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Global Strategy and Leadership · Module 6: Strategy implementation

Eight Stages at Bilby Telecom

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Chapters

  1. 0:00Lost customers
  2. 0:21Climate
  3. 0:50Engage
  4. 1:17Make it stick
  5. 1:52Recap

In short

Kotter's eight stages for leading change run in order: create urgency, build a guiding coalition, develop a vision and strategy, communicate the vision, empower broad-based action, generate short-term wins, consolidate gains, and anchor new approaches in the culture. Declaring victory too soon lets old habits return.

  • After the vision comes communicating it.
  • Empowering action means removing rules and measures that block the new way.
  • Anchoring in the culture is what Lewin calls refreezing.

Transcript

0:00Lost customers

Bilby Telecom lost 400,000 customers in a single year. Its new chief executive had one plan: move customer service into an app. Most big changes like this fail. Here is how she ran it, stage by stage.

0:21Climate

Stage one: a sense of urgency. She shows every manager the customers they lost, and where they went. Stage two: a guiding coalition, senior people with the power to lead it. Stage three: a vision. Any service question, answered in the app in minutes. Pause. Urgency, coalition, vision. What comes next?

0:50Engage

Communicate the vision, over and over, in every store and every meeting. Stage five: empower people, by removing what blocks them. Staff are still judged on call minutes, so she scraps that report. Stage six: short-term wins. In three months, app complaints fall by a third. She celebrates it loudly, and names the teams who made it happen.

1:17Make it stick

This is where many programs fail. The board wants to declare victory. Kotter warns against exactly that. Declare victory too soon, and old habits return. Stage seven: consolidate gains. She uses the credibility to change more. Billing and repairs move into the app too. Stage eight: anchor it in the culture. Hiring, promotion and bonuses now reward the new way of working. In Lewin's terms, that's refreezing: the change becomes how things are done.

1:52Recap

Climate, engage, make it stick. Eight stages, in order. Screenshot this. Which stage do organizations skip most? Tell us in the comments.

Try a question on this lesson

From the EstatePass Global Strategy and Leadership bank. Answer it, then read the explanation.

Question 1 of 10/0 correct

The chief executive of Bilby Telecom Ltd is leading a major change to implement a new strategy and follows Kotter's eight-stage process in order. She has established a sense of urgency, formed a guiding coalition of senior managers and developed a vision and strategy for the change. Which stage comes next?

Sources

  • Kotter (1996), Leading Change
  • Kotter (1995), Leading change: why transformation efforts fail
  • Lewin (1947), Frontiers in group dynamics
  • CPA question bank: cpa-gsl-0444, 0445, 0610, 0611

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