Using Kotter's Eight Steps to Drive a Service Management Transformation

John Sansbury builds his service management transformation approach on John Kotter's eight-step change model: create urgency, build a guiding coalition, form a strategic vision, enlist a volunteer army, remove barriers, generate short-term wins, sustain acceleration and institute change. The steps are sequential, and skipping any of them risks having to start again.

• Invest heavily in urgency. Sansbury says some 50 per cent of transformations fail to realise their goals through inadequate attention to this step, and Kotter suggests 75 per cent of management must buy in. Agree how to deal with blockers.
• Build a coalition of influential, trusted people, not only senior leaders, who create an easy-to-explain vision and strategy and speak with one consistent voice.
• Treat it as a movement and remove barriers. Leaders must walk the walk, and their role is to remove obstacles to team performance while empowering people to remove barriers themselves.
• Win early, then embed. Achievable short-term wins build momentum, and a continual service improvement register helps capture ideas and benefits. Avoid declaring victory too early; embed changes into business as usual, hiring, training and recognition.
• Use the guiding principles. Sansbury notes they reinforce Kotter: Focus on Value builds urgency, Collaborate and Promote Success supports the coalition, and Optimise and Automate helps embed change.