Table of Contents

Why Organizations Fail in Experiencing New Vision

John P. Kotter, Konosuke Matsushita professor of leadership at the Harvard Business School, wrote an article, "Leading Change: Why Transformational Efforts Fail,"¹ from his experience of watching more than 100 companies try to remake themselves into better corporations. These leadership efforts were initiated for many reasons: total quality management, reengineering, right sizing, restructuring, cultural change, and turnaround. Regardless of what the process was called, the goal was essentially the same. They all wanted to make fundamental changes in how the business was run to better cope with the changing market.

While a few of the leadership efforts were successful and a few were failures, most fell somewhere in the middle, with a concentration at the lower end of the scale.

Kotter drew two conclusions and then identified eight errors organizations make. The first observation was that the change process is a combination of several phases that take a considerable length of time. Skipping steps may seem faster, but compromises the end result. Second, he observed that critical mistakes in any of the steps could slow the progress of the project and undo previous gains.

Error #1: Not establishing a great enough sense of urgency.

Getting a transformation program started requires the aggressive cooperation of many individuals. Kotter claims that well over 50 percent of the companies fail in this first step.

Error #2: Not creating a powerful enough guiding coalition.

Large processes often start with one or two people, but in successful cases the leadership coalition continued to grow over time.

Error #3: Lacking a vision.

In unsuccessful cases, the leadership team failed to develop a picture of the future that is relatively easy to communicate and is attractive to insiders and others.

Error #4: Undercommunicating the vision by a factor of 10.

In unsuccessful projects, the leaders failed to use all existing channels and every opportunity to communicate the vision to their people.

Error #5: Not removing obstacles to the new vision.

All obstacles are not obvious from the beginning. The process of removing them is an ongoing one.

Error #6: Not systematically planning for and creating short-term wins.

Real transformation takes time and a renewal effort loses momentum if there are no short-term goals to meet and celebrate.

Error #7: Declaring victory too soon.

Premature victory celebrations kill momentum before the process is actually finished.

Error #8: Not anchoring changes in the corporation’s culture.

Change isn’t permanent until it becomes "the way we do things around here." Until the group norms of the various units change and the organizational culture is altered, the changes are likely to be abandoned when the pressure for change is removed.

The strength of the local church organizational culture makes it very difficult for a pastor to lead a church through major change without committing errors very similar to these. Number one on Kotter’s list is likely number one on our list. The pastor has a great sense of urgency for the church to change, but the local stakeholders rarely do.

Endnote

1. Kotter, John P. "Leading Change: Why Transformational Efforts Fail." Harvard Business Review (March–April 1995): 59–67.

Information supplied by Steven R. Mills, leadership development coordinator for the Assemblies of God Division of Christian Education, Springfield, Missouri.