A Guide to John Kotter's Change Model

John Kotter's 8-step model guides leaders through difficult changes step by step, ensuring the company emerges safely on the other side.

By CfL, April 2022

John Kotter's 8-step model guides leaders through difficult changes step by step, ensuring the company emerges safely on the other side.

Change processes can seem vast, overwhelming, and troublesome. Therefore, it can be extremely practical to have concrete tools for managing them—and here Kotter's change model may be just what you need.

The model consists of 8 steps, and through these Kotter offers his approach on how a leader can guide their organization completely through the necessary change processes.

Who is John Kotter?

John Paul Kotter (born 1947) is a professor at Harvard Business School and the founder of Kotter Associates in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Over his many years as a researcher, he has published a number of works that are used worldwide in connection with both general management and change management.

Some of his most popular publications include The Iceberg Sinks and At the Forefront of Change. The latter is also known by its English title Leading Change, which was published as early as 1996. 

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Change management through Kotter's 8-step model

Kotter emphasizes that the model is not iterative. It must be followed in the correct order to achieve the desired effect. At most, two consecutive steps can be worked on simultaneously, but steps should not be skipped.

1. Establishing a sense of urgency that change is necessary

When facing a major change, it is essential that everyone in the organization is convinced that change is needed. This can be challenging if it isn’t clear to all employees and stakeholders that a change is necessary.

It is therefore crucial to develop a rhetoric that frames the change as necessary and essential for the company’s future survival. Many refer to the metaphor “the burning platform” in change management contexts. Read more about “the burning platform” here.

However, it must be emphasized that management themselves must be convinced that the current situation is unsustainable; otherwise, significant difficulties are likely to arise when implementing the remaining steps.

2. Forming a guiding coalition ("Change group")

Although Kotter does not provide extremely detailed instructions on how to establish a guiding coalition, he does outline several guidelines and considerations. The coalition can be compared to what we know as a project team.

It should consist of influential individuals within the organization – for example, leaders – and should also include experts who cover the technical aspects. According to Kotter, the credibility of this team is crucial, and he makes a distinction between management and leadership.

Management covers the practical aspects such as budgeting and organizing, whereas leadership is about setting a direction and inspiring and motivating employees. The guiding coalition must incorporate both management and leadership to possess the necessary credibility.

3. Developing a vision and a strategy

The vision of your change process expresses the goal you are working toward, while the strategy outlines how you will achieve it. The strategy can also be seen as a plan for navigating the remaining five steps of the model, including the timeframe in which the change should occur.

Kotter defines an effective vision based on six criteria: it must be conceivable, desirable, achievable, focused, flexible, and communicable.

A key aspect of the vision is its simplicity—the message must be so clear and concise that all involved parties can understand it. At the same time, the vision must be strong enough to convince everyone in the organization that they must be prepared for change.

4. Communicating the change vision

The fourth step of the 8-step model deals with how to best communicate your vision to the rest of the organization. Kotter emphasizes several important elements in conveying the vision: simplicity, the use of metaphors and examples, multiple communication channels, repetition, the power of example, clarification of apparent inconsistencies, and interaction.

In short, the vision should be communicated simply, understandably, and concisely. There is no need to embellish it with unnecessary jargon or foreign terms, as that would only make it harder for employees to relate to. Metaphors can be useful to make the vision more relatable or memorable.

As a leader, it is important that you lead by example. If you are not actively working towards the shared vision, why should your employees?

If disagreements arise during the process, it is also the leader’s responsibility to engage in dialogue with the involved parties to resolve issues immediately

5. Enabling broad-based action

Now that the vision has been formulated and effectively communicated so that employees understand the rationale behind the change, you face the task of getting everyone to actively work towards realizing it.

At this stage, the biggest challenge is often that the organization and its structures are designed for the old way of doing things, and when new methods are needed, a misalignment occurs. This happens because the “old” organization does not fit the “new” processes required to fulfill the vision.

It is worth noting that these issues are most common in large or very large companies. The smaller the company and the flatter its hierarchy, the easier it will be to overcome structural obstacles.

6. Generating short-term wins

Change processes are challenging for all employees involved. Therefore, it is important to focus on maintaining morale and motivation. A natural way to do this is by creating short-term wins from your efforts. This allows you to document early on that the vision is working and that you are on the right track.

To achieve these short-term wins, it is necessary to set measurable and concrete interim goals that prefigure the final result, leaving no doubt that each effort makes a difference.

Short-term wins also help diminish the arguments of skeptics or critics of the change.

7. Consolidating gains and producing more change

If all the preceding steps are executed smoothly, an ideal state can be reached where consolidation occurs through effective leadership and engaged, motivated employees. This often creates the need for further change.

However, the process rarely goes perfectly. In most cases, obstacles will arise that may lead to regression due to factors such as:

• Short-term wins failing to materialize.
• Resistance to change not being properly managed and therefore persisting.
• Internal interdependence being perceived negatively.
• Management failing to establish clear responsibilities and competencies.
• Celebrating success before the change is fully achieved.

These are merely examples of causes for regression. It is important to address these obstacles as early as possible, otherwise the necessary change may never occur. To succeed, you must collectively create a change-ready corporate culture characterized by visionary leadership and engaged, motivated employees.

8. Anchoring new approaches in the culture

There is a close connection between changing the company culture and embedding new ways of working, as one cannot exist without the other. At this stage, it is essential to identify those leaders and employees who have shown that they cannot or will not adapt to the new culture.

In some cases, this can be remedied through conversations that clarify the reasons for resistance; in other cases, it may be necessary to dismiss employees who refuse to adapt to the new ways of working.

If Kotter’s 8 steps are followed closely and thoroughly, the embedding of the new corporate culture will foster an understanding among management and employees that further changes will be necessary in the future.

Overall cultural change within the company will only take hold when it becomes clear to everyone that the change process they have just undergone has actually improved the company’s results and the goal has been achieved.