Kotter: Leading change
Stage |
Actions needed |
Pitfalls |
1. Establish a sense of urgency |
Must be powerful, must be a team |
Paralyzed by risk, underestimating enertia |
2. Forming a powerful guiding coalition |
Must be powerful, must be a team |
No team experience at top, leadership must be with senior line manager (don't give to HR) |
3. Create the vision |
Vision and strategy |
Too complicated or vague (5 min test) |
4. Communicate the vision |
Constant communication, find good cases/examples |
Undercommunicating, behaving in anti-ethical ways to the vision |
5. Empowering others to act on the vision |
Remove obstacles, more risk, change systems / structures |
Failing to remove powerful resistors |
6. Planning for and creating short term wins |
Plan for visible improvements, reward the employees who do them |
Leaving quick wins to chance, failing to score success in first 12-24 months |
7. Consolidating improvements and producing still more change |
Use increased credibility to change system |
Declaring victory too soon (get more data), allowing resistors to convince their troops they won |
8. Institutionalize new approaches |
Show connections between new behaviour and success - ensure leadership development |
Not creating now norms and values, promoting people who do not personify the approach |
Change when biz is good
Gather employees input |
Open discussion, let them air it out |
Analyse input |
Find themes |
Revise your values |
..and invite input again |
Identify obstacles to living them |
Look at feedback to find obstacles |
Launch initiatives to remove obstacles |
Empower |
Instead of galvanizing people through fear of failure, you have to galvanize them through hope and aspiration.
Tempered radicals
Disruptive self-expression |
Demonstrate values through language, dress, decor, behaviour |
Most personal |
Verbal Jujitsu |
Redirect negative actions to positive change (the "Sue" case) |
Variable term opportunism |
Grasp short term opportunities, plan long term opportunities. Also, share power etc with employees to brand your department |
Strategic alliance building |
Focus less on enemies, more on alliances. Don't think of opponents as enemies. |
Most public |
Organisations change in two ways: drastic action or through evolutionary adaption.Incremental changes can be so incremental that they do not merit notice - which is why they work.
Case on p 72 (canteen)
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2. Change through persuasion
Phase 1: Set the stage for acceptance |
Well in advance! Develop a bold message that provides compelling reasons to do things differently. 3rd party reports are good. |
Phase 2: Frame the turnaround plan |
Present your turnaround plan in a way that helps people interpret you ideas correctly |
Phase 3: Manage the mood |
Strike a balance of optimism and realism, make employees feel cared for (pain of layoffs, then focus on creating a world class medical facility (in their honour)) |
Phase 4: Prevent backsliding |
Provide opportunities for employees to practice desired behaviour, publicly criticize wrong behavior |
Planning it |
Page 23 has a plan |
Communicate |
Repeat, repeat, repeat, get it into all conversations. |
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Ways to stop change: |
Reason: |
A culture of "no" |
Two symptoms: a culture of analysis and criticism, and complex multi-approval decision processes. |
The show must go on |
Spending too much time on powerpoints than on the decisions. Too much form, not enough content |
The grass is always greener |
Ignore the problem, build new products. Problem doesn't go away. |
After the meeting, debate begins |
Coop meetings followed by resistance. Meddling and politics. |
Ready, aim, aim, aim... |
Analysis paralysis, too many reports, not enough decisions |
This too shall pass |
People ignore the initiative, because of failed earlier attempts. |
They did a memo for phase 2, in 3 parts. 1st section was to mollify critics and reduce fears by being positive and uplifting and laying out what would remain the same (world class etc). 2nd section set expectations for hard measures and pointed to 3rd party report. 3rd section anticipated and responded to prospective concerns, looking at past plans and their failure.
Tipping point
Break through the cognitive hurdle |
Make them experience the pain |
Sidestep the resource hurdle |
80/20 or most bang for the buck - no inflated budgets |
Jump the motivational hurdle |
Influence key influencers and the rest will follow |
Knock over the political hurdle |
Hire an oldtimer who knows the game and finds the opponents who can then be dealt with |
Manage your environment: |
Operate in and above |
Dancefloor to balcony |
Court the uncommitted |
You want the uncertain ones, they are the critical mass |
Cook the conflict |
Raise the temperature to confront hidden conflicts, lower it to prevent turmoil |
Place the work where it belongs |
PIppen case |
Manage yourself: |
Restrain your need for control and importance. Anchor yourself. |
Overall: Once the critical mass has been moved, the rest of the organisation will follow
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