Framework library · Change management
Kotter's 8 steps
Kotter's eight steps start with urgency and a guiding coalition, move through a vision that is communicated and acted on, and end with early wins, consolidation and anchoring the change in how the organisation works. They began as a list of the errors that sink transformations, so each step is also a warning: skipping one feels faster and usually costs more later.
Use it when
- You are leading a change across the whole organisation, such as a new operating model, a merger or a move to a different technology base, and need a sequence for the leadership work.
- A transformation has stalled and you want to find which step was skipped or done too lightly.
- The programme has a technical plan with dates and owners, and the leadership work needs the same.
Avoid it when
- The change is local, such as a new tool in one team. Eight steps is too much machinery; use ADKAR with the people affected.
- The organisation has to change continuously rather than once. Kotter's own later version, the eight accelerators, runs the steps at the same time through a network of volunteers. Use this tool as a checklist, not a sequence.
- You need to know how each group of people is coping. The steps describe what leaders do. Pair them with the Bridges transition model or ADKAR for the people living through it.
How to run it
Write the change in two sentences
What will be different, for whom, and by when. Everything below is judged against it.
Test the urgency honestly
Kotter's rule of thumb was that about three quarters of management must believe the current way cannot continue. Ask them instead of assuming the launch did it. If urgency is low, every later step stalls.
Name the coalition and the vision
List who is in the guiding coalition, and who should be there but is not. If the vision cannot be explained in five minutes and get a reaction that shows understanding, it is not finished.
Write what has actually happened at each step
Record evidence, not intentions: how often people have heard the vision and from whom, which obstacles have been removed, which wins are dated. Set a status, an owner and a due date.
Deal with blocked steps before later ones
A blocked step, most often the one about obstacles, usually means a structure, a measure or a senior manager working against the change. Wins planned on top of it will not happen.
Review monthly and do not declare victory early
Use early wins to change bigger systems, then anchor the change in how people are hired, promoted and measured. Close the last step only when the new way would survive the sponsor leaving.
Work through it
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Mistakes to avoid
- Treating urgency as a communications task. A launch video does not create urgency; evidence that people see for themselves does.
- Building the coalition from whoever is available. Without the leaders whose areas change most, it cannot remove the obstacles that matter.
- Declaring victory after the first wins, which lets the old ways return within a year or two.
- Planning the leadership work and forgetting the people who have to change what they do each day.
Where it comes from
John P. Kotter, "Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail", Harvard Business Review, March to April 1995, which described eight errors that sink transformations; set out as an eight-stage process in Leading Change (Harvard Business School Press, 1996). In Accelerate (Harvard Business Review Press, 2014), developed from an HBR article of 2012, Kotter restated the steps as eight accelerators that run at the same time and draw on a network of volunteers alongside the hierarchy. Source.
The 8-Step Process for Leading Change is the work of John P. Kotter and Kotter Inc. This page describes it independently and is not endorsed by Kotter Inc.
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Further reading
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