Leading Change

1. Embrace Change: Urgency is Essential for Organizational Transformation

By far the biggest mistake people make when trying to change organizations is to plunge ahead without establishing a high enough sense of urgency in fellow managers and employees.

Complacency is the enemy of change. Organizations often fail to transform because they underestimate the power of complacency and don't create a sufficient sense of urgency. Complacency can stem from:

• Past success and the absence of visible crises
• Low performance standards and lack of external feedback
• Organizational structures that focus on narrow functional goals
• Internal measurement systems that emphasize the wrong metrics

To increase urgency:

• Create a crisis by exposing major weaknesses
• Set ambitious targets that can't be reached by business as usual
• Provide more customer and financial performance data to employees
• Insist on frank discussions about problems in management meetings

2. Build a Powerful Guiding Coalition to Lead Change Efforts

A strong guiding coalition is always needed—one with the right composition, level of trust, and shared objective.

Teamwork at the top is crucial. Major change is impossible unless the head of the organization is an active supporter, but the effort requires a powerful coalition beyond just one leader. This coalition should have:

• Position power: Enough key players to lead the change
• Expertise: Relevant perspectives for making informed decisions
• Credibility: A good reputation to be taken seriously
• Leadership: Proven change leaders to drive the process

To build an effective coalition:

• Find the right people with a combination of skills and traits
• Create trust through carefully planned off-site events and activities
• Develop a common goal that appeals to both head and heart

3. Create and Communicate a Compelling Vision for Change

Vision refers to a picture of the future with some implicit or explicit commentary on why people should strive to create that future.

A clear vision guides the change effort. An effective vision serves three important purposes:

1. Clarifies the general direction for change
2. Motivates people to take action in the right direction
3. Helps coordinate the actions of different people efficiently

Characteristics of an effective vision:

• Imaginable: Conveys a clear picture of the future
• Desirable: Appeals to long-term interests of stakeholders
• Feasible: Contains realistic, attainable goals
• Focused: Clear enough to guide decision-making
• Flexible: Allows for individual initiative and alternative responses
• Communicable: Can be explained quickly and easily

4. Empower Employees to Act on the Vision

Without sufficient empowerment, critical information about quality sits unused in workers' minds and energy to implement changes lies dormant.

Remove barriers to change. Even when employees understand and support the vision, they may feel disempowered by obstacles in their path. Common barriers include:

• Organizational structures that undermine the vision
• Lack of needed skills or training
• Personnel and information systems that are misaligned with the vision
• Supervisors who discourage actions toward implementing the vision

To empower employees:

• Align structures, skills, systems, and supervisors with the new vision
• Communicate the vision clearly and consistently
• Provide training to develop necessary skills
• Align information and personnel systems to support the vision
• Confront supervisors who undercut needed change

5. Generate Short-Term Wins to Maintain Momentum

Running a transformation effort without serious attention to short-term wins is extremely risky.

Plan for and create visible performance improvements. Short-term wins serve multiple purposes:

1. Provide evidence that sacrifices are worth it
2. Reward change agents with recognition
3. Help fine-tune vision and strategies
4. Undermine cynics and resisters
5. Keep bosses on board
6. Build momentum

Characteristics of a good short-term win:

• Visible: Many people can see the results
• Unambiguous: Little argument over the call
• Clearly related to the change effort

To generate short-term wins:

• Plan for visible performance improvements
• Create those improvements
• Recognize and reward people involved in the improvements

6. Consolidate Gains and Produce More Change

Whenever you let up before the job is done, critical momentum can be lost and regression may follow.

Don't declare victory too soon. After some success, there's a tendency to let up on the urgency and momentum. However, change efforts often require years to fully anchor in an organization's culture. To consolidate gains and produce more change:

• Use increased credibility from short-term wins to tackle bigger problems
• Bring in additional people to help with the changes
• Keep urgency levels up and maintain clarity of shared purpose
• Manage multiple change projects through empowered employees
• Identify and eliminate unnecessary interdependencies

Key aspects of this stage:

• More change, not less
• More help from additional people
• Leadership from senior management to maintain focus
• Project management and leadership from lower levels
• Reduction of unnecessary interdependencies

7. Anchor New Approaches in the Organizational Culture

Culture changes only after you have successfully altered people's actions, after the new behavior produces some group benefit for a period of time, and after people see the connection between the new actions and the performance improvement.

Make change stick by rooting it in the culture. Culture – the norms of behavior and shared values of a group – is powerful because:

1. Individuals are selected and indoctrinated well
2. The culture manifests itself through the actions of many people
3. It happens without much conscious intent, making it hard to challenge

To anchor change in culture:

• Come last, not first: Most changes in norms and values occur at the end of the transformation process
• Depend on results: New approaches sink into culture after it's clear they work
• Require a lot of talk: Verbal support and instruction help people accept new practices
• May involve turnover: Sometimes changing key people is necessary
• Make decisions on succession crucial: Promotion processes must be compatible with new practices

8. Leadership, Not Just Management, is Crucial for Successful Change

Management is a set of processes that can keep a complicated system of people and technology running smoothly. Leadership is a set of processes that creates organizations in the first place or adapts them to significantly changing circumstances.

Develop leadership throughout the organization. While management is about coping with complexity, leadership is about coping with change. In a world of increasing change, organizations need more leadership at every level. To develop leadership:

• Create flatter, leaner structures that allow people to lead
• Foster less controlling and more risk-taking cultures
• Encourage people to attempt to lead, starting on a small scale
• Provide coaching and encouragement to help people grow

The organization of the future will need:

• A persistent sense of urgency
• Teamwork at the top
• People who can create and communicate vision
• Broad-based empowerment

By developing these capabilities, organizations can better navigate the increasingly complex and rapidly changing business environment of the 21st century.

Last updated: January 22, 2025