Leading Change

John P. Kotter

As it is obvious from its title, this book is about leadership for change. John wrote fable before that I posted a couple of month ago (Our Iceberg Is Melting). This is more business like version of that.
There are eight steps for change, establishing a sense of urgency, creating the guiding coalition, developing a vision and strategy, communicating the change vision, empowering employees for broad-based action, generating short-term wins, consolidating gains and producing more change, anchoring new approaches in the culture.
The first four steps help defrost a hardened status quo. Steps five to seven introduce new practices. The last step grounds the changes in the corporate culture. In reality most firms struggle in steps 2 to 4.
According to a twenty-year study of 115 Harvard Business School graduates in 1974, two elements were identified: competitive drive and lifelong learning. Suppose comparing two people, one grow 6 percent while the other grow 1 percent every year. Twenty years later, the former reaches 321 points while the latter reaches only 122 points. This is the cumulative effect of lifelong learning.
Now you can start learning by reading this book.