Summary: The Heart of Change

Review and Analysis of Kotter and Cohen's Book

BusinessNews Publishing

• Verlag: Must Read Summaries
• Jahr: 2016
• ISBN:
  9782511020128
• Thema: Business
• Thema: Workplace Culture

The must-read summary of John Kotter and Dan Cohen's book: `The Heart of Change: Real-Life Stories of How People Change Their Organizations`.

This complete summary of the ideas from John Kotter and Dan Cohen's book `The Heart of Change` asks a fundamental question: `What is the most effective way to actually get organisations to make permanent changes?` Often, detailed information is gathered and then presented to staff who are encouraged to think carefully about what they are doing. Hopefully, this will then help people to change their behaviour. In their book, the authors suggest a different approach: instead of gathering exhaustive data, gather examples that illustrate what the problem is. This summary is a useful and pragmatic guide for managers and employees who want to learn a new approach to change in their organisations.

Added-value of this summary:
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To learn more, read `The Heart of Change` and discover the new way to implement change successfully.

Summary of The Heart Of Change (John Kotter and Dan Cohen)

1. The Eight Stages of Successful Large-Scale Change

Those organizations which are leaping into the future more successfully than others tend to handle eight key steps better than their peers:

1. Establish a sense of urgency.
   Organizations that handle change productively create a sense of urgency amongst the most important people. They show there is a compelling need to change and motivate these people to get into action rather than be content with the status quo.
2. Create a guiding coalition.
   Every change initiative will require leadership. The guiding coalition is the steering committee and action team combined. A credible guiding coalition will be a deft mix of people with the right skills, connections, skills and formal authority. The stronger this team is, the more likely the change will be completed successfully.
3. Develop both a vision and a strategy.
   To encourage change, the guiding team will articulate a vision of what the enterprise will be like at the end of the change process. They will also develop a set of workable strategies by which that vision can be realized.
4. Communicate the vision.
   The goal of this stage is not solely to convey the change vision and strategy but to induce understanding of the changes right throughout the organization. Deeds speak more loudly than words in this area. The most successful change programs feature direct, undiluted and repeated communication about the changes.
5. Empower employees to act.
   Productive change programs need a heavy dose of empowerment if they are to succeed. The priority here is to give people enough authority to remove all the obstacles that can arise. Empowerment from this perspective also means to provide the information systems and other resources which will be required for people to act differently in the future.
6. Generate short-term wins.
   Some short-term wins provide credibility and validation the change is worth it. The more success that is generated by short-term projects which are successful, the greater the momentum will build for the overall change program itself and the more enthusiasm that will be felt by the people involved.
7. Consolidate the gains to build momentum.
   In effective change programs, the leaders don’t let up after a few early successes. Instead, there is a deliberate effort to deliver wave after wave of additional benefits. Doing this means the requisite level of resources, attention and energy will continue to be applied to the long-term change project.
8. Anchor changes in the culture.
   Finally, good change programs make a permanent difference. The changes are made to stick by anchoring them in the culture of the organization. Over time, people will naturally continue to act in ways that are consistent with the change program.

Note the central challenge in all eight stages is to change the way people act. The key to changing behavior is to alter emotions. When the people within an organization feel differently, they are more likely to act differently. The core challenge in making successful large-scale changes is to change the emotions people feel so as to motivate different actions in the future.

“Evidence overwhelmingly suggests that the most fundamental problem in all of the stages is changing the behavior of people. Significantly changing the behavior of a single person can be exceptionally difficult. Changing 101 or 10,001 people can be a Herculean task. Yet organizations that are leaping into the future succeed at doing just that. Look carefully at how they act and you’ll find another pattern. They succeed, regardless of the stage in the overall process, because their central activity does not center on formal data gathering, analysis, report writing and presentations - the sorts of actions typically aimed at changing thinking in order to change behavior. Instead, they compellingly show people what the problems are and how to resolve the problems. They provoke responses that reduce feelings that slow and stifle needed change, and they enhance feelings that motivate useful action. The emotional reaction then provides the energy that propels people to push along the change process, no matter how great the difficulties.”

– John Kotter and Dan Cohen

“Successful see-feel-change tactics tend to be clever, not clumsy, and never cynically manipulative. They often have an afterglow, where the story of the event is told again and again or where there is a visible sign of the event that influences additional people over time. When ...