Step One: Establishing a Sense of Urgency

Establishing a sense of urgency is essential to gain the cooperation needed to initiate a greater need for change. Some leaders misjudge the difficulty to get people out of their comfort zone, or give themselves too much credit for how well they think they have already done. They could also just lack the patience required to develop appropriate urgency. Leaders should understand the importance of having a sense off urgency. If they did, they would be able to differentiate between complacency, false urgency and true urgency. Many times change initiatives fail isn’t due to being poorly thought out, or insufficient facts, the problem is that the case is all head and no heart. Leaders should “Aim for the Heart.” This way they will connect to the values of their people and encourage them to become great. The business will then bloom with human experience, engage the senses, create messages that are simple and imaginative, and call people to aspire.

Step Two: Creating the Guiding Coalition

Forming the right coalition of people to lead a change initiative is detrimental to its success. The coalition must have the right composition, a substantial level of trust, and a mutual objective. Decision-making is an important component for teams. In a world that is constantly changing, organizations are forced to make decisions more quickly and with less certainty. Teams of leaders and managers acting together are the only effective way to make productive decisions under these circumstances. The team should develop a level of trust in one another. Creating the right team and combining a level of trust with a common goal in which the team believes can result in guiding coalition that has the ability to make needed change happen.

Step Three: Developing a Vision and Strategy

Clear visions simplify many detailed decisions motivate people to take action in the right directions, and helps to coordinate the actions of different people in a fast and efficient way. The vision is part of a larger system that includes strategies, plans and budgets. The vision holds everything together. A vision must provide guidance. It should be focused, flexible and easy to communicate. It should also inspire action and guide that action.

Step Four: Communicating the Change Vision

In order for the vision to work, it must be communicated in hour- by- hour activities. Leaders should communicate it through emails, in meetings, and through presentations. When communicating the vision for the transformation, keep the vision simple, vivid, repeatable, and invitational. When keeping it simple, use fewer words is the best way. Even though communication is important, the next step is to create action. Leaders need to back up their vision with behavior. These actions increase motivation, inspire confidence and decrease skepticism.

Step Five: Empowering Employees for Broad- Based Action

Empowering employees involves addressing obstacle such as structures, skills, systems and supervisors. One of the more major obstacles is a structural barrier. Sometimes it is hard to remove these barriers during the change process. A more effective approach to this type of change happens in the human resources area. Rearranging incentives and performance assessments to reflect the change vision can have an overwhelming effect on the ability to accomplish the change vision. Management information systems can also have a big impact on the successful implementation of change vision. Another barrier to change is a troublesome supervisor. They don’t like to go along with change requirements. Managers sometimes have to manipulate certain situations to deal with these types of people.

Step Six: Generating Short- Term Wins

You rely on the guiding coalition to identify major improvement that can happen short term. These wins help to ensure overall change initiative’s success. Short- term wins are essential for a company’s success so they should be both visible and clear, and be clearly related to the change effort. The wins help to fine-tune the vision and strategies. Also, they build momentum that turns neutral people into supporters, and reluctant supporters into active helpers. Short- term wins happen because careful planning and effort, and can increase the sense of true urgency.

Step Seven: Consolidating Gains and Producing More Change

It is important to let up before the completion of the job. This way you’ll maintain momentum when going after long-term successes. Transformational leaders take the time out to make sure all the new practices are firmly grounded into the organization’s culture. Managers tend to think in shorter timeframes. It becomes the leaders responsibility to lead the team in the right direction towards long- term successes. Adequate and reliable leadership keeps the change alive and promotes success in a continuously changing world.

Step Eight: Anchoring New Approaches in the Culture

New practices must grow deep roots be embedded in the culture. Culture is composed of norms of behavior and common values. People that are new to the organization are brainwashed into its culture without even knowing it. The collective group of employees maintains the inertia over many years. Tradition is a powerful force. Creating a new, supportive and sufficiently strong organizational culture to keep change in place. I f I were in charge, I would pick out the key elements in each of the steps, and implement change from there. Starting with step one, I would like to become more in touch with the natural side of things. We live in a technology driven world and have become disconnected from nature. We are all apart of nature, and we act on it as much as it acts upon us. Next, we as a company should act with urgency on a daily basis. Also, we should find opportunity in a crisis. It is not the end of the world, and we can overcome this issue together. Instead of viewing the crisis as something negative, we should remain positive and think of ways to turn the situation around. It becomes a learning process, and we will eventually grow stronger within the company. Another key component to this step is dealing with the bad habits. These habits could slowly bring the company down on performance grades. Establishing good habits increases the performance of the team. Start things off right.
Moving on to step two, I want to make sure we have an effective guiding coalition. As a team, we should establish a position of power. We need enough players on the team so that those left out cant block this progress of change. We need to focus on skill. All applicable points of view should be represented so that informed intelligent decisions can be made. The next key is trustworthiness. We should be seen and respected by others within the company so that other employees will take our assertions seriously. Lastly, leadership. We should have enough capable of making the change process. When developing a vision and strategy, we should focus on certain key characteristics. The vision first has to be comprehendible. The employees should be able to create a clear picture of what I’m trying to have our future as company look like. Next the vision should be appropriate. It needs to appeal to the long-term interest of my employees, our customers, and those who have a say so in this company. The vision needs to realistic as well. The goals for this vision of change should be easily reachable. I want my vision to be clear enough so that decision- making would quick and easy. Lastly, if these things are followed then the vision will be easy to communicate to other and it would be easy to explain. In communicating the vision for change, I need to remember to keep it simple. Simple is better, no need to complicate with irrelevant information. I would also need to focus on making the vision as clear as possible. Everyone should be able to paint a picture in his or her mind. A picture is worth a thousand words! As mentioned earlier, the vision should be able to spread form person to person, and everyone should have a clear understanding of the change I’m trying to implement. I need also make myself open for communication. The more input and feedback I receive the better. This way the change can happen more effectively. Step five is about empowering the employees. I want to focus on the their concerns as well as mine. This way we are really working towards a common goal and getting rid of any element that may be hindering our progress on the change vision that is to take place. By removing these barriers, I am making it possible for the employees to do their best work for the company. Moving on to step six, we should be generating short- term wins. This involves a lot of planning and execution all team members involved. These wins will change the morale of the team and better performances will soon follow. Sometimes these short- term wins can add pressure to the team during the efforts of change. If we do these skillfully, the need to create short- term wins will increase the since of true urgency and actually accomplishing our goals. The next step involves consolidating gains and producing more change. As a person in charge, I will make sure all previous steps are being followed to best of our abilities. By the time we reach this step of the process I would expect successful changes going with out vision. I want to see more team projects being added which would open the door for additional people being brought in to help with these changes. I also want to leadership attempts at focusing on providing clarity to all visions and shared purpose. All my employees should feel empowered to all levels and begin to lead some of the new projects that have been implemented. They should all work together as well to keep urgency high within the team. I want them to be able to provide me with confirmation that these new changes are working well for the team. This will show in the team’s performance levels. In the final step of this process, we are supposed to be anchoring new approached in the culture. We have to make these changes stick. According to Kotter, cultural changes should come last and not first. Being in charge, I should be able to prove to other that the new changes are far better than the old. Our successes as a team should be noticeable and well communicated. I also have to be aware that along the journey I will lose some people in the process. Some people can’t handle change. It is better to lose them than to have them hinder our success at change. To enforce the new rules and values, I would hand out rewards and incentives to employees. Such possible awards would be promotions. This is my way showing that I appreciate them for sticking with me and providing joint effort in making these changes possible. The culture we have created will thus be instilled in every new employee to join the team. Reviewing the list of changes following the eight-step process, I feel these would successfully bring the organization into the twenty-first century. First we have to create a vision of change that works for everyone. Then we have to communicate it to everyone. Leave room for feedback to make alterations. The vision should be clear and goes with the long-term goals of the organization. These were all valuable insights that Dr. Kotter presented that he felt will benefit any organization contemplating changes in order to position itself to compete successfully n the global marketplace. Whatever you feel is necessary for your organization, it is important to stick to the vision and not fail. It requires efforts from every individual involved. One person can’t carry the whole team. Change is inevitable. You either accept these facts or go elsewhere.