Change is hard. Honestly, that’s an understatement. Most corporate shake-ups don’t just fail; they crash and burn in a spectacular mess of missed KPIs and resentful employees. If you've spent any time in a boardroom or a Slack channel lately, you’ve probably heard someone mention Kotter's 8 step change process. It’s the "gold standard." But here’s the thing: people treat it like a grocery list. They check off the boxes and then wonder why their culture is still toxic.
John Kotter, a Harvard Business School professor, didn’t just pull these steps out of thin air back in 1995. He watched hundreds of companies try to pivot. Most of them—about 70%, according to his research—failed. His book Leading Change became a bible because it gave a structure to the messy, human chaos of organizational shifts. It’s about psychology, not just spreadsheets.
The Urgency Trap
Everything starts with a sense of urgency. But this is where most managers mess up right away. They think urgency means sending a panicked email about quarterly losses. That’s not urgency; that’s just stress. True urgency, in the Kotter's 8 step change process framework, is about making the status quo feel more dangerous than the unknown future.
You have to find the "burning platform."
In 1990, Lou Gerstner took over a dying IBM. He didn't just tell people to work harder. He forced the company to face the fact that they were becoming irrelevant in a world moving toward integrated services. He created a "crises" by being brutally honest about their market share. You need about 75% of your management to genuinely believe that staying the same is a death sentence. If they think "we’re doing okay," your change initiative is already dead.
Building the Coalition (It’s Not Just Executives)
Step two is all about the Guiding Coalition. This isn't just the C-suite. If you only have VPs in the room, you’re in trouble. You need the "informal leaders"—the person in engineering that everyone listens to, or the veteran salesperson who knows where all the bodies are buried.
This group needs four things: positional power, expertise, credibility, and leadership.
It’s about building a team that has enough emotional intelligence to navigate the politics of the office. They have to trust each other. If there’s backstabbing in the coalition, the rest of the company will smell it from a mile away. You’re looking for a mix of "players" who can actually move the needle.
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Vision Isn't a Mission Statement
Most vision statements are boring. They’re filled with words like "synergy" and "world-class" and "customer-centric." Nobody cares.
A real vision—the kind Kotter talks about—is a picture of the future that is easy to communicate and appeals to customers, stockholders, and employees. It should be something you can explain in five minutes or less. If it’s a 50-page PowerPoint deck, it’s not a vision. It’s a chore.
Why does this matter? Because a clear vision simplifies thousands of tiny decisions. If every employee knows the "North Star," they don’t have to ask for permission every time they want to try something new. It gives them autonomy within a framework.
The Communication Breakdown
Step four is where the wheels usually fall off. Communication.
You think you’ve communicated the change? You haven't. Kotter famously argued that most leaders under-communicate their vision by a factor of ten, or even a hundred. You have to use every single channel available. Town halls, emails, 1-on-1s, the company intranet—it all has to be consistent.
But talk is cheap.
The most powerful communication is behavior. If the Guiding Coalition says "we’re cutting costs" but then spends $50,000 on a luxury retreat, the Kotter's 8 step change process is officially broken. People watch what you do, not what you say. Deeds are the ultimate communication tool.
Removing the Barriers to Action
You've got the vision. You've talked about it until you're blue in the face. Now, you have to empower people.
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Sometimes the barriers are structural. Maybe the way people are paid actually discourages them from doing the new things you want them to do. If you want "collaboration" but your bonus structure is based on individual performance, you’re sabotaging yourself.
Sometimes the barrier is a person. We all know that one manager who refuses to change. They’ve been there 20 years, they’re "old school," and they’re quietly telling their team that "this too shall pass." Kotter is pretty clear here: if you can’t get them on board, you might have to move them out of the way. It sounds harsh, but one stubborn leader can sink the whole ship.
Short-Term Wins are Oxygen
Change takes a long time. People get tired. They get cynical.
That’s why you need short-term wins. These aren't just "nice to haves." They are essential for keeping the momentum alive. You need to create visible, unambiguous successes within six to 18 months.
- Launch a pilot project that actually works.
- Show a specific department saving money or hitting a goal.
- Publicly reward the people who made it happen.
These wins provide the evidence that the sacrifices are worth it. They take the wind out of the sails of the critics. If you don't have a win within the first year, people will start drifting back to their old habits.
Don't Declare Victory Too Soon
This is the most common mistake in the whole Kotter's 8 step change process.
A company sees a little bit of progress, the stock price bumps up, and the CEO declares "Mission Accomplished."
Big mistake.
Real change takes years to sink into the DNA of a company. Step seven is about "Consolidating Gains and Producing More Change." This is where you use the credibility of those early wins to tackle the even bigger, nastier problems. You might change the hiring process. You might overhaul the entire IT infrastructure.
New approaches are fragile. They can be easily crushed by the weight of "the way we’ve always done things." You have to keep pushing until the new way is just... the way.
Making It Stick
The final step is anchoring the change in the culture.
Culture is what happens when no one is looking. It’s the shared values and social norms of the group. For a change to be permanent, it has to be rooted in the social fabric of the organization.
You have to show people how the new behaviors have helped improve performance. "Remember when it took six weeks to get an approval? Now it takes two days, and our customers are much happier." You also have to make sure the next generation of leaders actually embodies these new values. If you promote people who represent the "old way," the culture will revert instantly.
Why This Fails in the Real World
Look, I’ll be honest. Even with these steps, it’s a slog.
Critics of Kotter often say the model is too "top-down." They’re not entirely wrong. In the modern, agile world of 2026, things move faster than they did in the 90s. Some experts, like those at McKinsey or BCG, argue that you need a more iterative approach—something closer to "Agile Change Management."
But the core principles of Kotter's 8 step change process remain true because they address human nature. We are wired to resist change. We are wired to seek safety in the familiar.
The biggest limitation of the model is that it assumes a certain level of stability that just doesn't exist anymore. Today, you aren't just doing one big change; you’re probably doing five at once. This creates "change fatigue." People just get burnt out.
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Actionable Next Steps for Leaders
If you’re looking at your organization and thinking, "we need to fix this," don't just print out a list of these steps. Start here:
Do an honest "Urgency Audit." Ask five people at different levels of the company why they think change is necessary. If they all give you different answers—or worse, if they don't think it's necessary at all—you need to go back to step one. You haven't sold the problem yet.
Identify your "Quiet Influencers." Stop looking at the org chart. Who do people actually talk to in the breakroom? Who is the person people go to when they're confused? Get that person on your Guiding Coalition immediately. Their buy-in is worth more than ten emails from the CEO.
Kill one "Old Way" process this week. Find a report that no one reads or a meeting that everyone hates. Stop doing it. Tell everyone: "We are stopping this to make room for the new initiative." It’s a small, symbolic move that proves you’re serious about clearing barriers.
Define a "Win" for next month. Not next year. Next month. What is one tiny thing you can point to and say "See? It’s working." Make it measurable. Make it public.
Change isn't a project with a start and end date. It’s a muscle you have to build. Using Kotter's 8 step change process isn't about following a script; it’s about understanding that your people are the ones who actually make the change happen. If you lose them, you lose everything. Focus on the humans, and the process will usually take care of itself.