Eight Steps to Transform Your Organization
No organization today -- large or small, local or global -- is immune to change. To cope with new technological, competitive, and demographic forces, leaders in every sector have sought to fundamentally alter the way their organizations do business.
These change efforts have paraded under many banners -- total quality management, reengineering, restructuring, mergers and acquisitions, turnarounds. Yet, despite all of this change, most organizations fail at managing change. The nonprofit sector is no exception.
Yet, according tp change management guru John Kotter, fewer than 15 of the 100 or more companies studied have successfully transformed themselves. While the particulars of every case vary, Kotter has identified eight critical stages of successful change management. Mismanaging any one of these steps can undermine an otherwise well-conceived vision.
- Establish a Sense of Urgency
- Examine market and competitive realities
- Identify and discuss crises, potential crises, or major opportunities
- Form a Powerful Guiding Coalition
- Assemble a group with enough power to lead the change effort
- Encourage the group to work as a team
- Create a Vision
- Create a vision to help direct the change effort
- Develop strategies for achieving that vision
- Communicate the Vision
- Use every vehicle possible to communicate the new vision and strategies
- Teach new behaviors by the example of the guiding coalition
- Empower Others to Act on the Vision
- Get rid of obstacles to change
- Change systems or structures that seriously undermine the vision
- Encourage risk-taking and nontraditional ideas, activities, and actions
- Plan for and Create Short-Term Wins
- Plan for visible performance improvements
- Create those improvements
- Recognize and reward employees involved in the improvements
- Consolidate Improvements and Produce Still More Change
- Use increased credibility to change systems, structures, and policies that don't fit the vision
- Hire, promote, and develop employees who can implement the vision
- Reinvigorate the process with new projects, themes, and change agents
- Institutionalize New Approaches
- Articulate the connections between the new behaviors and organizational success
- Develop the means to ensure leadership development and succession
Source: Kotter, John P. "Winning at Change" Leader to Leader. 10 (Fall 1998): 27-33.
If you have trouble reading this e-newsletter due to formatting issues, or visible HTML code, or if you would like to discuss content-related issues, please contact Bill Freeman, NRC e-Newsletter Editor at wjf@daremightythings.com.
Hypertext links and other references to non-CCF products and services are provided for information only and do not constitute endorsement or warranty, express or implied, by the CCF, DHHS, or U.S. Government, as to their suitability, content, usefulness, functioning, completeness, or accuracy.