Book Report Of Leading Change By John Kotter Essay

“It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” - Charles Darwin
Change is inevitable in life and even more so in business, it is the key to progress. Yet, almost even more important than the change itself, is how we react to those changes. Since around the end of the Cold War, business has been on an upward spiraling pattern that is exponentially gathering momentum due to the expansion of globalization, as economies become more and more integrated with their technology, communications, markets and systems, our cultures and businesses must follow suit and therefore evolve. With globalization Kotter describes two main hazards and opportunities that emerge; hazards being more competition and increased speed, opportunities include bigger markets and fewer barriers (p.33). As businesses are forced into this evolution Kotter describes eight errors made by corporations that often inhibit this change: Allowing too much complacency, Failing to create a sufficiently powerful guiding coalition, Underestimating the power of vision, Under communicating the vision by a factor of 10x-100x, Permitting obstacles to block the new vision, Failing to create short-term wins, Declaring victory too soon, Neglecting to anchor changes firmly in the corporate culture (Kotter, 1996). These errors are avoidable which Kotter has explained by overcoming resistance to change and following his eight-step process.
Going along with this ideology of resentence, made me think of a quote that I was recently introduced to. Carl Jung, a Swiss psychologist, was known to have coined the term, “what you resist persists”. He basically believed that by resisting something you had to put energy into it and in, were giving the thing you wanted to go away the power to stick around and even manifest itself into a larger thing. Think of it as trying to keep a door closed while someone is on the other side trying to get in. To keep it...