Leading Change by John P. Kotter Is Basically a Guide or Step by Step

Organizational Change

Victoria Bohrer

Integrative Paper

Leading Change by John P. Kotter is basically a guide or step by step

Instructions to get your organization up to date with the twenty first century. Kotter believes that strong leadership is the key to creating and sustaining a successful organization. He first explains why so many organizations fail. He feels that for your organization to succeed you have to be able to understand why so many organizations fail. Kotter gives eight common errors as to why organizations fail when transforming organizations.

The first error organizations make is allowing too much complacency. The organization needs to establish a high sense of urgency and they need to make sure a common goal is communicated to managers as well as employees. Kotter states that without a sense of urgency employees will not work at a high level or give the effort that is essential to new changes.

The next error organizations make is failing to create a sufficiently powerful coalition. All the powerful people in the organization normally have job titles. These individuals will need to work together for an effective change to occur. According to Kotter, the combination of trust and a common goal shared by people with the right characteristics can make a powerful team. The resulting coalition will have the potential to do the hard work involved in creating the necessary vision, communicating the vision widely, and empowering a broad base of people to take action.

Organizations underestimate the power of vision. Vision helps create direction and sparks action among large groups of employees. Lack of vision leads to confusion and could have a reverse effect of an effective change actually taking place. According to Kotter, a good vision can help clear the decks of expensive and time-consuming clutter. This can help the organization save time and money because inappropriate projects can be identified and terminated.

The fourth error Kotter describes is under communicating the vision. Kotter states, “without credible communication, and a lot of it, employees’ hearts and minds are never captured”. Employees must be willing to help with these efforts of change. They must see the benefits or they must really believe that a transformation within their organization is possible.

The fifth error is allowing obstacles to block the new vision. A lot of obstacles are imagined but some obstacles are actually real. Some of the obstacles that Kotter mentions are organizational structure, self interests of employees, or supervisors who refuse