Leading Change

Kotter, a Harvard Business School professor, sets out an eight-stage process for organisational transformation, derived from his observation of many change efforts and his conclusion that most fail.

The eight stages are: establish a sense of urgency, which he argues is the most commonly skipped and the most consequential omission, since people will not act while the current situation feels acceptable; create a guiding coalition with enough positional power, expertise and credibility to lead the effort, because no individual can drive change alone; develop a vision and strategy that can be communicated in five minutes; communicate the vision, which he argues requires an order of magnitude more repetition than executives supply and which fails most often when leaders behave inconsistently with it; empower broad-based action by removing the structures, systems and people that block it; generate short-term wins within twelve to twenty-four months, because credibility depends on visible results before the full change arrives; consolidate gains and produce more change rather than declaring victory, which he identifies as the most common cause of reversal; and anchor the changes in the culture, which happens last rather than first.

His central insight is the sequencing. The stages must occur in order, each is skipped at a predictable cost, and the most frequent failure is declaring success at stage six.

The book has no controlled evidence and rests on Kotter's consulting observation. It has been criticised as prescriptive and top-down, and later change literature emphasises emergence and participation more. The urgency and premature victory arguments are the most durable.