Book Review-ish: Leading Change

An excellent book and one that doesn't quite fit the usual review format, Leading Change, is well-worth the read for system leaders in business and school. So rather than pursue my usual review format - review followed by assessment. These Review-ishes will be more of a digital notebook offering up what I see as highlights especially in the context of school leadership. Today's review-ish is on Leading Change by John P. Kotter.

Kotter's emphasis lies in differentiating between managing and leading - and how it relates to his steps. The text addresses follow-up from his ground-breaking article, "Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail," published in 1995. I would say that Kotter aims to dive into problems, examples, and aspects of each step - broadening the picture with more data. For school leaders, who must engage with change leadership across a myriad of reasons, the text is extremely helpful in its broad strokes, if not always applicable in its details or examples.

Kotter splits the text into three sections, broad addresses of success/failure, the eight-stage process, and implications for the twenty-first century. Obviously, the bulk lies in that second section; a helpful guide for leaders reading ahead for their own transformations and worth it for a revisit as leaders move through the steps. Management is "a set of processes that keep a complicated system of people and technology running smoothly" (28) while leadership defines "what the future should look like, aligns people with that vision, and inspires them to make it happen despite the obstacles" (28).

Part I offers up the most common reasons for failure - which will provide the through-line through the 8 steps. These are (1) not raising the sense of urgency, (2) not building the right coalition, (3) a weak vision, (4) under-communicating, (5) permitting obstacles, (6) lacking short-term wins, (7) declaring victory to soon, and (8) neglecting to anchor changes in culture.

As Kotter writes, the vision is key: "Whenever you cannot describe the vision driving a change initiative in five minutes or less and get a reaction that signifies both understanding and interest, you are in for trouble" (9). This is great advice for principals - we need the elevator pitch for staff, students, families, and system leaders to overcome the inertia of tradition.

As a principal who has been at multiple schools, that idea of anchoring changes for long-term results and impact is also key. How do we set up changes beyond the tenure of one leader? Elsewhere, Fullan seeks to provide a school-centered response to that difficult talk. Kotter offers some advice, but it tends to be rooted in large organizations. Each chapter does present a really helpful visual summary of the primary topics related to each step of the process. A couple of highlights:

• Complacency: "never underestimate the magnitude of the forces that reinforce complacency and that help maintain the status quo" (44) - which is certainly a mistake I've made!

• Creating a coalition requires a coalition where members have the right "position power, expertise, credibility, and leadership" (59) and not those with "egos that full up a room...or snakes, people who create enough mistrust to kill teamwork" (61). These types of people with a great deal of power, need to be let go or retired - they can stimy any change effort

• Vision: "a good vision can demand sacrifices from some or all of these groups in order to produce a better future, but it never ignores the legitimate long-term interests of anyone" (75) - we need to ensure our vision affects and supports all stakeholders in an acceptable way

• Communication: we need to make sure the vision is communicated early, often, and clearly - work it into as many conversations and communications as possible

• Empowerment: we must ensure that the technical and social skills are supplied; that ongoing-support occurs -- these ensure continual work and improvement. Frankness can help in this - especially with long-tenured or recalcitrant employees; show the data and ask for specific help or suggestions.

• Short-term wins are "visible...unambiguous...clearly related to the change effort" (126); they need to be planned for systematically as part of the efforts and can serve to renew motivation (which needs to happen somewhat regularly)

• ""Irrational and political resistance to change never fully dissipates" (138)

• In transitioning changes into culture; an alignment between those changes and the new culture must be ensured, not relying on the current leadership or environment. One way to do so is in the case of hiring where we tend to hire people because they will fit in (158) to the current culture. However, "culture changes only after you have successfully altered people's actions, after the new behavior produces some group benefit for a period of time, and after people see the connection between the new actions and the performance improvement" (164-165).

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If you haven't picked up Leading Change by John P. Kotter, I encourage you to do so!