Transformations that Stick - Kotter's 8 Accelerators for Change
💸 $9.5M is the average cost of a failed transformation programs. Updated 2024
💸 $9.5M is the average cost of a failed transformation programs in 2023 according to MuleSoft - up from $6.8M in 2022. That's a big jump.
How might we ensure your company transformation is as successful as Adobe’s as outlined in the book “Transformed: Moving to the Operating Model” - moving from $13B Shareholder Value to $269B Shareholder Value ?
❓ Why?
We're ignoring the human motivations, emotional resistance and human side of change. If we want change or transformation to stick, this side can't be ignored.
As Product Manager, all products represent a level of change - new systems, new platforms, new process, new product experience, new market. Influencing and getting support for the change within an organisation is crucial for to be able to solve customer problems and create value for the business. And we need 100% of the leaders supporting the transformation according to Kotter.
✨ John Kotter's 8 Accelerators for Change (that sticks)
This article has been updated with Kotter’s latest thinking reflecting that change is constant and requires a less linear approach.
Kotter’s updated approach recognises that change in today’s environment is continuous. The eight accelerators operate together, with no defined beginning or end, allowing organisations to be more adaptable and resilient. Key elements, such as maintaining urgency, empowering employees, and leveraging a broad network of change agents, ensure that change initiatives can evolve and sustain momentum over time.
This approach also shifts the responsibility for change away from senior leaders alone, empowering individuals throughout the organisation to take ownership and drive meaningful progress.
1. Establishing Urgency
To counteract complacency. Clear reasons why the current way can't continue. Change must be supported by 100% the executive leadership team.
Urgency should be centered around significant opportunities and become a driving force that constantly energizes the organization.
Inspire people to recognise the need for change by illustrating the risks of not changing and the opportunities that change can bring.
Steps Involved:
Analyse the market and competitive environment for potential threats and opportunities.
Spark discussion about the potential crises or compelling market forces.
Create momentum by showing the negative consequences of staying stagnant.
Outcome: Helps overcome complacency and creates the energy needed to motivate people.
Kotter stresses the importance of maintaining ongoing urgency. This provides organisations with a sustained competitive advantage, keeping momentum high and the focus sharp.
2. Form a Powerful Coalition
With a common goal, trust, people with positional power and credibility.
Kotter originally focussed on a top down need to build a strong guiding coalition of influential leaders who support the change.
The update recognises the power of an empowered team across the business. The need for a “volunteer army”—a broad network of change agents drawn from across the organization, from all levels can be invaluable for change to stick.
Senior leaders may or may not be part of this network, but they must support it to drive successful, sustained change.
Steps Involved:
Assemble a team of leaders who have the authority, energy, and influence to lead the change.
Ensure that this group has enough diversity in skills, expertise, and viewpoints.
Work to build trust and develop a shared commitment to the vision.
Outcome: Ensures that there is strong leadership backing the change, providing credibility.
3. Creating a Vision for the Change
That paints a picture of a better future, provides positive outcomes for the business and customers.
Develop a clear and compelling vision that gives the organisation direction during the change. It should be both achievable and compelling, easy to communicate, and aligned with the organization’s big opportunity.
The vision should resonate with people, providing a clear and practical roadmap to capitalise on emerging opportunities, while inspiring the organisation toward collective action.
Steps Involved:
Articulate a vision that is easy to understand and that captures the essence of the change effort.
Link this vision to key values and outcomes that are important to the organization.
Create strategies to achieve the vision.
Outcome: Provides a clear sense of direction and motivation for the team.
4. Communicating the Change Vision
That's easy to understand, communicated often and outline the New World after the change is implemented.
Spread the vision throughout the organisation to ensure everyone understands and buys into it. Creative and passionate communication of the vision is needed to build momentum. The communication should be infectious, spreading like a “viral” idea throughout the organization.
Steps Involved:
Communicate the vision through various channels and at every opportunity.
Use clear and simple language to ensure it resonates with all employees.
Lead by example, showing behaviors that align with the vision.
Encourage feedback and address concerns.
Outcome: Ensures that everyone understands the goals and their role in making the change successful. Effective communication is critical to get buy-in across the board. The message should "sell" the concept and inspire people to join the change effort.
5. Empowered Employees
To act and implement the change vision. Giving them space, training and input into designing the new world.
Remove obstacles and empower people to act on the vision by eliminating barriers to change. Empowering employees, at all levels of the organisation, to take action toward achieving the vision should not be the sole responsibility of senior leaders. The volunteer army of change agents throughout the organisation may support this across the organisation.
Leaders must identify and eliminate obstacles, whether they are structural, procedural, or cultural, enabling individuals to solve problems and take decisive steps towards the vision.
Steps Involved:
Identify potential blockers, including structural issues, or resistance from influential individuals.
Encourage risk-taking and non-traditional thinking.
Align organisational processes, structures, and resources with the vision to enable action.
Outcome: Creates a sense of ownership and empowers employees to take initiative in driving the change.
6. Celebrating Visible Short Term Wins
Build momentum by achieving visible, quick wins that can be celebrated.
Short-term wins are crucial to maintaining momentum and demonstrating that the change is working. This supports the change and reduces negativity towards the change. These wins should be undeniable and clearly linked to the vision, so they cannot be easily dismissed by skeptics.
Steps Involved:
Break the change into smaller, manageable projects that can deliver quick results.
Recognise and reward the people who help achieve these early successes.
Publicise short-term wins to maintain morale and demonstrate progress.
Outcome: Boosts morale and keeps people motivated as they see tangible benefits early on.
By celebrating and communicating these wins, organizations can keep morale high, silence critics, and further fuel the urgency to continue pushing toward the long-term goals.
7. Never Letting Up
Use the credibility from short-term wins to drive deeper, broader changes across the organization. Kotter underscores the importance of continuous learning and adaptation. Change initiatives must evolve as the world changes, and leaders should avoid the temptation to declare victory too soon.
Sustaining change requires ongoing effort. Learning from both successes and failures ensures that the initiative keeps progressing, and the sense of urgency is maintained.
Steps Involved:
Analyse what went right with the short-term wins and use this to fine-tune strategies.
Continue removing barriers, optimising processes, and encouraging innovation.
Build on the change, avoiding the temptation to declare victory prematurely.
Outcome: Ensures that early momentum doesn’t fade and that the change continues to deepen and expand.
8. Making Change Stick - anchoring change to Culture
This final accelerator remains focused on embedding the change into the organisation’s culture.
Aligning culture with the change makes transformations more likely to stick. This means identifying and addressing aspects of the old organisational culture that may threaten the change from sticking.
Embed the changes into the organisational culture so they become part of the everyday operations.
The ultimate goal is for the new behaviours and approaches to become second nature, ensuring that they persist even as the organization grows and evolves. The new ways of working to replace the old way.
Steps Involved:
Clearly connect the success of the change to organisational performance.
Reinforce the importance of the new ways of working through leadership development, succession planning, and onboarding new hires.
Ensure the change becomes institutionalised by aligning it with organisational norms and values.
Outcome: Makes the change sustainable by embedding it into the organisation’s culture, preventing regression to old habits.
The Volunteer Army and Guiding Coalition
Kotter’s updated model shifts from a small guiding coalition of senior leaders to a broader volunteer army. This inclusive group of change agents comes from all levels of the organisation, spreading responsibility beyond just leadership.
Rather than relying solely on top-down direction, the volunteer army empowers individuals to drive change across the organisation. Senior leaders must support and legitimise this network, creating an environment where these change agents can thrive and succeed.
Change is less about processes and more about people
Their security; their personal chances of success; and how much they can see themselves, as individuals, in the future you are proposing.
Enter Dan Heath and Chip Heath's analogy of
🙋♂️the Rider,
🐘the Elephant and
🛣the Path
The Rider is about logic and rational thought. They analyse and solve problems.
The Elephant is emotion and being so large, fuels human action.
✨ How do we have them working together to adopt and implement product transformations that stick?
Want your product and change transformations to stick? I can help. Send me an email at irene@phronesisadvisory.com
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