Speaker 1: Hello and welcome to today's lesson where we're looking at John Cotter's eight-step change model, which is one of the best known and most widely applied models for leading change. Now, Cotter first described the model in a 1995 article in the Harvard Business Review and later described the model in more detail in his 1996 book, Leading Change, and I've included a link to the book below this video if you'd like to learn more. So he developed the model by observing numerous organizations trying to change and from this extracted common success factors and combined them into this methodology you see here. Now, broadly speaking, we can say there are three phases to the Cotter change model. So first, create a climate for change. This phase, which happens first, is about creating a shared understanding of the change you want to make and why you want to make it. Second, we have engage and enable the organization. This phase is about engaging your team so that they are all empowered and enthusiastic to affect change within the organization. And third, we have implement and sustain. This phase is about pressing ahead after your initial successes to build momentum and fully embed the change within your organization. So with that, let's jump in and take a more detailed look at each of the steps. So first, you need to create a sense of urgency around the initiative that convinces others of the need to act immediately. In this step, what you're trying to do is build a compelling case for change so that people understand why the change is necessary. Your aim is to build lots of support for your initiative so that the sense of urgency is shared and your peers are no longer happy with the status quo. Now, Cotter estimated that a minimum of 75% of management needs to back an initiative or be on board with an initiative for it to be successful. Next, we have build a coalition. It's not enough to try and push through a major change by yourself. To be successful, you need to form powerful coalitions with key people within your organization. By getting influential and respected people visibly on your side, you are far more likely to drive through the change successfully. These key people must be prepared to work together outside of the formal hierarchy and act as change leaders for the initiative. Bring these key people together to form a change coalition or powerful change steering group. Aim to have a diverse group of key powerful people from different parts of the organization who combined have enough power to drive the change through the organization. Step 3 is create a vision. You need a clear vision of how you see the future organization looking and why it's necessary to change. This will help everyone understand why you're asking them to move outside their comfort zone and action this change. Every member of the change coalition should be able to describe the vision in just a few minutes and it's a good idea for you as the leader to practice your vision speech often. You want your vision to be easily understood by the people who will be affected by the change. Now during this stage you also create initiatives to realize the vision and you should link these initiatives to the vision so it's clear to everyone how they contribute towards realizing the vision. Step 4 is to communicate the vision. It's not enough to have a vision you need to communicate it. You want to win the hearts and minds of those who have to execute the change. That way you will create a willing army of people who want to make the change happen. In essence you want to get everyone to buy in to the initiative. Understand the urgency of the change who all want to pull in the same direction. Now your communication needs to be clear and laser focused and that's because it competes with all the other hundreds or even thousands of communications happening within your organization every day. In this phase you want the team to feel that this isn't a project it's a mission. Now to cut through make use of all the communication channels available to you and every time you speak or communicate about the initiative remember to tie it back to the vision. Step 5 is empower others to act on the vision. Now until now you've been painting a picture of the vision to inspire your team but now the entire change coalition needs to step up and remove any blockers or barriers so that the team can get on and implement the vision. Now this could mean a number of things including providing training or coaching so your team has the skills they need, creating an organizational structure either temporarily or permanently, setting up a reward system aligned to the desired outcome to motivate the team, identifying those who are resistant to change and working with them to get their buy-in as appropriate or even hiring or borrowing the people you need where you can see gaps. But essentially by removing barriers and overcoming obstacles the entire change coalition empowers the team to succeed. The sixth step is to create quick wins. Now major transformation can take a very long time and so people can lose faith or give up altogether if they don't see any signs of progress. So in this step you structure your initiatives so as to achieve quick wins early on. Now that means breaking the initiative down into phases with one or more visible tangible benefits delivered at the end of each phase. Seeing early success is a great way to build momentum and energize your team. It also builds resilience for when more difficult challenges are encountered later on. Now you should communicate any successes you have regularly and widely. Remember that nothing breeds success like success so praise and reward those who help reach the targets. Step 7 is build on the change. Real change as we've just said takes a very long time. Until new approaches are deeply ingrained there's a real risk of people reverting to old ways of working. Quick wins are only the very start of what needs to happen to achieve long-term change and this means you must continuously repeat steps 4 through to 6 of the model and communicate the vision, empower others and schedule quick wins over and over. It can be really easy to take your foot off the accelerator once you see some quick wins. This step counters that tendency by encouraging you to stay focused and continuing to set goals to build on the successes and momentum you've already achieved. The final step is to embed the change. In this step you make the change stick. The change needs to become a fundamental part of how your organization works and its culture and that means that the change must be embedded into organizational systems and processes. It must be embedded into the daily work of everyone in the organization. Now there are some advantages and disadvantages associated with the model. So in terms of advantages then the model focuses on obtaining buy-in from key employees to ensure success. It fits nicely on top of traditional organizational structures and it provides a set of clear steps to guide you through the process of change. In terms of disadvantages well it's a top-down model so you can miss potential opportunities because not everyone is involved in the co-creation of the vision or the initiatives. It can lead to resistance and resentment amongst employees if you don't consider how people react to significant change, if you don't understand for example the change curve. And finally while the model is really good for initiating change it doesn't help you as much when it comes to sustaining change. So in summary changing organizations successfully is hard. It's challenging. Kotter's 8-step change model provides a step-by-step process you can follow to give your change a fighting chance of success. When you take the time to create a climate for successful change and build momentum through a powerful vision removing barriers and achieving regular quick wins then you are more likely to be successful. And when you repeat the steps of Kotter's 8-step change model over the long term then you can make change a core part of your organization and its culture and you can declare a victory in your change. So that's it for this lesson really hope you enjoyed it and I look forward to speaking to you again soon.