1©2015 Kotter International

CHANGE ESSENTIALS Today we expect leaders at all levels to deliver results under conditions of increasing change and uncertainty. However, many feel unprepared and ill equipped to lead change. In this program, you first learn the components of Dr. Kotter’s 8 Steps for Successful Change and four Critical Leadership Principles that must be in place to ensure successful change. Second, you explore and practice how to get and keep people on board and supporting change: you learn the definition of true urgency and how to build and maintain it in your own context.

Core Content Areas

The session includes practices, interactive exercises, and tools in the following core areas:

How to Build a Foundation for Successful Change

You will learn about the rates and causes of failure for change in organizations and explore the essential elements of successful change: the research-based 8 Steps for Successful Change and the four Critical Leadership Principles. Leveraging the results of your own Change Appraisal, you will study implementation practices and build a customized tactics guide and action plan for use in executing change in your organization.

How to Ignite Urgency for Change

You will explore how to get and keep people bought in to and actively supporting a change by learning what true urgency looks like and what leaders of change need to do to build, communicate and maintain it.

You will learn to adapt your own “change style” to people's different communication needs as a way to build buy-in across a range of personalities. Applying the principles for building urgency, you will work with different types to establish momentum for an idea or a current change initiative. Focus areas include how to gather support, how to identify who must be urgent, and how to develop messages that both appeal to all styles and rise above the din of competing messages.

Program Outcomes

As a result of this experience, you will be able to:

Explain the 8 Steps for Successful Change and related core leadership principles Apply core principles of effective change to your own situation and identify ways

to enhance its success Recognize the behaviors that occur when people are on board, bought in and actively

supporting a change More effectively engage others in change by addressing their diverse needs Apply tactics to increase urgency and active support for a change You will leave with tips, tools, and a plan to build success for your change

The Change Essentials Program is based on the best-selling book coauthored by Dr. Kotter

CHANGE ESSENTIALS • OVERVIEW

2©2015 Kotter International

Toolkit

Participants have digital access to a toolkit they can use to explore and develop the skills cultivated in the session. Among the tools included are a change leadership appraisal, self-assessments, core worksheets from the pre-work and in-session materials, and an action plan. They are designed to support participants’ efforts as they work through their own current and/or future change initiatives. Accompanying each tool is a short overview highlighting its purpose and describing why, when and how participants can best use it. Additionally, integral content from the course is summarized in useful tables and tactics guides.

Structure and Audience

This is a two-day, classroom-based, highly interactive (non-lecture) program for up to 25 participants. There is approximately an hour of pre-work that can be completed either on-line or through handout materials. The structure includes a mix of individual, small group and large group work. Suggestions for follow-up application and enrichment are included.

This session is most appropriate for mid-level leaders and high potentials. Facilitators can also tailor the delivery so that the program is relevant for senior leaders or front line managers.

Foundation of this Program

This educational program is based on the best-selling book, Our Iceberg Is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions, by Dr. John Kotter and Holger Rathgeber. This simple yet powerful book weaves Dr. Kotter’s work together with a story of successful transformation, helping organizations and people all around the globe embrace change and achieve their strategies. John Kotter is Professor of Leadership, Emeritus, at Harvard Business School.

Dr. John Kotter