vulnerable to say phrases that show your own fear and uncertainty because that humanizes you. It then helps the recipients of the message to go into solution mode themselves, which is key to them owning the outcomes of the change effort.

STEP 5: Empower broad-based action – enable people to act and overcome barriers.

So we have identified our change coalition, now we need to actually give them work to do. Often, we are very attached to change initiatives as change agents, forgetting that we are not responsible for their sustained presence in the organization. The sooner we delegate authority of the change to other people with credibility, the better chances we have of the change not being labelled as “ours”. Moreover, the more we encourage many people to own the change by instituting it, the better that change will assimilate with the culture of the organization.

While I do not prescribe an exact number, I would say keep the circle relatively small for ease of aligning calendars and conducting impromptu meetings but ensure that you have voices from a varied level of organizational responsibility to avoid creating a change silo.

STEP 6: Generate short-term wins – to motivate and ensure further support.

Here is the thing, we often compound project short term wins with change management short term wins. For example, a short-term win for a project would be rolling out a new feature on time and on budget…but a change short term win could be successfully logging a change request for a system feature to be reworked, because on consultation with stakeholders, we realized it was not going to work as was originally intended.

My take is to ensure that your change short term wins are instances where people realize they are being heard and that not everything is being parked as out of scope. The more people see that this change is accommodating, the more support you will receive for the change. You can only manage to do this if you separate the change vision from the project vision because the lead measures  you cite as your change indicators repeatedly become your short-term wins that you can use to promote overall roll-out success.  

STEP 7: Consolidate gains and produce more change – maintain change momentum.

Project management professionals will probably cringe at this because it can be translated as allowing scope creep of massive proportions. However, that is not how I have come to understand this step. It is about aligning elements of change to reinforce the overall change. For example, Say we had to create a new role called analyst x because of system x rollout. We have begun building the system, perhaps we are now testing it, a complementary change that we can exploit is to advertise for the change agent role simultaneously. Why?

Because that creates in my mind (someone affected by the change) a possible universe for myself or for a colleague whose departure may result in me getting their job! It suddenly makes the change something I can personally invest in because I have attached it to my own future. So as change agents, the items on your change plan must make a compelling argument to anyone affected and should flow in such a way that they create increasing appetite not increasing anxiety.

STEP 8: Anchor new approaches in the culture – new values, attitudes and behaviors.

It is somewhat baffling that of 70% of the change initiative failures that corporates endure, we never boldly celebrate the 30% successes. But then to celebrate the successes we would have had to develop the matrix for success…something I do not think I have seen actively in my career. In general, corporate culture does not have practices that acknowledge  organizational change capacity. I am yet to see us map out our change management maturity firstly, and then actively develop change leaders or agents, with the skills we believe will minimize our change failures. Successful change still remains a shot in the dark, often compounded by successful project roll-outs, that unfortunately create tense climates when the ink on the project closure document is dry.

A question and a suggestion is this: :How do we perfect what we never measure and how do we build appetite for things we do not acknowledge? As leadership, perhaps the tone should shift to accommodate assessing, acknowledging and refining our change capacity as part of our corporate culture practices.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author Lerato Mphaka, a current MBA student, focusing on Leading  Innovation and Change in Organizations.