John Kotter’s 8-Step Change Process

A Fast Guide from The Leadership Hub

Professor John Kotter was named by BusinessWeek magazine, in a poll of US managers, as ‘The Number 1 leadership and change guru’.

His 8-Step Change Process is widely used for transformational top-down change initiatives by large organizations.

“In the most successful change efforts, leaders move through eight complicated stages,” says Professor Kotter, “in which they

  1. create a sense of urgency
  2. put together a strong enough team to direct the process
  3. create an appropriate vision
  4. communicate that vision broadly
  5. empower employees to act on the vision
  6. produce sufficient short-term results to give their efforts credibility and to disempower the cynics
  7. build momentum and use that momentum to tackle tougher change problems and
  8. anchor the new behaviour in the organisational culture

“Each of these actions takes time. Step 1. alone, pushing up the level of urgency, may take months in a complacent organisation of any size. Formulating an appropriate vision or strategy may be done in weeks. But, it often requires 12 or even 24 months.

“People do create the appearance of successful change, both more quickly and more easily (through an acquisition, for example). But appearances deceive.”

Here’s a graphical representation of Kotter’s 8-step change model, with notes on each step. If you subscribe to Kotter’s model, it may be useful to print off and share with your people to help them lead major change with you

So, how do I use this model to lead change ?

Each stage of John Kotter’s 8-Step Model is explained a little more fully, with some examples, on his website called The Heart of Change. Click on the site link, . Then, once in the site, click on ‘The 8 Steps’. There are other useful examples from the book of the same name on the site, and a change insight tool you might find useful.

Further Kotter resources: Kotter’s Harvard Business Review Article Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail. Click on the link here if you wish to download. Harvard charge a few dollars for this. The article goes into the 8 Stages.

SOURCE:This Hub Fast Guide was put together for The Leadership Hub Community by Hub members Phil Dourado and Joe Espana