Leading Change - Why transformation efforts fail ?Based on the HBR article by John P Kotter

1. LEADING CHANGE
Why Transformation Efforts Fail?
By John P Kotter
Harvard Business Review March-April 1995

2. We know that the change needs to happen,
but we don’t really know how to go about
doing delivering it. Where to start? Whom
do you involve? How do you see it through
to the end?
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3. John P Kotter
“ A professor at Harvard Business School and world
renowned change expert, Kotter introduced his eight-
step change process in his 1995 book, “Leading
Change””
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4. Error #1 : Not Establishing a Great Sense of Urgency
Looking into company’s competitive / market position,
tech trends, financials
Identifying and discussing crisis, potential crisis or
major opportunities
• Underestimating how hard it can be to drive people out of their
comfort zone
• Grossly overestimating how successful they have already been in
increasing urgency
• Lack of patience
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5. “Change to be successful, 75% of a company’s management needs to “buy
into” the change; in other words, you have to work hard on.”
“If you act without preparation you could be in for a very bumpy ride”
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6. Error #2 : Not Creating a Powerful Coalition
 Assembling a group with enough power to lead the effort
 Encouraging the group to work as a team
 Can be as small as 3-5 individuals, work as a team
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7. Error #3 : Lacking a Vision
• Series of discussion : better vision emerges
• No sensible vision – transformation effort dissolves
• Complicated or blurry to be useful
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8. Error #4 : Undercommunicating the vision
• 3 patterns with respect to the communication
•Single
Communication
Transformation
Vision
• Speeches to the
employees
Head of the
Organization • Behaves in
ways that are
antithetical
Senior
Executives
• Transformation is impossible unless people are
willing to help
• Challenge : If short term sacrifices including job loss
• “Walk the Talk”
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9. Error #5 : Not Removing Obstacles to the New Vision
• Communications is never enough by itself
• Getting rid of obstacles to change
• Changing systems or structures that seriously
undermine the vision
• Encouraging risk taking and non traditional
ideas activities and actions
• Empowering others to act on the vision
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10. Error #6 : Not Systematically Planning for, and Creating
Short-Term Wins
 Planning for visible performance improvements
 Creating those improvements
 Recognizing and rewarding employees involved in
the improvements
 Planning and creating short term wins
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11. Error #7 : Declaring Victory Too Soon
• Celebrating a win is good, declaring it can be catastrophic
• Long process until changes sink deeply
• Problems starts early in the process
• Premature victory celebration that kills momentum
• Combo of change initiators and resistors that creates
premature victory celebration
• Leaders of successful efforts use the credibility afforded
by short term wins to tackle even bigger problems
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12. Error #8 : Not Anchoring Changes in the Corporation's
Culture
Conscious Attempt to show people how the new approaches,
behaviours, attitudes have helped improve the performance
Taking sufficient time to make sure that the next generation
management really does personify the new approach.
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14. Presented By
Divya Liz George
Srushti M Rao
Genevieve Dias
Pearl Vas
Nelson J