Leading Organizational Change

Dick Bokal

MMT 661b

Spring II, 2005

Leading Organizational Change

Leading Change

“Be the change that you want to see in the world.”

Mahatma Gandhi

The amount of change in organizations has grown tremendously over the past two decades, and the rate of change will only accelerate in the next few decades. Changes, and leadership through change, are foremost concerns of CEO’s today. It is the topic of many business journal articles. Although the need for change is widely recognized and acknowledged, the reality of creating that change, and more importantly, making the change stick are extremely difficult.

There is difference between managing change and leading change. It takes good managers to control and cope with change. But it takes inspired leadership to initiate change. Instigating change and following through is a formidable task, requiring committed leaders. It takes leaders with persistence and perseverance, with vision, and with knowledge of the change process. Competent management is required to keep change efforts on track. But for most organizations, the much bigger challenge is leading change. Only leadership can blast through the many sources of corporate inertia. Only leadership can motivate the actions needed to alter behavior in any significant way. Only leadership can get change to stick, by anchoring it in the very culture of the organization. But leadership cannot be confined to one larger-than-life individual who charms thousands into being obedient followers. Modern organizations are far too complex to be transformed by a single giant. The leadership effort must have support from many people who assist the leadership agenda within their sphere of activity.

John Kotter, a professor at Harvard Business School, has developed an eight-stage model for implementing change[i]. Kotter asserts that all of the stages must be worked through in order, and completely, to successfully effect change. Skipping even...