John Kotter, professor emeritus of the Harvard Business School and co-founder of Kotter InternationalFred Lum/The Globe and Mail
KARL MOORE - This is Karl Moore of the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University, Talking Management for The Globe and Mail. Today, I am delighted to be with John Kotter, a professor emeritus from the Harvard Business School and co-founder of Kotter International.
Good Morning, John.
JOHN KOTTER - Good Morning.
KM - You have written a lot about change. This is a huge subject and you are one of the great thinkers about it. What are you thinking about change today? What is your latest thinking?
JK - Over the last couple of years since we have started this firm, Kotter Intl., I have been out working with some of the clients they line up and what has been fascinating to me is to watch the way they think about change, what they seem to pick up easily, and what they seem to struggle with. I have been trying to think that through more deeply in the spirit of how to help them, but also intellectually what does that mean conceptually about how we should think about change?
What I conclude is that, just like anything in life, your skills, your abilities, and how you think are a function of your experiences. These people have been growing up in a world that is moving slower than today's world, that has less large-scale change - which is what I am particularly interested in - and as a result their thinking is, of course, affected by that. They think in terms of more incremental changes and more moderate size leaps, if you will. As it turns out, it is very clear to me now that the basic way that you operate, to be successful with the moderate to small changes, is fundamentally different than when you hit a certain point and you have to do things in a really big way.
The "really big" is basically what I have been writing about for 10 or 15 years and what I am trying to understand is, therefore, what is the difference between that and what they have been taught to think? Because it is really, really, different. So when they are hit with the really big - the market moves enough or the world technology moves enough - they are forced to come to grips with the fact that "we are going to have to do something big" they stumble so often of the times. Seventy per cent of the time big change efforts fail completely, 20 per cent they do OK, 5 per cent you and I would give an A+ grade.
KM - So when you mean big change it's not just saying, "Let's do a change of a division or a change of going after a new customer set," but it's really substantial society change and we have to rethink our business model a fair bit.
JK - Yes, rethinking a business model is one; it could just be some worldwide transformation in our total I.T. capabilities, which turns out to be a humongous thing to do. Some people use the word "transformational" a lot when they are talking about that, I am not sure that is the best word. A lot of it is "we have a whole new strategy and how do we, somehow, make the firm operate that way?" which can be a big, big, deal.
KM - This has been Karl Moore of the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University, Talking Management for The Globe and Mail.