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John P. Kotter is currently touring Australia talking about leadership and how to successfully manage change. I was lucky enough to attend his seminar this week in Canberra. His seminar was different to others that I have attended, in that he actually engaged the audience in his discussions rather than delivering a lecture. He did this by showing short video clips of leaders in organisations in different situations and then asked the audience for their input.
John Kotter has studied many organisations and the people who run them, particularly with respect to change management initiatives. He says that the organisations he has found that are successful in managing change initiatives have used the following eight steps:
- Establishing a sense of urgency
- Forming a powerful guiding coalition
- Creating a vision
- Communicating vision
- Empowering others to act
- Planning for and creating short term wins
- Consolidating improvements and producing still more change
- Institutionalizing new approaches
While at this seminar I bought a couple of books - Our Iceberg is Melting and The Heart of Change Field Guide.
Our Iceberg is Melting is a fable about a penguin colony in Antarctica. A group penguins have lived on an iceberg for many years. Then one day one of the penguins discovers their home is threatened and almost no one listens to him. It goes into resistance to change and the type of leadership required to encourage change; particularly behavioural change. This book is full of colourful pictures of penguins (I like it already) and is easy and simple to read (it takes less than an hour) but carries a very strong message on change and what is required to ensure change occurs. You can find out more about this book at its website.
The Heart of Change Field Guide is a guide to assist people in developing questions, diagnostics and frameworks to planning change initiatives. It has a particular focus on using the eight steps listed above. You can find more about this book at the Heart of Change website.
I not only took away these books, but walked away convinced that for any change to happen successfully in an organisation you need the hearts of your employees. If you don't then you are doomed from the beginning and no great change management planning system is going to help you.
