I’m doing research for something and I was encouraged to look deeper into “change management.” It’s a management trend that’s been trending for a long time. I remember back in the 1990s hearing at almost every turn “change is the new norm.” Now, that encouragement I was given was more toward looking to the internet but I like books first. Mr. Kotter seems to be thechange management guru, and the title of this is about leading and not managing, so it seems a good starting point.

This book is both dated (1996 original pub, and this, the second edition, 2012), and still relevant: “The simple insight that management is not leadership (chapter 2) is better understood today, but not nearly as well as is needed.”

Kotter starts out with identifying eight common mistakes of organizational change. I noted of the first four:
“Error #1: Allowing Too Much Complacency”
{Organizations that rest on their laurels get left behind}
“Error #2: Failing to Create a Sufficiently Powerful Guiding Coalition”
{This is wordy, and loses its impact}
“Error #3: Underestimating the Power of Vision”
{Of the first three, I don't think this is as common. If anything, "vision" is overestimated, and overused.}
“Error #4: Undercommunicating the Vision by a Factor of 10 (or 100 or Even 1,000)”
{Okay, this aspect of vision is quite true. Overall, for any changes - even ones where the concepts are socialized well - there will be some. missing communication.}

He says “Normally, people skip steps because they are feeling pressures to produce.” I wonder if people might skip sections of this because it is can be a bit academic. Still, there is a lot of value in this.

Curated notes and highlights:

“With a strong emphasis on management but not leadership, bureaucracy and an inward focus take over.”
{Ouch. And spot on.}

“After a while, one might easily conclude that the kind of leadership that is so critical to any change can come only from a single larger-than-life person.
This is a very dangerous belief.”
[...]
No one individual, even a monarch-like CEO, is ever able to develop the right vision, communicate it to large numbers of people, eliminate all the key obstacles, generate short-term wins, lead and manage dozens of change projects, and anchor new approaches deep in the organization’s culture.”
{Single point of direction, single point of failure.}

“Characteristics of an effective vision
• Imaginable: Conveys a picture of what the future will look like
• Desirable: Appeals to the long-term interests of employees, customers, stockholders, and others who have a stake in the enterprise
• Feasible: Comprises realistic, attainable goals
• Focused: Is clear enough to provide guidance in decision making
• Flexible: Is general enough to allow individual initiative and alternative responses in light of changing conditions
• Communicable: Is easy to communicate; can be successfully explained within five minutes”
{Good summary}

“I am sometimes amazed at how many people try to transform organizations using methods that look like the first two scenarios: authoritarian decree and micromanagement. Both approaches have been applied widely in enterprises over the last century, but mostly for maintaining existing systems, not transforming those systems into something better. ”
{And yet, authoritarian and micromanaging are ubiquitous.}

“While the [vision] statement does not give anything close to a detailed directive, it does provide focus ”
{Vision is an abstract goal of a future impact. Mission should be a definition of what is now. And an action plan gives the direction. }

“Vision creation can be difficult for at least five reasons [...] First, we have raised a number of generations of very talented people to be managers, not leaders or leader/managers, and vision is not a component of effective management. ”
{Focus is on management, not leadership. In the military, it is the opposite. In both, a mix of the two is necessary (with emphasis on leadership, of course.)}

“Key elements in the effective communication of vision
• Simplicity: All jargon and technobabble must be eliminated.
• Metaphor, analogy, and example: A verbal picture is worth a thousand words.
• Multiple forums: Big meetings and small, memos and newspapers, formal and informal interaction—all are effective for spreading the word.
• Repetition: Ideas sink in deeply only after they have been heard many times.
• Leadership by example: Behavior from important people that is inconsistent with the vision overwhelms other forms of communication.
• Explanation of seeming inconsistencies: Unaddressed inconsistencies undermine the credibility of all communication.
• Give-and-take: Two-way communication is always more powerful than one-way
communication.”

“If I hear the word empowerment one more time,” someone recently told me, “I think I’ll gag.”
A few years ago, I might have agreed with his reservations. Today, I don’t. I’m still not enthusiastic about using faddish words, but in this ever faster-moving world, I think the idea of helping more people to become more powerful is important.”
{good point}

“Short-Term Wins Aren’t Short-Term Gimmicks”
{Another good point}

“Cultural Change Comes Last, Not First”
{This is too seldom realized, recognized, and called out.}

“I can imagine a day not long from now when succession at the top of firms may no longer be an exercise in picking one person to replace another. Succession could be a process of picking at least the core of a team.
[…]
I can also imagine a day when big egos and snakes are eliminated from promotion lists, no matter how smart, clever, hard working, or well educated they”
{He has a good imagination. That is a change that will be long in coming.} ( )

Good, clear, short. Nice framework, good examples. A little hard to apply a very $$$/business oriented perspective to higher ed, but still valuable. ( )

One of those books that makes much of the business world make a lot more sense when you're done. A lightbulb about successful and failed change efforts at workplaces throughout my career went off probably every two or three pages throughout the book. It has some good insights too, I think, for anyone wondering why we are doing such a crap job of transforming on a larger, societal scale to deal wtih environmental threats like climate change. ( )

This business book was making the rounds at my company so I decided I needed to read it to find out why everyone was so excited. I found it shallow and a real waste of money. ( )

I'm rating this a top choice based on the depth and practicality covered in such concise form. Kotter's model based on 8 steps make sense. He explains well why they are all necessary, and why they need an ordering in order to work. This is one to keep handy and refer back to. ( )