Leading Change | 
| Author: John P. Kotter
Publisher: Harvard Business School Press
Category: Book
List Price: $26.95
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Avg. Customer Rating:  73 reviews
Sales Rank: 859
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 187
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.5 x 0.9
ISBN: 0875847471
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.406
EAN: 9780875847474
ASIN: 0875847471
Publication Date: January 15, 1996
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: some underlining
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Product Description
In Leading Change, John Kotter examines the efforts of more than 100 companies to remake themselves into better competitors. He identifies the most common mistakes leaders and managers make in attempting to create change and offers an eight-step process to overcome the obstacles and carry out the firm's agenda: establishing a greater sense of urgency, creating the guiding coalition, developing a vision and strategy, communicating the change vision, empowering others to act, creating short-term wins, consolidating gains and producing even more change, and institutionalizing new approaches in the future. This highly personal book reveals what John Kotter has seen, heard, experienced, and concluded in 25 years of working with companies to create lasting transformation.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 68 more reviews...
 Good leadership advice, but narrow and out-dated May 30, 2008
John Kotter is a business professor at Harvard University who writes "Leading Change" as a guide to business leaders, helping them to transform their stagnant, ineffective, hierarchical companies into more effective, responsive, team-oriented ones. To help companies and leaders make this transition, he presents eight sequential steps that must be followed in order and done well.
These eight steps are:
1. Establish a sense of urgency (fight complacency)
2. Create a guiding coalition (both influential leaders and effective managers)
3. Develop a widely inspiring vision and strategy for achieving it
4. Communicate the vision, communicate the vision, and communicate the vision even more.
5. Give the employees authority to creatively experiment concerning how to best make the vision a reality
6. Make sure you point out things to celebrate as you make progress toward your goals; it rewards appropriate behavior and, besides, people need to celebrate once in a while.
7. Understand Bowen Family Systems Theory--that when you change one thing, everything else changes with it. Systemic change is difficult work that produces a whole lot of anxiety and unintended consequences.
8. Make sure that, once the changes are made, they become engrained in the new culture of he company; make them "the way we do things around here."
Kotter does get credit for being comprehensive and for being among the first to write a leadership book of this sort (copyright 1996). He appears correct in all of his arguments and this reader has difficulty finding flaws in his eight steps. He appropriately balances task-orientation and relationship-orientation and distinguishes between leading and managing. Furthermore, he is the only author I've come across that understands how Family Systems Theory plays out in an organization undergoing change.
However, the book is outdated. Newer authors like Jim Collins, John Maxwell, and Kouzes & Posner have refined Kotter's ideas and presented them in a more readable, more applicable, and more modern way (again, 1996 copyright).
Kotter limits his ideas and examples to the large, highly structured business world; other authors deliberately address leadership within smaller businesses, schools, non-profits, and other environments. Kotter writes before the internet was widely used; other books keep rapid communication advancements in mind. The obligatory quotes from people I've never heard of who praise the book say over and over again how highly readable Kotter's prose is; I found the prose dry and could cite many examples from this genre which are much more readable.
The ideas Kotter presents are not bad; in fact they're quite good and have blazed the trail for other leadership books. However, "Leading Change" could certainly use an updated edition. Other authors have taken many of Kotter's ideas, refined them, re-worked them, and present them in a manner much more helpful to a wider audience.
I neither recommend this book nor do I contest it. You would do well to read "Leading Change," but you would do better to read some of the authors listed above.
 A MUST HAVE for your leadership library May 27, 2008
Very well written book and easy to read and follow. Since change is a modern requirement for any business, it simply makes sense to focus in on what it takes to provide the necessary leadership to do so.
Excellent April 5, 2008
This book is phenominal! An excellent guide for the leader experiencing change. If I had no other resource, this book would be enough for survival in the business world of change. Definitely worth the investment.
FANTASTIC SERVICE April 5, 2008
The book came right on time, and was delivered in the best of conditions. It is always very good doing business with you. I can trust that my books will arrive on time and the shipping is done with the urgency they deserve. Thanks once more. Teresa
Very nice book February 14, 2008
The book I bought is a new copy.
It is in very good condition and also delivered in time, as mentioned.
When coming to the content of the book [It is a prescribed book for our course], It is good, worth reading once atleast.
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