John Kotter’s eight-step change model continues to influence some of the most forward-looking businesses, nonprofits, and government organizations in the world. Most recently the author of Change: How Organizations Achieve Hard-to-Imagine Results in Uncertain and Volatile Times (Wiley, 2021), Kotter remains a leadership expert’s leadership expert.
A professor emeritus at Harvard Business School, John Kotter has guided research and provided consulting services that have transformed major international corporations, including those challenged by the need to help teams embrace change and thrive during the transition to a digital environment.
A practical and inspirational plan for change
The classic Kotter change model asks organizations to:
1. Create a sense of urgency
- Build a guiding coalition
- Communicate the vision of change
- Communicating the vision
- Enable action by removing barriers
- Generate short-term wins
- Consolidating Gains
- Anchoring change in the culture
A guiding coalition gets you where you want to go
After a leader has ignited a sense of urgency within an organization and created a desire for change among employees, Kotter moves into the second factor: building an effective guiding coalition to promote change from within an organization’s ranks.
So what exactly is a “guiding coalition” in the universe of change management?
It’s a group of knowledgeable, highly effective staff drawn from within an organization who can use their social and professional capital to help plan for change and encourage buy-in at every level.
No one executive can do it alone when it comes to implementing and cementing innovative strategies. To neglect this insight is to fail to understand that power in any organization is distributed among stakeholders at multiple rungs on the hierarchical ladder.
A guiding coalition is a network of respected, energetic, and insightful internal experts who can move from the urgency of the first step in the change model to making positive change happen in the real world. Ideal coalition members also possess the experience and credibility to engage, persuade, and cultivate others throughout the organization. As the team at Kotter International sometimes likes to say, it’s not so much that “it takes a village,” as that “it takes a guiding coalition.”
Who do you want on your guiding coalition?
Experienced leaders in and outside Kotter International note that diversity is the first thing to look for in a guiding coalition. You want a group that incorporates a mix of distinct job titles, experiences, backgrounds, skill sets, and viewpoints. This will give you the advantage of a 360-degree view of any issue. Diverse groups have also shown themselves more capable of pushing past conventional wisdom and groupthink to produce relevant and innovative ideas.
You also want a guiding coalition that is notable for its enthusiasm and is well-stocked with people unafraid to think for themselves and outside conventional lines.
In selecting members of any guiding coalition, focus on actions rather than perceived “innate” personality characteristics. You will want to avoid automatic naysayers, those who place their immediate gain over the group’s success, and those who lack focus and thus might run creative efforts into the weeds. You want to only invite people who have earned the trust of their teammates and who have demonstrated an ability to check their egos at the door.
Draw most members of the coalition from within the ranks of front-line staff and middle managers rather than allowing it to become top-heavy with executives. While you need some level of executive representation, choose members based on demonstrated leadership achievements at their level.
While championing change starts at the top of an organization, it won’t gain sufficient traction without participation from middle management, front-line staff, and workers at every level.
Making your guiding coalition work
You’ll want to be sure the guiding coalition you’ve invested time and thought into creating can fulfill its mission. Make sure to provide your guiding coalition members with a solid foundation from which they can get moving quickly. To do this, you’ll need to give this team the authority to work beyond existing barriers and hierarchies. They should report their change recommendations directly to you or another designated executive team member. You can additionally bolster their cohesiveness and effectiveness as a working group by facilitating off-site retreats or other team-building sessions.
Give the guiding coalition the scope and power to lead the change efforts you want while staying out of their way as they execute the strategy you want.
At the same time, you must be sure the coalition stays focused and on target. You’ll need to stay engaged with its activities and be available to communicate regularly with its members. Your presence will also be needed to serve as a counterweight to the inevitable pushback the coalition will receive from others within the organization.
A picture of success
United Way of Metropolitan Dallas (UWMD) is one of the many success stories among Kotter International clients. UWMD’s traditional employee-giving campaign structure was foundering. Looking to better engage donors at a time when opportunities for self-directed giving began to flourish, UWMD asked Kotter for help in changing its operational model. Building a guiding coalition was at the center of this change effort.
Thanks to the energetic response of coalition members, UWMD was able to identify previously untapped leadership within its ranks and support new talent that offered innovative solutions.
Coalition members tried out potential ways of revitalizing the organization’s increasingly irrelevant “community chest” fundraising strategy, and in the process broke UWMD out of its rut. Among other achievements, it implemented a social innovation division for building community connections and directing funds to emerging enterprises focused on social welfare issues. UWMD also succeeded in transforming its organizational culture, fostering greater staff engagement, and achieving its most successful fundraising year ever.
Ari Betof 