The Heart of Change outlines eight steps to manage change within an organization. Authors John P. Kotter and Dan S. Cohen believe that creating broad change in organizations is possible by having a focus in accomplishing change in people’s behavior. The proposition of the authors, although challenging, is a reality when efforts are placed in creating change in what people do or don’t do. Throughout each step, Kotter gives real life stories that illustrate its application. Since sometimes it can be difficult to envision how a theoretical principle can apply in the real-life context of an organization, the story telling part of the book is its most helpful feature. This helps the reader to assimilate and connect the principles with our own problems that require change.
Throughout the book, the authors are emphatic on how emotions help to shape change across the steps. They first describes a pattern that drives change successfully: seeing(identifying/showing the problem), feeling (precipitating the right emotions regarding the problem) and changing(converting those feelings into motivated change). We can see the role that emotions are stressed further along the process, for example, having heartfelt communication and understanding what people are feeling and creating a recognition system that builds self-confidence.
The method of this book is useful for any person in a leadership position within an organization. This method could be particularly useful for those who are hoping to create permanent and more complex or difficult changes. Although some may be discouraged by the lengthiness of Kotter’s process, I think that every step in the process is congruent and essential for the next one, which makes it easier to remember the flow of them. The element of trust associated to creating a guiding team captivated my attention.
“Individuals who aren’t team player or who aren’t trustworthy can destroy a group.“
Although this topic is presented briefly in the book, you can easily grasp the impact of it as you read through the few lines that bring up the bigger picture on the importance of having trustworthy people as leaders. There are two things mentioned in the book, about building a trustworthy team that stroke me the most: modeling trust and showing enthusiasm and commitment
We usually think that building the right team is about the capacities that individuals have and can contribute to the organization. However, these two points actually lead us to think how this can be more a matter about our own ability to influence others in the team. It is clear that we need to lead by example so that others can follow us into achieving the collective goal.
The book presents how the steps are connected to each other; if a problem is found in one of them, it’s probably because there is a problem with a previous step. I think it’s really amazing to find a valuable resource that you can apply to any type of organization whether its ministerial or entrepreneurial.
