Leading Change
I’ve been introduced and re-introduced to the book Leading Change by John Kotter, a couple times in my career. The first was over a decade ago by a girlfriend, who worked at a well-known global cosmetics company. She’d been asked to be part of a group leading a big change in her company, and they were following the process outlined in this book. She was excited about and rightly proud of the opportunity.
Then, maybe five years later when I was studying in Paris, we had a professor from Harvard, who taught us this process. And yes, I intentionally name-drop Harvard because frankly, I wouldn’t have paid the same attention if he wasn’t from the famous school in Cambridge. Here’s why I say that…
At the verrrrrrrry end of our Executive MBA, Roger Hallowell from Harvard threw a bombshell at us, challenging everything I thought I’d spent the past 18 months studying. He was there to teach us: you can do all the management, technical things you want. But if you’re not proficient in leading change, appealing to people’s heads and hearts, it’s all for naught. The management stuff will never work.
This isn’t the first time you’ve seen me write emotionally about how we do things at Ellevated Outcomes. Sure, we do a lot of technical things with our clients: profitability analyses, customer avatars, pricing, hiring plans, customer journey roadmaps, blah blah. (Okay, of course it’s not really “blah blah” but you get the picture). These are technical, managerial tools that we use and help our clients customize for their businesses.
But our secret sauce isn’t in what we do. It’s how we do it. This is why we say that we’re not a coach and not a consultant. We’re an advisor. We bring a set of consultant-like tools to our clients’ businesses; and then we lead them through a process of learning, customizing, and implementing. Then we test, learn, and refine and do the whole thing over and over again.
For as John Kotter says,
Management is a set of processes that can keep a complicated system of people and technology running smoothly…
Leadership is a set of processes that creates organizations in the first place or adapts them to significantly changing circumstances…
Successful transformation is 70 to 90 percent leadership and only 10 to 30 percent management.
Now remember, we are talking about creating change. A transformation. So don’t treat this as either/or. It’s more of a “yes and….” situation. Management is important too! Once we know the technical things that we need, discipline and measurement is absolutely critical.
It’s why one client who’s been with us for 18 months, brilliantly made themselves a “report card.” They update it each month (grade included!) to hold themselves accountable and measure progress of their evolving transformation.
But the takeaway I’d like to offer is this: whether you’re a multi-national corporation worth billions of dollars or a solopreneur who is seeking change, the plan and process has to appeal to the head and heart.
Next week, I’m going to lift the curtain a bit and share exactly which parts of Kotter’s eight stage process have the biggest impact on our clients and the most important question for prospects to pass through our quote gate.
