Kotter's thesis is that strategies for change often fail in corporations because the changes do not alter behavior. He identifies the most common mistakes in effecting change, offering eight steps to overcoming obstacles. The eight-step process consists of establishing a sense of urgency by analyzing competition and identifying potential crises; putting together a powerful team to lead change; creating a vision; communicating the new vision, strategies, and expected behavior; removing obstacles to the change and encouraging risk taking; recognizing and rewarding short-term successes; identifying people who can implement change; and ensuring that the changes become part of the institutional culture for long-term transformation and growth. The author acknowledges that substantive change requires leadership, but not the elitist notion of leadership as a divine gift of birth granted to a few. Kotter makes a compelling case that winners will be those who outgrow their rivals. Mary Whaley

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Product Description

In Leading Change, John Kotter examines the efforts of more than 100 companies to remake themselves into better competitors. He identifies the most common mistakes leaders and managers make in attempting to create change and offers an eight-step process to overcome the obstacles and carry out the firm's agenda: establishing a greater sense of urgency, creating the guiding coalition, developing a vision and strategy, communicating the change vision, empowering others to act, creating short-term wins, consolidating gains and producing even more change, and institutionalizing new approaches in the future. This highly personal book reveals what John Kotter has seen, heard, experienced, and concluded in 25 years of working with companies to create lasting transformation.

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Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #919 in Books
• Published on: 1996-01-15
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 187 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Harvard Business School professor Kotter (A Force for Change) breaks from the mold of M.B.A. jargon-filled texts to produce a truly accessible, clear and visionary guide to the business world's buzzword for the late '90s?change. In this excellent business manual, Kotter emphasizes a comprehensive eight-step framework that can be followed by executives at all levels. Kotter advises those who would implement change to foster a sense of urgency within the organization. "A higher rate of urgency does not imply everpresent panic, anxiety, or fear. It means a state in which complacency is virtually absent." Twenty-first century business change must overcome overmanaged and underled cultures. "Because management deals mostly with the status quo and leadership deals mostly with change, in the next century we are going to have to try to become much more skilled at creating leaders." Kotter also identifies pitfalls to be avoided, like "big egos and snakes" or personalities that can undermine a successful change effort. Kotter convincingly argues for the promotion and recognition of teams rather than individuals. He aptly concludes with an emphasis on lifelong learning. "In an ever changing world, you never learn it all, even if you keep growing into your '90s." Leading Change is a useful tool for everyone from business students preparing to enter the work force to middle and senior executives faced with the widespread transformation in the corporate world. 60,000 first printing; $100,000 ad/promo; dual main selection of the Newbridge Book Club Executive Program; 20-city radio satellite tour.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
After trying an endless array of quick fixes and other panaceas, executives struggling to stay in business in a rapidly changing world are finding it necessary to consider more fundamental reasons for their lack of success. Kotter (The New Rules: A Force for Change, Free Pr., 1995) now offers a practical approach to an organized means of leading, not managing, change. He presents an eight-stage process of change with highly useful examples that show how to go about implementing it. Based on experience with numerous companies, his sound advice gets directly at reasons that organizations fail to change, reasons that concern primarily the leader. This is a solid, substantive work that goes beyond the cliches and the consultant-of-the-month's express down yet another dead-end street. With its clear demonstration of the hard work necessary to lead change, this important work stands with Michael Hammer's latest, Beyond Reengineering (see review above). Highly recommended.?Dale F. Farris, Groves, Tex.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Kotter's thesis is that strategies for change often fail in corporations because the changes do not alter behavior. He identifies the most common mistakes in effecting change, offering eight steps to overcoming obstacles. The eight-step process consists of establishing a sense of urgency by analyzing competition and identifying potential crises; putting together a powerful team to lead change; creating a vision; communicating the new vision, strategies, and expected behavior; removing obstacles to the change and encouraging risk taking; recognizing and rewarding short-term successes; identifying people who can implement change; and ensuring that the changes become part of the institutional culture for long-term transformation and growth. The author acknowledges that substantive change requires leadership, but not the elitist notion of leadership as a divine gift of birth granted to a few. Kotter makes a compelling case that winners will be those who outgrow their rivals. Mary Whaley

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Customer Reviews

Good leadership advice, but narrow and out-dated
John Kotter is a business professor at Harvard University who writes "Leading Change" as a guide to business leaders, helping them to transform their stagnant, ineffective, hierarchical companies into more effective, responsive, team-oriented ones. To help companies and leaders make this transition, he presents eight sequential steps that must be followed in order and done well.

These eight steps are:

1. Establish a sense of urgency (fight complacency)

2. Create a guiding coalition (both influential leaders and effective managers)

3. Develop a widely inspiring vision and strategy for achieving it

4. Communicate the vision, communicate the vision, and communicate the vision even more.

5. Give the employees authority to creatively experiment concerning how to best make the vision a reality

6. Make sure you point out things to celebrate as you make progress toward your goals; it rewards appropriate behavior and, besides, people need to celebrate once in a while.

7. Understand Bowen Family Systems Theory--that when you change one thing, everything else changes with it. Systemic change is difficult work that produces a whole lot of anxiety and unintended consequences.

8. Make sure that, once the changes are made, they become engrained in the new culture of he company; make them "the way we do things around here."

Kotter does get credit for being comprehensive and for being among the first to write a leadership book of this sort (copyright 1996). He appears correct in all of his arguments and this reader has difficulty finding flaws in his eight steps. He appropriately balances task-orientation and relationship-orientation and distinguishes between leading and managing. Furthermore, he is the only author I've come across that understands how Family Systems Theory plays out in an organization undergoing change.

However, the book is outdated. Newer authors like Jim Collins, John Maxwell, and Kouzes & Posner have refined Kotter's ideas and presented them in a more readable, more applicable, and more modern way (again, 1996 copyright).

Kotter limits his ideas and examples to the large, highly structured business world; other authors deliberately address leadership within smaller businesses, schools, non-profits, and other environments. Kotter writes before the internet was widely used; other books keep rapid communication advancements in mind. The obligatory quotes from people I've never heard of who praise the book say over and over again how highly readable Kotter's prose is; I found the prose dry and could cite many examples from this genre which are much more readable.

The ideas Kotter presents are not bad; in fact they're quite good and have blazed the trail for other leadership books. However, "Leading Change" could certainly use an updated edition. Other authors have taken many of Kotter's ideas, refined them, re-worked them, and present them in a manner much more helpful to a wider audience.

I neither recommend this book nor do I contest it. You would do well to read "Leading Change," but you would do better to read some of the authors listed above.

A MUST HAVE for your leadership library
Very well written book and easy to read and follow. Since change is a modern requirement for any business, it simply makes sense to focus in on what it takes to provide the necessary leadership to do so.

Excellent
This book is phenominal! An excellent guide for the leader experiencing change. If I had no other resource, this book would be enough for survival in the business world of change. Definitely worth the investment.