John P. Kotter's Leading Change

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In his book, Leading Change, Dr. John P. Kotter communicates why organizations fail or succeed based on ten years of conducting research on more than 100 companies to see what contributed to their successful transformations and what hindered those transformations. “In October 2001 Business Week magazine reported a survey they conducted of 504 enterprises that rated Professor Kotter the number one “leading guru” in America.” The two significant aspects I took from this book were the reasons why change initiatives fail and an eight-stage process to lead the organization through a successful transformation. Dr. Kotter listed the following reasons why initiatives fail: allowing too much complacency, failing to create a sufficiently powerful guiding coalition, underestimating the power of vision, under-communicating the vision by a factor of 10, permitting obstacles to block the new vision, …show more content…

Dr. Kotter emphasizes this stage is fragile and calls for more dedicated leadership to continue pushing the change vision. It is at this stage to remove unnecessary interdependencies to make way for the transformation to take hold. The Army fell victim to this phase when senior leadership claimed victory too early in the Iraq war and failed to provide a proper vision for the way ahead that resulted in an insurgency. There are many excellent takeaways that Army leaders at all levels of war can implement when making a change. Lessons learned by many companies were thoroughly discussed and clearly highlights the pitfalls and traps leaders fall victim to when making a transformation. Therefore, Leading Change is a must read for military professionals because there are two critical tools that all leaders need to put into their kit bag, the eight reasons why change initiative fail and the eight-stage process to lead the organization through successful

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