Kotter's '8 Keys to Change Management'
They say constant change is here to stay. The world is changing fast and we need to adapt to change and adopt new ways of working, thinking and doing business to keep ahead of the game. Kotter's 8 Keys to Change Management will give you some great insight into creating change within your organisation.
This is one method of managing change and changing mindsets in your organisation. This approach emphasises the importance of sequence and of leading as well as managing. Kotter identifies the following stages of managing change effectively:
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Establishing a sense of urgency
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Creating the 'Guiding Coalition'
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Developing a vision and strategy
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Communicating the change vision
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Empowering broad-based action
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Generating short term wins
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Consolidating gains and producing more change
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Anchoring new approaches in the culture
Stage One: Establishing a sense of urgency
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Examine the market and competitive realities
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Identify and discuss crises and competitive realities
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Identify the areas of complacency
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Diagnosis of what needs to be done
Stage Two: Creating the 'Guiding Coalition'
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Put together a group with enough power to lead the change
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When putting the group together, look at who has sufficient influence to ensure people engage with the process. Who has the knowledge to ensure the process is effective?
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Who has the authority to make change happen?
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Get the group to work together like a team
Stage Three: Developing a Vision and Strategy
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Create an effective vision to help direct the change effort
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Develop strategies for achieving the vision
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An effective vision: Conveys a picture of what the future will look like and appeals to the long term interests of employees and stakeholders.
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An effective strategy: contains realstic and attainable goals, is clear enough to provide guidance in decision making, is flexible enough to allow individual and alternative
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responses to change in conditions and is easy to communicate within five minutes.
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A clearly defined, staged strategy should be developed by the change team, which includes SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Resources, Timebound).
Stage Four: Communicating the Change Vision
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Use every vehicle possible to constantly communicate the new vision and strategies
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Having the guiding coalition role-model the behaviour expected of employees
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Communication - two way, consultative, KIS
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Using appropriate methods
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Repeat, Repeat, Repeat
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Communicate short term wins
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Make sure information, skills and insights are shared, so that trust is built up, generating commitment rather than compliance
Stage Five: Empowering Broad-based Action
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Get rid of obstacles
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Changing systems or structures that undermine the change vision
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Encouraging risk-taking and non-traditional ideas, activities and actions
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Implementation Strategies: monitor the plan, confront problems, make necessary adjustments, maintain good leadership, be accessible
Stage Six: Generating Short Term Wins
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Plan for visible improvements in performance, or 'wins'
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Create those 'wins'
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Visibly reward and recognise the people who made the 'wins' possible
Stage Seven: Consolidating gains and producing more change
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Used increased credibility to change all systems, structures and policies that don't fit together and don't fit the transformation vision
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Hiring, promoting and developing people who can implement the change vision
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Reinvigorating the process with new projects, themes and change agents
Stage Eight: Anchoring new approaches in the culture
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Creating better performance through customer and product-oriented behaviour, more and better leadership and more effective management
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Articulating, the connections between behaviours and organisational success
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Developing means to ensure leadership development and succession
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Comes last, not first: most alterations in norms and shared values come at the end of the change process
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Depends on results: new approaches sink into culture only after it's very clear they work and are superior to the old methods
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Requires a lot of talk: without verbal instruction and support, people are often reluctant to admit the viability of the new practices
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May involve turnover: sometimes the only way to change a culture is to change key poeple
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Make decisions on succession: if promnotion processes are not changed to be compatible with the new processes, the old culture will reassert iteslf.