Comments on The Heart of Change by John Kotter et al

I read John Kotter’s Leading Change quite a while ago. The impression at that time is that it is a practical guide for people at the change agent role if you believe the idea. It is, probably, a little bit too practical. The eight steps process of change advocated in the book is, to certain degree, what I think of as conventional thought. However, in workplace, the problem is not that we are all carrying too many conventional thoughts; but on the contrary, most of the thinking is even below the conventional level.

For the past two days, I have been reading The Heart of Change from John Kotter and Dan Cohen. The authors in this sequel tried to show and analyze some stories on how the eight steps change process works in reality.

The central message the authors sent out in this book, as explicitly pointed out there, is “people change what they do less because they are given analysis that shifts their thinking than because they are shown a truth that influences their feeling.” With such a message in mind, it is not a surprise that the authors’ discussion on the eight steps emphasize much on the emotional barriers of people in a situation that needs to change, and the emotional intelligence of people that advocates the change efforts. This is no doubt a good observation; and there is lot of recognizable truth in the authors’ descriptions if you ever tried to change something in an organization.

In plain language, what the author is advocating for change process is as follows: as the first step, you make the case for your change effort; then you describe where it will be after the change; as the third step you choose some leaders to lead the change, after that you try to sell your change plan; at the end, if you manage the change process properly, you may be successful in your change effort; and if you do better, you are even able to make the change permanent. If you are going to follow the author’s suggestion to carry out a change effort, you are certainly to feel that emotional barriers are the major obstacles. With this approach, when you are making your case for change in the first step, you, in most cases, this way or that way, have to point out that the status quo is problematic. The implication will certainly be the thought on who is responsible for this failing status quo; at least, a question will be asked on why people are keeping this status quo and do not realize there needs change. Those thought and question make enemy for the change effort. And it gets into people’s emotional egos. Also when you try to sell your change plan to a large audience, the same problem rises: why this large group of people bears the status quo and do not advocate change themselves? It again gets into people’s emotional egos.

What I believe is that following the author’s eight steps is very tough. To make it successful is even harder. In a situation where all people are already looking for changes and it only needs a hero to break the glass window and overcome their fear, and then they will carry the change out voluntarily, the author’s approach may work. A second situation where it may work is that the CEO or the people who are in the un-movable positions want to push the change. Even in those situations, the success of the author’s approach is accidental. The reason is that those emotional barriers are just difficult, if not impossible to overcome. In other’s situations, you need God’s help to make it to the end.

The approach I think there is a better chance to win is to secure small wins and build up momentum in the first step. You do not make enemy in the very beginning; instead, you convert people and build up your forces gradually. When it comes the moment your forces are strong enough, you then raise the flag and make your declaration to change. Afterwards, you may follow the authors’ steps. In this case, there will be less and lower emotional barriers. Of course, there can also be problems with this approach. You may not have enough time to build up a strong force. Or it may happen that the status quo is just so horrible that there is no chance at all for you to secure even small wins.

If the inertia is so strong, to stop it and to revert it is certainly not an easy job.

A successful case for the author’s approach is the turnaround of IBM by Louis Gerstner in the 90s of last century. It will be a good exercise to read Lou’s book (Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance) together with Kotter’s books. For the approach proposed in the above section, I myself experienced it once. It worked; but afterwards I almost want to say I never want to do it again although I am still more than proud of the effort today.

For those change agents, all my suggestion is that you prepared yourself for the worst. There are reasons why companies get into a situation where they either change or they fail. And companies already in this situation, in most cases, do not particularly like the idea of change (or else, they will not be there). What you will probably feel more than often is that they are actually pursuing failures (at least their behaviors indicate this. What actually happen can be that people or leaders in those companies lose the control of themselves, some just leave and those remain there just do not have any sense of fighting with the infrastructure or anything else that is the problem. In mst cases, they rationalize the status quo). This may explain why in reality there are much more companies that fail than those that survive or resurrect.

In the extreme cases, you are fighting with God! It needs unconventional wisdom and exceptional mental and physical power to make it happen. Read the above-mentioned Lou’s book, particularly the discussion of “what it takes to run IBM”. Or, even better, also read the readers’ comments in Amazon on the book. There are great evidences of the emotional barriers that Kotter and his coauthor discussed in The Heart of Change.