Product Description

John Kotter's international bestseller Leading Change struck a powerful chord with legions of managers everywhere. It acknowledged the cynicism, pain, and fear they faced in implementing large-scale change-but also armed them with an eight-step plan of action for leaping boldly forward in a turbulent world.

Now, Kotter and coauthor Dan S. Cohen delve deeper into the subject of change to get to the heart of how change actually happens. Through compelling, real-life stories from people in the trenches, in all kinds of organizations, the authors attack the fundamental problem that underlies every major transformation: How do you go beyond simply getting your message across to truly changing people's behavior?

Based on interviews within over 100 organizations in the midst of large-scale change, The Heart of Change delivers the simple yet provocative answer to this question, forever altering the way organizations and individuals approach change. While most companies believe change happens by making people think differently, Kotter and Cohen say the key lies in making them feel differently. They introduce a new dynamic-"see-feel-change"-that fuels action by showing people potent reasons for change that spark their emotions.

Organized around the revolutionary eight-step change process introduced in Leading Change, this story-driven book shows how the best change leaders use not just reports or analysis, but gloves, video cameras, airplanes, office design, and other concrete elements to impel people toward positive action. The authors reveal how this appeal to the heart-over the mind-motivates people to overcome even daunting obstacles to change and produce breathtaking results.

For individuals in every walk of life and companies in every stage of change, this compact, no-nonsense book captures the heart-and the how-of successful change.

John P. Kotter, world-renowned expert on leadership at the Harvard Business School, is the author of many books, including the award-winning, best-selling Leading Change. Dan S. Cohen is a Principal with Deloitte Consulting LLC.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #3144 in Books
• Published on: 2002-08-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 190 pages

Amazon.com
The Heart of Change is the follow-up to John Kotter's enormously popular book Leading Change, in which he outlines a framework for implementing change that sidesteps many of the pitfalls common to organizations looking to turn themselves around. The essence of Kotter's message is this: the reason so many change initiatives fail is that they rely too much on "data gathering, analysis, report writing, and presentations" instead of a more creative approach aimed at grabbing the "feelings that motivate useful action." In The Heart of Change, Kotter, with the help of Dan Cohen, a partner at Deloitte Consulting, shows how his eight-step approach has worked at over 100 organizations. In just about every case, change happened because the players were led to "see" and "feel" the change. In one example, a sales representative underscores a sense of urgency to change a manufacturing process by showing a videotaped interview with an unhappy customer; in another, a purchasing manager makes his point to senior management about corporate waste by displaying on the company's boardroom table the 424 different kinds of gloves that the company had procured through different vendors at vastly different prices. Well written and loaded with real-life examples and practical advice, The Heart of Change towers over other change-management titles. Managers and employees at organizations both big and small will find much to draw from. Highly recommended. --Harry C. Edwards

From Publishers Weekly
"Never underestimate the power of a good story," Kotter and Cohen testify in this highly readable sequel to Kotter's groundbreaking Leading Change. Practicing what they preach, they have culled, from hundreds of interviews conducted by Deloitte Consulting, the 34 most instructive and vivid accounts of companies undergoing large-scale change. With chapters organized by each of the eight stages of change Kotter identified in his 1996 bestseller, the authors deftly contrast success stories with fumbles, then utilize the compare-and-contrast format for lively "how-to/how-not-to" discussion. Throughout, they pepper their discussion with arresting (and quotable) aphorisms, such as "Dying will not help" and "Honesty always trumps propaganda," to ensure that readers remain on task, engaged and awake. Viewed in stages with concrete examples and convenient end-of-chapter summaries, the challenges and opportunities of the change process emerge in sharp relief. Kotter and Cohen demonstrate the critical difference that focus, faith, leadership, commitment and creativity make in winning employees' hearts, offering good stories that truly apply to each topic. "The single biggest challenge in the process is changing people's behavior," they insist, while providing convincing evidence (as well as examples of the effectiveness of videos and creative visual displays) that their method of "see-feel-change" will enable a company to overcome resistance lurking in its midst.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Prolific author and change management expert Kotter (emeritus, Harvard Business Sch.) and consultant Cohen join forces in this timely update to Kotter's successful Leading Change (1996), which set the standard for books on the subject. This earlier work revealed why efforts at change so often end in failure and outlined the eight critical steps needed to turn things around. Having researched more than 100 organizations in the midst of major changes, Kotter and Cohen now reveal the core problems people face at each of these eight stages and provide straightforward solutions. Their main finding is that the central issue concerns not structure or systems but changing the behavior of people. An overview of how people see and meet change is followed by chapters on the steps to successful, large-scale change, including increasing urgency, building a guiding team, getting the vision right, communicating for buy-in, empowering action, creating short-term wins, and persistence. The inclusion of many firsthand, personal stories from people involved in change efforts makes this a useful book for any organization. Highly recommended for all academic libraries supporting business curricula. Dale Farris, Groves, TX
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

Fantastic
A very well written book on how to lead change in your organization (or family) taking into account how others will react.

Change Management
This is a must read for any executive facing a large initiative requiring changing the way people do their jobs. Book provides application instead of theories found in most texts.

An examination of "the centrality of emotion" when leading change

This book was first published in 2002 and I recently re-read it, curious to know how well John Kotter's core concepts have held up since then. My conclusion? Very well indeed. The Heart of Change is in several respects a sequel to Kotter's previously published classic, Leading Change, in which he observes that "Over the past decade, I have watched more than a hundred companies try to remake themselves into significantly better competitors...Their efforts have gone under many banners: total quality management, reengineering, right-sizing, restructuring, cultural change, and turnaround. But in almost every case the basic goal has been the same: to make fundamental changes in how business is conducted in order to help cope with a new, more challenging market environment. A few of these corporate change efforts have been very successful. A few have been utter failures. Most fall somewhere in between, with a distinct tilt toward the lower end of the scale. The lessons that can be drawn are interesting and will probably be relevant to even more organizations in the increasingly competitive business environment of the coming decade."

Whereas in Leading Change Kotter examines the eight steps people tend to follow to produce new ways of operating, in this volume he and Dan Cohen examine "the core problem people face in all of those steps, and how to successfully deal with the problem." And the central issue is never strategy, structure, culture, or systems. "All these elements, and others, are important. But the core of the matter is always about changing the behavior of people, and behavior change happens in highly successful situations mostly by speaking to people's feelings." (Those who do that effectively have what Daniel Goleman characterizes as "emotional intelligence.") Kotter and Cohen structure this book around the eight steps "because that is how people experience the process. There is a flow in a successful change effort, and the chapters follow that flow."

They duly acknowledge the importance of clear thinking to large-scale change when selecting a strategy, locating information and then determining what to do with it, selecting possibilities for short-term achievements (i.e. picking "low-hanging fruit"), and formulating periodic progress reports. That said, I agree with Kotter and Cohen that effective leaders are sensitive to the emotions that undermine change (e.g. false pride, pessimism, cynicism, insecurity, and fear of the unknown), and they find ways to reduce those feelings.

Effective leaders are also sensitive to the emotions that facilitate change (e.g. faith, trust, optimism, reality-based pride, enthusiasm), and they find ways to nourish and enhance those feelings. Most important of all, effective leaders master the "See-Feel-Change" approach: They help others to recognize a problem or a solution to a problem, then help them to visualize it as concretely as possible, anchored in human terms, so that they will be emotionally committed to the given change initiatives. Kotter and Cohen devote a separate chapter to each of the eight steps, explaining with a series of real-life stories how various people changed their organizations and how others can change theirs. John Kotter and Dan Cohen understand, of course, that change initiatives inevitably encounter resistance. However, they have demonstrated in their book that almost anyone can help give direction to, or energize, at least a part of one the eight steps. "We need more of these people, and there is no reason we cannot have more. We need more people doing what they already do, but better - and there is no reason why that also is not possible." I agree.