2009 SHRM Annual Conference Blog

Harvard Business School professor John Kotter will be presenting a keynote speech at SHRM’s Annual Conference today from 8:30 a.m. to 9:45 a.m. He is the author of numerous books, including Leading Change, which is currently available at the SHRMStore and will be available on-site at the conference. Read an excerpt Leading Change of  below.

THE FUTURE

“The change problem inside organizations would become less worrisome if the business environment would soon stabilize or at least slow down. But most credible evidence suggests the opposite: that the rate of environmental movement will increase and that the pressures on organizations to transform themselves will grow over the next few decades. If that’s the case, the only rational solution is to learn more about what creates successful change and to pass that knowledge on to increasingly larger groups of people.

From what I have seen over the past two decades, helping individuals to better understand transformation has two components, both of which will be addressed in some detail in the remainder of this book. The first relates to the various steps in the multistage process. Most of us still have plenty to learn about what works, what doesn’t, what is the natural sequence of events, and where even very capable people have difficulties. The second component is associated with the driving force behind the process: leadership, leadership, and still more leadership.

If you sincerely think that you and other relevant people in your organization already know most of what is necessary to produce needed change and, therefore, are quite logically wondering why you should take the time to read the rest of this book, let me suggest that you consider the following. What do you think we would find if we searched all the documents produced in your organization in the last twelve months while looking for two phrases: ‘managing change’ and ‘leading change?’ We would look at memos, meeting summaries, newsletters, annual reports, project reports, formal plans, etc. Then we would turn the numbers into percentages—X percent of the references are to ‘managing change’ and Y percent to ‘leading change.’

Of course the findings from this exercise could be nothing more than meaningless semantics. But then again, maybe they would accurately reflect the way your organization thinks about change. And maybe that has something to do with how quickly you improve the quality of products or services, increase productivity, lower costs, and innovate.”

Reprinted by permission of Harvard Business Press. Excerpt from Leading Change by John P. Kotter.  Copyright 1996 John P. Kotter.  All rights reserved.