What can Kotter teach us about being more sustainable?

Today I received an email from Harvard Business Review promoting the combined works of Professor John Kotter who is well known for his views on Leading Change within businesses.

To my mind the challenge that we face in society with regards to living more sustainably, addressing climate change and biodiversity loss requires a 'change programme'.

We need to change our behaviour, our attitudes and the way we live. Businesses have been managing change programmes in the workplace for years so I thought I would review Kotter's 8 Steps and see if they could work for these big national and international issues.

Below is from Kotter's website with my comments in bold.

Step 1: Establishing a Sense of Urgency

Help others see the need for change and they will be convinced of the importance of acting immediately.

The way I see it, it’s governments, some in the media, and business leaders that need to be convinced. The sense of urgency is well documented, not least in UN and Government sponsored reports that they choose not to act on.

Step 2: Creating the Guiding Coalition

Assemble a group with enough power to lead the change effort, and encourage the group to work as a team.

Plenty of groups have been set up but you need to listen to their advice and recommendations. And empower them to act, not come up with excuses NOT to implement their suggestions.

Step 3: Developing a Change Vision

Create a vision to help direct the change effort, and develop strategies for achieving that vision. 

That’s a rounded vision, a holistic vision, not just one focussed on a single issue like economic growth.

Step 4: Communicating the Vision for Buy-in

Make sure as many as possible understand and accept the vision and the strategy.

Seems sensible enough, although you may want to prioritise efforts towards those decision makers who are more cynical and could undermine your strategy, such as politicians and certain parts of the media.

Step 5: Empowering Broad-based Action

Remove obstacles to change, change systems or structures that seriously undermine the vision, and encourage risk-taking and nontraditional ideas, activities, and actions.

Remove obstacles, change systems if they don’t work with the strategy and encourage people. Less is more. No need to spend hundreds of millions on IT systems or create working groups to procrastinate and create unecessary processes. 

Step 6: Generating Short-term Wins

Plan for achievements that can easily be made visible, follow-through with those achievements and recognize and reward employees who were involved.

But only if they are recognised as short-term wins and not tokenistic gestures that appear to show progress but haven’t really achieved very much at all.

Step 7: Never Letting Up

Use increased credibility to change systems, structures, and policies that don't fit the vision, also hire, promote, and develop employees who can implement the vision, and finally reinvigorate the process with new projects, themes, and change agents. 

In other words let those that can make change happen, make it a reality. Don’t stifle them, don’t create process that will impede them and don't take them off the job until it’s complete.

Step 8: Incorporating Changes into the Culture

Articulate the connections between the new behaviors and organizational success, and develop the means to ensure leadership development and succession.

Don’t let a future Prime Minister, Secretary of State or CEO cock it all up and undo everything at a later date.