However, I was told that the book focused this time more on the behavior changes of people that are needed to make change successful...and from experience, I knew that getting employees to really want to make a change makes all the difference to a successful change effort.
The book uses stories to describe how to educate and motivate others to accept change through the 8-step process. If you just look at the eight steps, they appear dry and built on well-worn cliches. Increase Urgency, Build the Guiding Team, Get the Vision Right, Communicate for Buy-In, Empower Action, Create Short-Term Wins, Don't Let Up, and Make Change Stick. Certainly, anyone that has led change can figure this out.
However, I found the stories to be very practical in describing the concept of See, Feel, Change that is needed by all employees to really embrace the change emotionally and not just logically. They have to want to change their own behaviors, not just for the project, but forever. The story I could relate to the most was "The Boss Goes to Switzerland". I have seen this happen numerous times for others and myself.
This book has practical content that can be referred to over and over again...I will use this book each time a new change initiative gets underway. Recommended for all business leaders.
In his first book Leading Change, he described eight steps people followed to produce new ways of operating. These were sequential steps that organizations utilized as they progressed through their transformation.
In The Heart of Change, Kotter takes the eight steps to a more in depth level. He interviewed over two hundred people in more than ninety organizations. Through his findings during these interviews, he developed his basis for The Heart of Change.
His main discovery is change is not strategy, structure, culture, or systems. These are all important; however, the core of real change involves people's behaviors and feelings. He states, "In highly successful change efforts, people find ways to help others see the problems or solutions in ways that influence emotions, not just through feelings that alter behaviors sufficiently to overcome all the many barriers to sensible large scale change."
As the work world becomes more and more turbulent, change happens whether we want it to or not usually at a fast paced rate. John Kotter gives some sensible strategies that can be utilized by change agents in every type of organization.
Filled with real-life stories, this book offers lots of inspiration. Perhaps the strongest anecdote is the story of an executive presentation made by a mid-level manager and an intern about revamping a wasteful purchasing process. Instead of cranking out a fancy report, the manager and intern filled a box of 424 different pairs of gloves (with attached price tags ranging from $5-$17) that the company was buying. Then they dumped the box on the boardroom table, clearly making a point that this process needed to be fixed.
The moral: Communicate change by appealing to emotions. And often, emotions are stirred by showing people, not just telling them.
A solid read.