Kotter Eight Step Change Model

What the Kotter eight step change model is

The Kotter eight step change model (نموذج كوتر للتغيير) is a framework that divides the leadership of a major transformation in an establishment into eight successive steps: building a sense of urgency, forming a leading coalition, shaping a vision and strategy, communicating the vision, removing obstacles and empowering action, achieving short term wins, consolidating gains and extending the change, and anchoring the new approaches in the culture. It is attributed to the American researcher John P. Kotter and is associated in the literature with his article “Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail” in Harvard Business Review in 1995 and his book “Leading Change”, published in 1996.

The model concerns the style of leading a transformation. What follows is an explanation of the model and of its limits. It does not claim that following the steps guarantees the success of a change, or that the steps apply in order to every establishment.

Where the model comes from

The article of the same title is recorded in Crossref, and the book is recorded through two reviews of it: one in Competitive Intelligence Review, volume 8, issue 2, 1997, and the other in the Journal of Product Innovation Management, volume 14, issue 6, 1997. Secondary summaries online say that the article appeared in the March and April 1995 issue, that it presented eight errors made by transformation efforts, and that the book expanded on it and presented the eight steps.

We did not verify the text of the article or of the book, so we quote nothing from them and state nothing from them beyond what we have described.

Resistance to change is a different question from the arrangement of leadership effort in a major transformation. One asks why people resist, and the other asks how the effort is arranged. We do not list the eight errors.

The eight steps

The wording below is our own, and the English names vary slightly between sources:

1. Building a sense of urgency. People see why leaving things as they are will not do.
2. Forming a leading coalition. A group with enough influence and credibility to lead the change comes together.
3. Shaping a vision and strategy. A picture of the future and a road to it are drawn.
4. Communicating the vision. The message is conveyed repeatedly, through several channels and with an example in behaviour.
5. Removing obstacles and empowering action. Structures and systems that conflict with the vision are modified, and people are encouraged to act.
6. Achieving short term wins. Visible early results are planned and announced.
7. Consolidating gains and extending the change. Success is not declared early, and what has been achieved is invested in deeper changes.
8. Anchoring new approaches in the culture. What is new becomes the habitual way of working.

How to interpret the steps

The steps can be grouped into three broad phases. This grouping is our own simplification and not a fixed division: preparing the climate for change, then launching the work, then fixing what has been achieved. The first four steps answer the question of whether people are prepared. The next two answer whether the road is open and whether any result has appeared. The last two answer whether the change will remain after interest in it declines.

The model’s idea is that neglecting a step weakens what follows it, and that leadership errors at the start of a transformation can spoil what comes after. Secondary sources describe this as a view based on the author’s observation of companies’ experiences and not on a controlled test.

The steps are not equally easy to measure. Step six is measured by a visible result, such as the number of people who adopted the new procedure. Step one is harder to measure precisely, because a sense of urgency has no agreed indicator in the summaries of the model. Establishments can settle for rough indicators, such as attendance at preparatory meetings or the number of questions received from teams, and interpret them with caution, without treating them as a measure of conviction.

How the model relates to change management

The human side of a transformation, meaning how people move from one way of working to another, is the field of change management. Kotter’s model is one of the frameworks used to organise that side. It gives an order to leadership effort, and it does not replace the question of why a particular team resists or the measurement of adoption. Other practices also connect with steps in the model:

• Vision. The picture an establishment seeks is set in a vision statement, which corresponds to step three.
• Communication. The channels through which messages move inside an establishment, which are the means of step four, belong to organizational communication.
• Empowerment. Giving an employee authority to decide within the employee’s work, as in employee empowerment, corresponds to step five.
• Goals. Individual goals are tied to the goals of the transformation through goal cascading, so that urgency turns into tasks.
• Culture. At the last step the new way of working becomes part of the unwritten rules of the establishment, which belong to organizational culture.

A hypothetical example: a transformation plan for a new appraisal form

Suppose a hypothetical establishment decides to adopt a new performance appraisal form, and its human resources team wants to arrange the work on Kotter’s steps over 24 weeks. The team distributed the weeks as follows: three for urgency, three for the coalition, three for the vision, four for communication, four for empowerment and removing obstacles, three for short term wins, two for consolidation and two for anchoring. The total is 3 + 3 + 3 + 4 + 4 + 3 + 2 + 2 = 24 weeks.

The first five steps take 3 + 3 + 3 + 4 + 4 = 17 weeks, so the three week short term win step ends at week 20 (17 + 3).

The team defined a short term win that appears at week 20: at least 12 of 20 managers submit their appraisals on the new form, which is 12 ÷ 20 = 60%. At the end of week 20, 15 managers had submitted, which is 15 ÷ 20 = 75%, so the target was exceeded by 15 percentage points.

This does not prove that the form is better. The other five managers may not yet be convinced, and the submission may be formal and not real. The value of a short term win in Kotter’s model, as secondary sources describe it, is that people see an early result that supports continuing, and not that it counts as evidence of final success.

The figures are hypothetical and set to illustrate. They do not represent an establishment or a study, and they do not mean that 24 weeks or 60% is customary or sufficient. The example shows that steps can be turned into durations and targets that can be monitored, and that the percentage achieved is considered together with questions about the quality of application.

A manager can use the steps as a list of questions before announcing a change. Do people know why we are changing? Who has the credibility to lead? Is the vision short enough to explain in minutes? What in our systems works against what we want? What is the first result that the team can see and that we can announce? A manager who cannot answer some of them knows where the work should begin.

Where the model is limited

• A practitioner’s model. Secondary sources describe it as drawn from the author’s observation of companies’ experience and consulting expertise, and no controlled test of its sequence underlies what we say about it.
• A linear sequence is assumed. In practice steps can overlap or be repeated, and the presentation of the model in circulation does not say what to do when an earlier step stumbles.
• A view from the top. The leading coalition and communicating the vision are steps managed from senior management, and the presentation in circulation does not detail the participation of those lower down in designing the change.
• Aimed at major transformations. Applying the model can be burdensome for a small change, such as amending an internal form.
• It does not measure. The model does not say how to know that the sense of urgency is sufficient or that the culture has actually changed.

How the model is misunderstood

• Treating it as a checklist. Every item is completed and success is announced without looking at what changed in behaviour.
• Assuming that the steps are a guarantee. No success rate should be attributed to them; we have not verified one.
• Jumping to empowerment before urgency and vision. People move without a clear direction.
• Declaring victory early. Effort stops before the change takes root.

The role of human resources

Human resources can help leadership to translate the steps into specific work. Who takes part in the coalition, and why? What message is to be conveyed to each group? What system conflicts with the vision and needs amendment, such as appraisal criteria or incentives? How will the team tell whether a short term win is real?

Human resources can also train leaders through a leadership development programme in communicating the vision and in setting an example in behaviour. The steps are useful to the extent that they are reviewed against employees’ own questions and not by completing the steps’ items on paper.

What the evidence allows

We do not state that the Kotter model raises the success rate of transformations. Secondary sources describe the model as a description of its author’s experience in companies he observed. We did not verify studies that test it on wide samples, and in the sources we reviewed we found no published figure that we adopt for the effect of applying it.

The model is treated as a framework for organising thinking about the steps of transformation, and it is judged by what appears in the establishment. Did people understand the reason for the change? Were obstacles actually removed? Did the change remain after interest in it declined?

The Kotter model remains a way of reminding leadership that a transformation is gradual work with stages, and that announcing it is not enough. What is decided afterwards depends on the size of the change and on the nature of the establishment.

This is an explanation of the concept, not legal advice.