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Summary
John Kotter realizes that change breeds pain and cynicism and often ends in failure. In his 1996 bestseller, Leading Change, he laid out a revolutionary eight-step process that organizations can use to facilitate successful change. Here, he and coauthor Dan S. Cohen reveal the results of their detailed research into more than 100 organizations in the midst of pervasive change. Both exciting and instructive, these true stories are certain to strike a responsive chords in manager/readers. Solid advice for the great leap forward.

They write that those who want to promote change must appeal more to the heart than the mind.

The authors write that people change what they do because they are shown a truth that influences their feelings. This is especially so in large-scale organizational change, where you are dealing with new technologies, cultural transformation, globalization and e-business. In an age of turbulence, when you handle this reality well, the authors explain, you win.

To understand why some organizations are leaping into the future more successfully than others, the authors write that companies first need to see the flow of effective large-scale change efforts. Change is an eight-step process that few handle well. These steps are:

1. Create a sense of urgency so that people start telling each other, "Let's go, we need to change things!" In successful change efforts, the first step is making sure sufficient people act with sufficient urgency - with on-your-toes behavior that looks for opportunities and problems and energizes colleagues, that beams a sense of "let's go." Without urgency, large-scale change will not happen.
2. Pull together a guiding team powerful enough to guide a big change. The team you put together to guide change needs a sense of urgency. When there is urgency, more people want to lead, even if there is personal risk and few short-term rewards. But urgency isn't enough. Large-scale change does not happen without a powerful guiding force. A fragmented management team cannot do the job, and a hero CEO does not work either. There are not enough hours in the day for even the strongest executive to accomplish change single-handedly. Your challenge is to put together an effective guiding team.
3. Create clear, simple, uplifting visions and sets of strategies. In successful large-scale change, a well-functioning guiding team answers the questions required to produce a clear sense of direction. What change is necessary? What is our vision for the new organization? What should not be altered? What is the best way to make the vision a reality? What change strategies are unacceptably dangerous? Good answers to these questions position an organization to leap into a better future.
4. Communicate the vision through simple, heartfelt messages sent through multiple channels so that people begin to buy into the change. In successful change efforts, the visions and change strategies can't stay locked in a room with your team. They must be communicated with as many people as possible, who in turn must buy in. The goal: to get as many people as possible acting to make the vision a reality.
5. Empower people by removing obstacles to the vision. When people begin to understand and act on a change vision, you need to remove barriers in their paths. One example: Take away a pessimistic skipper and give the crew an optimistic boss. Often the biggest obstacle to change efforts is a boss - an immediate manager or someone higher in the hierarchy. Subordinates see the vision and want to help, but are effectively shut down.
6. Create short-term wins that provide momentum. Empowered people create short-term wins -- victories that nourish faith in the change effort, emotionally reward the hard workers, keep the critics at bay, and build momentum. Without early wins that are visible, timely, unambiguous and meaningful, change efforts invariably run into serious problems.
7. Maintain momentum so that wave after wave of change is possible. After the first set of short-term wins, a change effort will have direction and momentum. In successful situations, people build on this momentum to make a vision a reality by keeping urgency up and a feeling of false pride down; by eliminating unnecessary, exhausting and demoralizing work; and by not declaring victory prematurely.
8. Make change stick by nurturing a new culture. Tradition is a powerful force. Leaps into the future can slide back into the past. Change sticks only if you create a new, supportive and strong organizational culture. A supportive culture provides roots for new ways of working. Making it stick is difficult. If this challenge isn't met at the end of the change-process, enormous effort can be wasted.

Why Soundview Likes This Book
The Heart of Change reveals a new dynamic - the "see-feel-change" dynamic that fuels action by showing people potent reasons for change that spark their emotions. Built around the eight steps of change first introduced in Kotter's bestseller, Leading Change, The Heart of Change gives straight advice on successful change - and true stories of companies making change happen. Copyright (c) 2002 Soundview Executive Book Summaries

John P. Kotter is the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus at Harvard Business School and is a frequent speaker at top management meetings around the world.