Eight Steps to Changing Your Corporate Culture

It is an axiom that to succeed we must make a contribution. To make a contribution we must deliver something of value and do it better, cheaper, faster, or more reliably.

This requires change and change is often resisted.

The eight steps to change were first codified by John Kotter the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus at the Harvard Business School and a graduate of MIT and Harvard.

He has spent the last 30 years studying how complex organizations achieve their strategic initiatives and successfully transform.

Kotter concluded that,

"Over 70% of all significant change efforts in organizations fail"

Above everything, a clear compelling vision and a strong sense of dissatisfaction with the present or the impending are the keys to successful change.

The eight steps to successful change are:

1. Establish a strong dissatisfaction with the present or impending and a sense of urgency to avoid the unpleasant.
2. Create a coalition of change champions at the top that have the power and tenacity to keep the organization focused on the need and desirability of change. This coalition does not need to conceive or implement the change but rather it needs to sell the necessity and enroll the players and naysayers
3. Develop a clear empowering vision that has the power to enrol
4. Share the vision using the champions to enrol others
5. Empower people to clear the obstacles and roadblocks and grease the skids to speed the momentum
6. Establish a can-do, must-do culture
7. Secure short-term wins to establish success and build confidence
8. Anchor the change to lessen the chances of returning to the old way.

Great leaders instil ferocity and resilience tempered by judgment and discretion. They see brilliant ideas and clarify and reinforce the vision whether it is initially theirs or others. They build and empower a team using the instincts, experience and knowledge of the collective without losing sight of the goal and the urgency to get there. They don't change for change sake but embrace the potential of; more, better, cheaper and more reliably.

The Schulich Executive Education Centre offers a whole line-up of Leadership programs that can help you beat the odds of successfully instituting change in your organization. For more information, visit the SEEC Leadership Programs web page.