The 8-Step Process of Successful Change
SET THE STAGE
1. Create a Sense of Urgency.
Help others see the need for change and the importance of acting immediately.
2. Pull Together the Guiding Team.
Make sure there is a powerful group guiding the change—one with leadership skills, bias for action, credibility,
communications ability, authority, analytical skills.
DECIDE WHAT TO DO
3. Develop the Change Vision and Strategy.
Clarify how the future will be different from the past, and how you can make that future a reality.
MAKE IT HAPPEN
4. Communicate for Understanding and Buy-in.
Make sure as many others as possible understand and accept the vision and the strategy.
5. Empower Others to Act.
Remove as many barriers as possible so that those who want to make the vision a reality can do so.
6. Produce Short-Term Wins.
Create some visible, unambiguous successes as soon as possible.
7. Don’t Let Up.
Press harder and faster after the first successes. Be relentless with instituting change after change until the vision
becomes a reality.
MAKE IT STICK
8. Create a New Culture.
Hold on to the new ways of behaving, and make sure they succeed, until they become a part of the very culture of the
group.
Photo adaptation from “Our Iceberg
Is Melting” Author John Kotter
Helpful Quotes
A Changing World
Communicate for Understanding and Buy-In
When written in Chinese the word crisis is composed of
two characters. One represents danger, and the other
represents opportunity.
In the small matters trust the mind, in the large ones
the heart.
John F. Kennedy
Not everything that is faced can be changed.
But nothing can be changed until it is faced.
James Baldwin
Create a Sense of Urgency
Ask with urgency and passion.
Arthur James Balfour
Sigmund Freud
Empower Others to Act
If it's a good idea, go ahead and do it. It is much easier
to apologize than it is to get permission.
Admiral Grace Hopper
The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands
in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times
of challenge and controversy.
Martin Luther King, Jr.
Pull Together the Guiding Team
When all think alike, then no one is thinking.
Walter Lippman
Coming together is a beginning; keeping together is
progress; working together is success.
Produce Short-Term Wins
A mind that is stretched by a new experience can never
go back to its old dimensions.
Oliver Wendell Holmes
Henry Ford
Don't Let Up
Develop the Change Vision and Strategy
Give us the tools, and we will finish the job.
The significant problems we face cannot be solved at
the same level of thinking we were at when we created
them.
Champions keep playing until they get it right.
Albert Einstein
Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who
can cut through argument, debate, and doubt to offer a
solution everybody can understand.
General Colin Powell
Winston Churchill
Billie Jean King
Create a New Culture
The measure of success is not whether you have a
tough problem to deal with, but whether it is the same
problem you had last year.
John Foster Dulles