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Meet the MasterMinds: John Kotter on How Change Is Changing

Harvard Business School Professor, John Kotter, is an expert on leadership and change. He’s the author of fifteen books, including Leading Change, The Heart of Change, Matsushita Leadership, Power and Influence, and his latest, Our Iceberg Is Melting.

Rated the number one "leadership guru" in America by Business Week magazine, Kotter is the premier voice on how the best organizations actually "do" change. We ask Kotter about his new book and about how consultants can play a productive role in leading organization change.

McLaughlin: Based on your observations, how has organizational change changed?

Kotter: The good news is that most organizations have gotten better at managing and guiding change. The bad news is that the world is changing faster than organizations are getting better at it, and the gap may be growing.

The data overwhelming show that the rate of change is increasing, though not everywhere, not at the same speed, and not linearly. Many organizations just can’t keep up with the speed of change.

The notion that change comes in waves and will slow down may be true over a millennium or two. But within the timeframe most of us must deal with, that is, one to ten or fifteen years, the rate of change is just going up and up.

McLaughlin: So to continue improving capability for change, where do you think organizations and leaders should focus their efforts?

Kotter: Everywhere—they need to get better at all of the eight steps that I identified for successful change: they must create a sense of urgency; build guiding teams; get the vision right; communicate for buy-in; empower action; produce short-term wins; never let up; and make change stick.

Without an organization-wide sense of urgency, it’s like trying to build a pyramid on a foundation of empty shoeboxes.

That formula has proven to be both a good way to conceptualize the process and a useful action plan. People make mistakes in all eight steps but, in particular, I think that more attention should be paid to the front end of the change process.

McLaughlin: You mean on creating a sense of urgency?

Kotter: Yes. If there is one place to focus, for most organizations most of the time, it’s getting better at convincing people that they are facing a dire problem and must do something about it.

People often say to me “Oh, no, no, lack of urgency is not an issue—our people understand how important it is to solve this problem. We’re beyond that.”

So instead of working on the sense of urgency, they want to talk about the team or, more likely, they want to talk about communicating the vision for the future. They want to skip to step four.

The trouble is, when I talk to people two levels down in the organization, I discover that the sense of urgency is about one-fifth of what it should be.

Yes, some people recognize the immediacy of the problem. Not everybody—some people go deeply into denial. But when you ask the ones who do see the problem clearly to elaborate, they point to somebody else. Therefore, their personal sense of urgency is often zero.

The people at the top may think there’s plenty sense of urgency, yet if you dig down into the organization, you discover it’s not nearly what it needs to be to sustain change through the whole process.

People don’t want to hear that, by the way. Managers come to me all the time and describe their two-year change efforts. I listen and ask do you want to hear what I think? I then say your problem is back at the beginning. Who wants to hear that? 

Maybe they’ve been working on the project for a year or two. They think they’re way down the road and want to talk about getting more short-term wins. Without an organization-wide sense of urgency, it’s like trying to build a pyramid on a foundation of empty shoeboxes.

McLaughlin: What’s your sense of the most effective way to use outside help—consultants and other service providers—to facilitate change?

Kotter: Number one, pick competent outside help, which is to say they’re good at whatever issue you’re facing. If you are working on change, find someone who really understands that. Second, listen to their advice.

It’s also important to help clients understand how consultants can help them—as opposed to you helping them and then discovering that they are not competent to use the help.

You can end up in this ridiculous situation where you throw a life buoy over the railing to a drowning client who picks it up and throws it back at you. In some cases, helping clients understand better how to use you is not easy. In extreme cases, it may be impossible.

The point for a client is that just because you have an issue that you think outsiders can help you address doesn’t mean you know how to make that outside help work well for your organization.

McLaughlin: During the change process, how can a leader maintain momentum in the face of disruptive organizational restructurings such as layoffs or redeployments?

Kotter: The ultimate way to help people believe in what you are doing is not words, but deeds. Fear is an inherent part of change, even when you do it well. So fear will be a factor when you start to change an organization, although not necessarily for everybody or to the same degree.

Now if you treat fear as a step four problem—communication of the vision—you’ll work harder to send your people the message that there is a better future and this is the right way to get there. If people are fearful about change, though, and the only aspect you improve is communication, you will probably fail.

Again, it’s about deeds: Every time you do something well, fear goes down because credibility goes up.

For example, if you do step two well—you put together a great team of people who look like they know what they’re doing—the fear level will go down because people will think “Maybe there’s a chance that they can pull this off and I’m not going to be pushed off a cliff after all.”

It’s the same for every step in the process. When people see it being done right, their fear level quite rationally goes down and their conviction grows that the plan can work. Skepticism on the intellectual side and fear on the emotional both go down. The probability that they will step forward to help and initiate in useful ways goes up.

If people are fearful about change, though, and the only aspect you improve is communication, you will probably fail.

People do resist change because they’re afraid. But they also resist change if they perceive that it’s being done stupidly. If you can get them to understand how they can play a constructive part, sometimes it’s amazing what happens.

McLaughlin: The fable format of your latest book, Our Iceberg Is Melting, is a departure from your past writing style. Why did you choose that format and how was it to write that way?

Kotter: Well, the answer to the last part is the easiest—it was enormous fun. It’s the most fun thing I’ve done.

Ten years ago, if you had asked me about fables as a genre for teaching about organizations, management, or life, I would have said that’s not a good approach. I would have said that maybe some people learn from them, but I don’t personally find them very helpful. I’m what you’d call an empiricist, which makes it all the more remarkable that I would end up writing a fable.

About five years ago, I talked to a terrific leader who told me, in a very nice way, that he wished more of his people would read my book, Leading Change, but he knew they wouldn’t. He pointed out that a lot of people just don’t read business books and articles. And when they do, they want it in five or ten pages. He said that he had vice presidents who were intimidated, not just by footnotes or long words, but by a graph or chart, and they’ll never admit it.

What I heard from him and other leaders was that change initiatives would be more effective if people at all levels of the organization really understood the process. But a standard business book is not always the right tool for that.

A fable seemed like a great way to reach more people. Researchers and experts tell us that the brain is hardwired to accept stories because that’s how it developed over time. After all, before we had books and classrooms, people learned through verbal stories and pictures.

Also, stories have emotional glue on them. They flow into the brain without getting rejected, they stick easily, and anything that was connected to them sticks too.

McLaughlin: If you were discussing a change initiative with somebody who was just getting started, what one piece of advice would you give that person?

Kotter: Most of the time, if you want something to change, you want to get on with it quickly. There is a problem, the boss wants it fixed, and so you feel pressure and also just an instinct—let’s go.

I’d say before you start racing down the track, make sure you know something about what running is all about, what running shoes are best, where there might be pitfalls on the track, and why some people win or lose races.

I’m not saying you should sit around and study it for three years. Speed is important, increasingly so. But pause and learn about what does and doesn’t work and the typical problems people run into that you can avoid. If you get that knowledge upfront, it can save you great grief and money later on.

McLaughlin: Thanks very much for your time.

You can find out more about Professor Kotter at www.johnkotter.com.