Book Review – Heart of Change – John P. Kotter & Dan S. Cohen
Reviewed by Ilker Cingillioglu, 15/04/2010
Heart of Change is the continuation of Kotter’s worldwide bestseller book Leading Change, in which his 8-step change model demonstrates some of the most crucial elements and easy-to-follow guidelines integral to help organizations leap successfully into the future.
The title of the book, Heart of Change, also implies the most important yet difficult challenge to tackle: changing people’s behaviour. The authors suggest that initiating human intensive transformation centred on the emotional concept of See-Feel-Change would work much better to foster heart-felt buy-in and overcome resistance to behaviour change than applying analytical, robust and financial measures.
Instead of adhering merely to simple do’s and don’ts of the standard 8 step sequence, in The Heart of Change, Kotter and Cohen break the mould of MBA jargon filled texts by filling out every step with practical stories that stir visual, heart-felt and emotional reaction. Unless this reaction is strong or shocking enough to get people off the dime, it is argued by the authors that any large-scale change initiative will be unlikely to succeed. The real-life stories discussed around the topic of each and every chapter are so insightful and expertly written that any reader would comprehend the message in the story and establish its connection with the big picture.
Players of organizational change can easily refer to the concrete examples and practical hints provided by this book each time a new transition challenge gets underway.
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Thursday, April 15, 2010
Monday, March 1, 2010
Book Review: "Our Iceberg Is Melting" by John Kotter
Reviewed by Ilker Cingillioglu, 02/03/2010
"Our Iceberg is Melting" is a fun and simple fable about how a penguin colony in Antarctica responds to the need for revolutionary change. Kotter demonstrates a scenario in the form of a dilemma in which interactive humanized penguins with diverse personalities are put through a quest for managing change. In a way he endeavours to elicit how his 8 stage change model could easily be used by any group of people - in this case penguins - when the need for change arises.
The book simply illustrates and provides insightful lessons around the relevance of Kotter's acclaimed 8-stage change process as follows:
1) Creating a sense of urgency by eliminating complacency and inertia and bringing up the inconvenient news and communicating the desperate need for change,
2) Pulling together the guiding coalition by convincing a broad-based group of penguins and engaging them in acting as a part of the solution by exploiting their distinguishing skills and experience,
3) Developing the change vision and strategy (seagull tactics) in a way to ensure the survival of the colony by looking for alternative places to live,
4) Communicating for understanding and buy in by spreading the vision across the colony with ice posters, speeches and seagull stories and telling other penguins what needs to be done,
5) Empowering others to act by assigning scouts to look for new places,
6) Producing short-term wins when scouts successfully complete their missions by acquiring vital information about the existence and location of new food resources which helped penguins embrace the idea of change even more,
7) Keeping up the good work and continuing to look for bigger and better places to move the colony to, as the scouts are rewarded for their effort and more penguins are getting excited and involved in the change process,
8) Creating a new culture by anchoring the changes in the culture of the colony and never letting them give up their new ways of living and life style.
As the author suggests, the core message that can be drawn from this book is "that the world needs much more action from a broader range of people - action that is informed, committed, and inspired - to help us all in an era of increasing change."
The penguin characters introduced in this book are so similar to individuals that we encounter in our organizations and they can easily be recognized as being like people from all walks of life. I also believe that its being a very clear, simple and quick read makes it possible for anyone to grasp the idea right away.
"Our Iceberg is Melting" is a fun and simple fable about how a penguin colony in Antarctica responds to the need for revolutionary change. Kotter demonstrates a scenario in the form of a dilemma in which interactive humanized penguins with diverse personalities are put through a quest for managing change. In a way he endeavours to elicit how his 8 stage change model could easily be used by any group of people - in this case penguins - when the need for change arises.
The book simply illustrates and provides insightful lessons around the relevance of Kotter's acclaimed 8-stage change process as follows:
1) Creating a sense of urgency by eliminating complacency and inertia and bringing up the inconvenient news and communicating the desperate need for change,
2) Pulling together the guiding coalition by convincing a broad-based group of penguins and engaging them in acting as a part of the solution by exploiting their distinguishing skills and experience,
3) Developing the change vision and strategy (seagull tactics) in a way to ensure the survival of the colony by looking for alternative places to live,
4) Communicating for understanding and buy in by spreading the vision across the colony with ice posters, speeches and seagull stories and telling other penguins what needs to be done,
5) Empowering others to act by assigning scouts to look for new places,
6) Producing short-term wins when scouts successfully complete their missions by acquiring vital information about the existence and location of new food resources which helped penguins embrace the idea of change even more,
7) Keeping up the good work and continuing to look for bigger and better places to move the colony to, as the scouts are rewarded for their effort and more penguins are getting excited and involved in the change process,
8) Creating a new culture by anchoring the changes in the culture of the colony and never letting them give up their new ways of living and life style.
As the author suggests, the core message that can be drawn from this book is "that the world needs much more action from a broader range of people - action that is informed, committed, and inspired - to help us all in an era of increasing change."
The penguin characters introduced in this book are so similar to individuals that we encounter in our organizations and they can easily be recognized as being like people from all walks of life. I also believe that its being a very clear, simple and quick read makes it possible for anyone to grasp the idea right away.
Sunday, February 28, 2010
Book Review: Leading Change - Professor John P. Kotter
Review and Comments by Ilker Cingillioglu
In a world of rapidly changing business environment to help organizations stay ahead of the competition, world-renowned Harvard Professor John P. Kotter has conducted a substantive work that illuminated some of the most crucial factors which determine the fundamental elements of leading a successful organizational transition.
In his jargon-free example-rich book, Kotter explicates the seemingly flexible but infact a rough eight-stage change process, which he associates each of these stages with one of the eight common mistakes that hamper successful transition efforts.
The Stages are:
1) Establishing a Sense of Urgency
2) Creating the Guiding Coalition
3) Developing a Vision and Strategy
4) Communicating the Change Vision
5) Empowering Employees for Broad-Based Action
6) Generating Short-Term Wins
7) Consolidating Gains and Producing More Change
8) Anchoring New Approaches in the Culture (of the organization)
Throughout his book Kotter provides extremely insightful and practical examples in regards to overcoming insider myopia and listening to outsiders' opinions, the importance of creating short-term wins by selecting the right people with a strong vision and effective strategy to steer others through change and how modern leadership, continuous improvement and lifelong learning are integral to drive the transition process in a socially healthy way.
Although the book presents a clear and viable guide to an organized means of leading change, it still lacks some of the most important human implication and cultural factors peculiar to the new generation and that may hinder organizations from successful change initiatives. For instance, Kotter takes complacency as a barrier that needs to be overcome in the first place, but in reality it is not anymore that simple to achieve it because admitting to become less complacent may mean to many leaders of tomorrow becoming less self-confident, weak and less assertive. Recent research showed that due to the soaring severity of individual competition at all levels of management, they build a propensity to put their short-term own interests before the overall long-term performance of the companies they work for. No matter how hard they may look like trying to overcome complacency, leaders of the next generation are willing to take risks for neither themselves nor their companies, thus making complacency ever present.
Despite its phenomenal success, this book misses the whole idea of technology-based improvisational change and the increasingly evolving trend of individualism over collectivism prevalent among the leaders of the 21st century. Therefore in my opinion, this book is not anymore as relevant today as it was more than a decade ago.
Though outdated, still top quality work. Highly recommended.
In a world of rapidly changing business environment to help organizations stay ahead of the competition, world-renowned Harvard Professor John P. Kotter has conducted a substantive work that illuminated some of the most crucial factors which determine the fundamental elements of leading a successful organizational transition.
In his jargon-free example-rich book, Kotter explicates the seemingly flexible but infact a rough eight-stage change process, which he associates each of these stages with one of the eight common mistakes that hamper successful transition efforts.
The Stages are:
1) Establishing a Sense of Urgency
2) Creating the Guiding Coalition
3) Developing a Vision and Strategy
4) Communicating the Change Vision
5) Empowering Employees for Broad-Based Action
6) Generating Short-Term Wins
7) Consolidating Gains and Producing More Change
8) Anchoring New Approaches in the Culture (of the organization)
Throughout his book Kotter provides extremely insightful and practical examples in regards to overcoming insider myopia and listening to outsiders' opinions, the importance of creating short-term wins by selecting the right people with a strong vision and effective strategy to steer others through change and how modern leadership, continuous improvement and lifelong learning are integral to drive the transition process in a socially healthy way.
Although the book presents a clear and viable guide to an organized means of leading change, it still lacks some of the most important human implication and cultural factors peculiar to the new generation and that may hinder organizations from successful change initiatives. For instance, Kotter takes complacency as a barrier that needs to be overcome in the first place, but in reality it is not anymore that simple to achieve it because admitting to become less complacent may mean to many leaders of tomorrow becoming less self-confident, weak and less assertive. Recent research showed that due to the soaring severity of individual competition at all levels of management, they build a propensity to put their short-term own interests before the overall long-term performance of the companies they work for. No matter how hard they may look like trying to overcome complacency, leaders of the next generation are willing to take risks for neither themselves nor their companies, thus making complacency ever present.
Despite its phenomenal success, this book misses the whole idea of technology-based improvisational change and the increasingly evolving trend of individualism over collectivism prevalent among the leaders of the 21st century. Therefore in my opinion, this book is not anymore as relevant today as it was more than a decade ago.
Though outdated, still top quality work. Highly recommended.
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