The Necessity of Change-Using Kotter’s Change Model

Organizations that fail to change, eventually fail to exist. Threats to longevity can come from any source that ranges from market preferences to enacted legislation. Organizations must continue to adapt to changes and threats to be fruitful and thwart failure. Kotter’s Transformational Change Model helps formulate how change occurs and ensure that the change becomes embedded.

Kotter’s Change Model has eight different stages that move the company through the process of change and into the solidification of change. The steps required to avoid stagnation include increasing urgency, building guiding teams, developing a vision, communicating, enabling action, develop short-term wins, continue pressure/urgency, and making the changes stay (Tanguay, Waltman& Defebaugh, 2011).

The model seems to create a buzz in the workplace, sets social standards, creates small steps to enact and solidify the change. Staying power requires adjusting the metrics and performance needs of the organization. Much of this includes modifying how employees are promoted and awarded to ensure that change takes effect.

Change comes down to two fundamental ideas of process and expectation. Changing processes leads to new expectations and expectations support the use of processes. People must accept the new methods and then adapt them as the most beneficial. Resistance occurs when processes are rejected, and companies slip back into previuos ways of doing things.

All entities and organizations must change and adapt or they will soon find themselves irrelevant. The processes of development requires challenge and successfully overcoming that challenge. Using models such as Kotter’s helps decision-makers understand how change happens which can lead them to promote more efficient change with the least amount of turmoil. All change will require some frustration and adjustment

Tanguay, D., Waltman, J. & Defebaugh, S.  (2011). An ethics program assessment: a case study of Kotter’s Transformational Change Model. Ethics & Critical Thinking Journal, 2.