Quotes from John P. Kotter

At any one time the world has a very limited number of Steve Jobs or Winston Churchills or Thomas Watson the firsts. These are wonderful people and we can learn much from them, but praying for a few more of them to solve the world's problems is not a great idea.

Low lights signal to our senses that the workday may be over and it's time for sleep, making it hard for an audience to pay careful attention. When we stand behind a big wooden podium, it can feel as if there's a shield between us and the audience.

In terms of getting people to experiment more and take more risk, there are at least three things that immediately come to my mind. Number one, of course, is role-modeling it yourself. Number two is, when people take intelligent, smart risks and yet it doesn't work out, not shooting them. And number three, being honest with yourself.

Because management deals mostly with the status quo and leadership deals mostly with change, in the next century we are going to have to try to become much more skilled at creating leaders.

The vast majority of large scale change efforts fail. Which means that the probability that you have actually experienced a failure, and your people know that and are pessimistic, therefore, about trying something again, is very high.

A guiding coalition with good managers but poor leaders will not succeed. A managerial mindset will develop plans, not vision; it will vastly undercommunicate the need for and direction of change; and it will control rather than empower people.

We need to remind the birds of what they have heard, and remind them all the time. The meeting this morning was brief. Some of the colony were not here. The message is radical. We need much more communication—every day, everywhere.

Failure here is usually associated with underestimating the difficulties in producing change and thus the importance of a strong guiding coalition.

Knocking down barriers to making everyone, even the children, feel empowered was unprecedented in the colony. But the chicks loved it.

At one point, even the Head Penguin suggested that the right step might be to slow down. But Alice wouldn't hear of it. "We are constantly at risk of losing our courage. Some birds are already suggesting we wait until next winter. Then, if we are still alive, they will say the danger was overstated and that any change is not needed." It was a good point.

The next season, the scouts found a still better iceberg, larger and with richer fishing grounds. And though it was tempting to declare that the colony had been subjected to enough change, and should stay forever on their new home, they didn't. They moved again. It was a critical step: not becoming complacent again and not letting up.

Alice (backed up with the Professor's relentless logic) convinced Louis to shake up the Leadership Council. He was reluctant to do anything that would show disrespect for birds who had worked hard for years to help and serve the colony. Making the moves while preserving the dignity of all was not easy.

Buddy was offered a number of more important jobs. He turned them all down, but helped the Leadership Council find other good candidates. His lack of ambition came to be seen as great humility. The birds loved him even more.

There was always some tension between those who thought their role was to keep things in order and those who were urgent about producing necessary changes. But most penguins intuitively understood that you needed both to thrive in this new era.

The need to adapt is nothing new; after all, Benjamin Franklin said, "When you are finished changing, you are finished." What is new is how often we need to change, the pace at which we need to move, and the complexity and volatility of the context in which we are operating.

Create a Sense of Urgency.

A useful rule of thumb: Whenever you cannot describe the vision driving a change initiative in five minutes or less and get a reaction that signifies both understanding and interest, you are in for trouble.

The simple insight that management is not leadership (chapter 2) is better understood today, but not nearly as well as is needed. Management makes a system work. It helps you do what you know how to do. Leadership builds systems or transforms old ones.

Pull Together the Guiding Team. Make sure there is a powerful group guiding the change—one with leadership skills, credibility, communications ability, authority, analytical skills, and a sense of urgency.

So what have you learned in the last decade? JK: The most basic point is that the rate of change continues to go up in most places, in most industries, and in most sectors. As a result, the number of significant initiatives inside organizations has gone up. Initiatives in operations, marketing, sales, finance, anywhere. And that has big implications.

Develop the Change Vision and Strategy. Clarify how the future will be different from the past, and how you can make that future a reality. Consider: What would be the equivalent of becoming nomads and being "free"? Is that better future attractive enough? Do we have a credible path to achieve that goal?

We throw people into launching and supporting change initiatives and projects and we just assume that life and past experiences have been a good teacher for everybody to pick up today's relevant insights and skills. But we have seen again and again that this is not necessarily true when you have to change more often and in bigger ways. Life—which means the past—can be a pretty bad teacher.

all the atoms vibrating on the same frequency—which

Communicate for Understanding and Buy-In. Make sure as many others as possible understand and accept the vision and the strategy. Go beyond "stopping resistance" to creating more and more people who want to help you.