John Paul Kotter is the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus, at the Harvard Business School,
Personal life
Kotter lives in Boston, Massachusetts with his wife, Nancy Dearman. They have two children, Caroline and Jonathan.
Career
John Kotter is an
emeritus from Harvard Business School where he started teaching in 1972.
He is the founder of Kotter International, and started his business in 2010 with locations in Cambridge Massachusetts and
Seattle. He currently serves as Chairman of Kotter International alongside CEO, Rick Western, Chief Commercial Officer, Kathy Gersch, Chief Financial Officer, Tanya Kruger and many more.
Kotter is also an author, speaker, and entrepreneur in the lines of business and leadership.
Successful change
In
Leading Change (1996), and subsequently in
The Heart of Change (2002), Kotter describes an eight stage model of successful change in which he seeks to support managers to
lead change and to understand how people accept, engage with and maintain successful organisational change. The eight stages or steps include the creation of "a sense of urgency" and the use of "short-term wins".
[Kotter, J., The 8-Step Process for Leading Change, accessed 10 January 2021]
Short-term wins, within a 6–18 month window, are considered necessary because "an organization has to realize some benefits from a change effort to maintain stakeholder commitment".[Tanner, R., Leading Change (Step 6) – Generate Short-Term Wins, Business Consulting Solutions LLC., updated 11 July 2021, accessed 8 August 2021] Kotter asserts that to be useful or influential, short-term wins need to be "visible and unambiguous" as well as "closely related to the change effort".
Written work
Kotter is the author of 21 books, as listed below. 12 of these have been business bestsellers and two of which are overall New York Times bestsellers.
See also
External links
