“Most US corporations today are over-managed and under-led. They need to develop their capacity to exercise leadership.” — John P. Kotter
“Leadership is about setting a direction. It’s about creating a vision, empowering and inspiring people to want to achieve the vision, and enabling them to do so with energy and speed through an effective strategy. In its most basic sense, leadership is about mobilizing a group of people to jump into a better future.” — John P. Kotter
“Leaders establish the vision for the future and set the strategy for getting there.” — John P. Kotter
“The rate of change is not going to slow down anytime soon. If anything, competition in most industries will probably speed up even more in the next few decades.” — John P. Kotter
“Leadership is about coping with change” — John P. Kotter
“Effective leaders help others to understand the necessity of change and to accept a common vision of the desired outcome.” — John P. Kotter
“One of the most common ways to overcome resistance to change is to educate people about it beforehand. Communication of ideas helps people see the need for and the logic of a change. The education process can involve one-on-one discussions, presentations to groups, or memos and reports.” — John P. Kotter
Change Leadership: John Kotter’s 8-Step Model
“Leaders establish the vision for the future and set the strategy for getting there; they cause change. They motivate and inspire others to go in the right direction and they, along with everyone else, sacrifice to get there.” — John P. Kotter
“Leadership defines what the future should look like, aligns people with that vision, and inspires them to make it happen despite the obstacles.” — John P. Kotter
“A leader needs enough understanding to fashion an intelligent strategy.” — John P. Kotter
“We know that leadership is very much related to change. As the pace of change accelerates, there is naturally a greater need for effective leadership.” — John P. Kotter
“Good communication does not mean that you have to speak in perfectly formed sentences and paragraphs. It isn’t about slickness. Simple and clear go a long way.” — John P. Kotter
“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.” — John P. Kotter
“Motivation and inspiration energize people, not by pushing them in the right direction as control mechanisms do but by satisfying basic human needs for achievement, a sense of belonging, recognition, self-esteem, a feeling of control over one’s life, and the ability to live up to one’s ideals. Such feelings touch us deeply and elicit a powerful response.” — John P. Kotter
“People are more inclined to be drawn in if their leader has a compelling vision. Great leaders help people get in touch with their own aspirations and then will help them forge those aspirations into a personal vision.” — John P. Kotter
“What’s really driving the boom in coaching, is this: as we move from 30 miles an hour to 70 to 120 to 180……as we go from driving straight down the road to making right turns and left turns to abandoning cars and getting motorcycles…the whole game changes, and a lot of people are trying to keep up, learn how not to fall.” — John P. Kotter
“Over the years I have become convinced that we learn best – and change – from hearing stories that strike a chord within us … Those in leadership positions who fail to grasp or use the power of stories risk failure for their companies and for themselves.” — John P. Kotter
“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. If the culture you have is radically different from an experiment and take-risk culture, then you have a big change you going to have to make—and no little gimmicks are going to do it for you.” — John P. Kotter
“In the final analysis, change sticks when it becomes the way we do things around here.” — John P. Kotter
“Many years ago, I think I got my first insight on how an incredibly diverse team can work together and do astonishing things, and not just misunderstand each other and fight.” — John P. Kotter
“Good communication is not just data transfer. You need to show people something that addresses their anxieties, that accepts their anger, that is credible in a very gut-level sense, and that evokes faith in the vision.” — John P. Kotter
“Great vision communication usually means heartfelt messages are coming from real human beings.” — John P. Kotter
“In a change effort, culture comes last, not first.” — John P. Kotter
“A culture truly changes only when a new way of operating has been shown to succeed over some minimum period of time.” — John P. Kotter
“Outsiders have the intuitive ability to continually view problems in fresh ways and to identify ineffective practices and traditions.” — John P. Kotter
“Overcoming complacency is crucial at the start of any change process, and it often requires a little bit of surprise, something that grabs attention at more than an intellectual level. You need to surprise people with something that disturbs their view that everything is perfect.” — John P. Kotter
“Anyone in a large organization who thinks major change is impossible should probably get out.” — John P. Kotter
“A higher rate of urgency does not imply ever-present panic, anxiety, or fear. It means a state in which complacency is virtually absent.” — John P. Kotter
“Changing behavior is less a matter of giving people analysis to influence their thoughts than helping them to see a truth to influence their feelings.” — John P. Kotter
“Effective leaders help others to understand the necessity of change and to accept a common vision of the desired outcome.” — John P. Kotter
“Great leaders understand that historical success tends to produce stable and inwardly focused organizations, and these outfits, in turn, reinforce a feeling of contentment with the status quo.” — John P. Kotter
“I’m impatient. Typically people think they know all about change and don’t need help. Their approach tends to be more management-oriented than leadership-oriented. It’s very frustrating.” — John P. Kotter
“In an ever changing world, you never learn it all, even if you keep growing into your 90s.” — John P. Kotter
“Leaders establish the vision for the future and set the strategy for getting there; they cause change. They motivate and inspire others to go in the right direction and they, along with everyone else, sacrifice to get there.” — John P. Kotter
“Leadership defines what the future should look like, aligns people with that vision, and inspires them to make it happen despite the obstacles.” — John P. Kotter
“Leadership is about setting a direction. It’s about creating a vision, empowering and inspiring people to want to achieve the vision, and enabling them to do so with energy and speed through an effective strategy.” — John P. Kotter
“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.” — John P. Kotter
“Managers are trained to make incremental, programmatic improvements. They aren’t trained to lead large-scale change.” — John P. Kotter
“Neurologists say that our brains are programmed much more for stories than for abstract ideas. Tales with a little drama are remembered far longer than any slide crammed with analytics.” — John P. Kotter
“People change what they do less because they are given an analysis that shifts their thinking than because they are shown a truth that influences their feelings.” — John P. Kotter
“Producing major change in an organization is not just about signing up one charismatic leader. You need a group – a team – to be able to drive the change.” — John P. Kotter
“The central issue is never strategy, structure, culture, or systems. The core of the matter is always about changing the behavior of people.” — John P. Kotter
“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.” — John P. Kotter
“The world has 6 billion people and counting. We need to help 500 million people become better leaders so that billions can benefit.” — John P. Kotter
“Tradition is a very powerful force.”
“We are always creating new tools and techniques to help people, but the fundamental framework is remarkably resilient, which means it must have something to do with the nature of organizations or human nature.” — John P. Kotter
“We worry about appearing awkward in a presentation. But up to a point, most people seem to feel more comfortable with less-than-perfect speaking abilities.” — John P. Kotter
“Without credible communication, and a lot of it, the hearts and minds of others are never captured.” — John P. Kotter
John Kotter
John Paul Kotter is the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus, at the Harvard Business School, an author, and the founder of Kotter International, a management consulting firm based in Seattle and Boston. He is a thought leader in business, leadership, and change.
In 2008, he co-founded Kotter International where he currently serves as Chairman. The business consultancy firm applies Kotter’s research on leadership, strategy execution, transformation, and any form of large-scale change.
Since early in his career, Kotter has received numerous awards for his thought leadership in his field from Harvard Business Review, Bloomberg BusinessWeek, and others.
John Kotter’s books
Kotter has authored 19 books. Leading Change (Harvard Business School Press, 1996), which Time selected as one of the 25 most influential business management books ever written, The Heart of Change (with Dan S. Cohen; Harvard Business School Press, 2002), and A Sense of Urgency (Harvard Business Press, 2008) detail and explore his change leadership process.
Kotter also teamed up with Holger Rathgeber and wrote a business parable featuring penguins, Our Iceberg Is Melting (St. Martin’s Press, 2005). Kotter’s latest book, That’s Not How We Do It Here! (Penguin, 2016), is another parable written with Rathgeber.
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