45 pages • 1 hour read
John P. KotterLeading Change
Nonfiction | Reference/Text Book | Adult | Published in 1988A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Part 2, Chapters 7-10Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Part 2: “The Eight-Stage Process”
Part 2, Chapter 7 Summary: “Empowering Employees for Broad-Based Action”
The fifth stage is to empower employees. Though Kotter notes that he formerly disliked the term “empowerment,” he embraces it now. Kotter identifies four elements of a firm that might hinder empowerment: organizational issues, a lack of crucial skills, personnel systems that counteract the vision, and discouraging managers. In each case, Kotter provides solutions and examples. Organizational barriers may include tasks that align with the new vision but are tedious to accomplish or involve reaching out across teams or departments; such tasks can discourage employees from using new methods and systems. Resolving this issue is a matter of responding to employee feedback, putting pressure on managers who may be dragging their feet, and reorganizing systems to allow for more fluid implementation of new methods. Employees who lack the necessary skills or knowledge to keep up with change may require training, and Kotter notes that while training may not always be needed, it can help to overcome barriers in employee performance. In situations where many employees will need to learn new methods or systems, large-scale training efforts might be necessary.
Personnel and human resources issues may include promotion criteria, specific goals and praise, or recruiting systems, all of which need to be aligned with the new vision. If employees are measured by outdated criteria, then they will not be motivated to adhere to new methods and objectives. In contrast, including elements of the vision in the guidelines for promotion will make employees more likely to adhere to those elements in their pursuit of advancement. Discouraging managers are difficult to handle, Kotter comments, because they often act as a barrier to progress by enforcing old rules or methods. Employees are not likely to confront a manager about such issues, and many higher-level managers might be reluctant to fire or discipline a discouraging manager for political or personal reasons. In such situations, Kotter recommends open discussion with the problematic manager to see if they can be convinced to adopt the vision. The problematic manager may just need assistance, either organizationally or individually, which can then turn them into an asset for the change effort.
Part 2, Chapter 8 Summary: “Generating Short-Term Wins”
The sixth stage of the eight-stage process is creating and highlighting short-term wins. Kotter notes that short-term wins need to be visible, definite, and related to the change effort. Employees and management need to see the short-term win. To be useful to the process of enacting change, the win should not allow for openings to debate its validity and should mark progress in the change effort. Short-term wins provide six key benefits: justification of struggles, rewarding those involved in change, getting feedback on methodology, undermining critics of the change effort, maintaining upper-level support, and building momentum moving into the seventh stage. In each case, the role of short-term wins is to show the company that the change process is working and is worth continued investment. Kotter uses the example of a charismatic leader who is fired four years into a change effort, the reason being that there were not enough short-term wins to justify his continued push for broad change. With consistent short-term wins, more people are likely to join the change effort, a shift that increases with the completion of the prior five stages.
Kotter emphasizes the need to plan short-term wins, noting that many companies rely on luck to provide short-term victories that will justify their change process. Though Kotter understands this perspective, he notes that a combination of strong leadership and good management can produce planned short-term wins that bolster the change effort. The pressure needed to produce such results can be beneficial as well, building additional urgency and empowering employees to contribute as much as possible. Kotter repeats the need for good management, noting how leadership tends to take a broader view of change, like the charismatic leader in the earlier example, while managers are more likely to produce short-term wins in a smaller scope.
Part 2, Chapter 9 Summary: “Consolidating Gains and Producing More Change”
Kotter cautions against early declarations of victory in a change effort. Even if top leadership knows that change is ongoing, big celebrations might lead to slack at lower levels of the movement. One of the big challenges to change, and to continuing the change process, is interdependences between groups and departments. As change continues, more interdependencies will be discovered. Kotter uses the example of reorganizing an office to illustrate this effect. In a regular office, an employee could move chairs closer to windows or replace a sofa easily. If all the objects in the office were tied to each other with rubber bands, wires, and chains, though, then moving any object would become difficult. The rubber bands, chains, and wires are the interconnected policies and procedures that become convention over time in a firm. Manufacturing might depend on research, which might depend on sales, which might depend on human resources, and these connections make change at any level more difficult. Yielding to interdependencies will halt the change effort. Accordingly, the first six stages of the eight-stage process aim to make the organization more willing to accept change.
The seventh stage of the eight-stage process is to build momentum in the change process. This momentum is achieved by reflecting on the successes so far and plotting out more tasks to work on moving forward. Kotter outlines five elements in this stage: expanding change efforts, bringing more people into the change process, maintaining leadership in senior management, bolstering leadership and management in lower levels of the process, and reducing or eliminating interdependencies that might slow change. Relying on the previous six stages, change agents must now push forward with their efforts, learning from the process thus far to inform continued momentum. As more people adopt the vision and interdependencies are mitigated, the seventh stage shifts focus to expanding and beginning even more change projects. Kotter comments that this stage could see 10 or more separate change projects occurring at the same time.
Part 2, Chapter 10 Summary: “Anchoring New Approaches in the Culture”
The eighth stage of the eight-stage process is anchoring the new change in company culture. Kotter compares changes in company culture to a new plant growing over an older plant. As long as the new plant is receiving water and the old plant is being cut back, it seems that the new plant will overtake the old. However, once these efforts stop, the old plant will reassert dominance due to its strong roots. Company culture, or the norms and shared values that govern the behavior and perception of employees, develops over time, and it can be difficult to challenge or alter. Culture is implicit and rarely discussed, but it can influence who is hired, who thrives, and who cannot function within a given organization. Because culture is hard to discuss and explain, it is a major barrier to change efforts.
In giving an example of a successful change effort, Kotter discusses a company that relied on thick policy and procedure manuals for years. The new CEO, after leading the change effort, performed a eulogy for the manuals, signaling to the company that the culture supported by those manuals was no longer the culture of their organization. Kotter notes five criteria for successfully cementing a change in company culture: This change comes after the other seven stages, relies on the results from the change process, requires frequent reinforcement, may lead to turnover, and emphasizes the importance of succession. With the first seven stages complete, yielding undeniable results ready for presentation, arguing for a change in culture is the logical next step. However, logic alone cannot anchor a change in culture, so the new culture needs to be reinforced through discussion, meetings, and official documentation. Employees who cannot adjust to the new culture may need to be let go, and choices on who will replace key figures in the company need to align with the new culture.
Part 2, Chapters 7-10 Analysis
Kotter continues to emphasize not only the content of each stage of the eight-stage process but also the importance of following the stages’ progression in order. Completing the first four “defrost” stages is key to setting organizations up for success as they enter the final four stages. That is, the initial sense of urgency established enables the organization to begin making changes and ensure that those changes remain in place. Critically, each stage involves a psychological component, an aspect especially true of the final four stages. That component includes, for example, improving the outlook of employees or cementing the vision in the company culture. Part of Kotter’s emphasis across the book is on changing the mindset of a company and its constituent employees. As in the defrost stages, in these latter stages, simply enacting new policies, buying new machinery, or reorganizing an office is insufficient to enact broad-scale change. Companies must make corresponding changes in the psychology of the workforce. Psychology, then, is a key element in The Nature and Challenges of Change, as employees and management are more likely to rely on their current mindset and experience.
The persistent nature of the status quo remains a concern even in these later stages. One “cardinal rule” Kotter expresses relates to the importance of keeping the energy for change high: “Whenever you let up before the job is done, critical momentum can be lost and regression may follow” (133). He urges readers never to underestimate the gravitational pull of the old ways of doing things. This warning thus applies to every step of the change process. In bolstering urgency, forming a coalition, developing and communicating a vision, empowering employees, generating short-term wins, building momentum, and changing the company culture, temporary successes may trick actors into relaxing or easing back on the change process. This slack opens the possibility for the change efforts to falter or for progress to backslide as employees and management slip back into old habits or ways of thinking. To cement change in the long term, the default mindset of the company needs to change to reflect the vision and the change that vision represents. Throughout these final stages, Kotter is open to more drastic changes, such as firing employees who cannot adapt to the mission or spending large sums of money on new equipment or training, all of which are worthwhile only if they can successfully change the outlook of the firm.
The Importance of Vision and Direction in Organizational Dynamics continues to meld with The Difference Between Leadership and Management in the final stages of the process as the need for sound management becomes infused with the vision of the change process. Human resources, a cornerstone of management, can be a “big challenge” for change, but Kotter notes that he is increasingly seeing human resources representatives stepping up as agents of change: “[G]utsy HR men and women [are] helping provide the leadership needed to change the system to fit a new vision” (111). In that context, it is important to note how leadership and vision combine to transform a management-focused human resources department into a powerhouse of cultural change. Namely, in discussing company culture, Kotter comments on how company culture often influences hiring practices and conditions for promotion and raises. Those factors, in turn, need to be modified in the policies and practices of human resources. Nonetheless, leadership is crucial. Kotter notes how leaders tie into the psychology of the company: “Driven by compelling visions that they find personally relevant, they are willing to stay the course to accomplish objectives that are often psychologically important to them” (144). In this assessment, he highlights how psychology, leadership, and vision combine to drive successful change projects. Leaders need a vision that overcomes both their own and their employees’ urge toward stagnation; once they have such a vision, they can use it to foster and secure organizational change. Therefore, by changing the culture of the leadership in a company and then disseminating that change through management and employees, change transcends simple changes in policy or methodology. It can thereby become a lasting, pervasive improvement across the firm.
