Data Matters: GUCCHD's National Technical Assistance Center for Children's Mental Health

Change Management

Circle of Happy Kids Have you ever wondered why change and transformation feels so chaotic? Have you ever wanted to have frameworks and tools that could help you lead change and manage complex change productively in your states and communities?

In order to transform our systems, agencies, organization, and individuals are experiencing enormous change. Regardless of the focus of your work – whether you are merging health and mental health or trying to implement EBPs, all of us will need to use change management strategies and skill sets in order to be successful. Our January 2007 national teleconference call (include link to playback option) offered change management framework and tools and strategies for managing complex change.

Change Management Resources:

This article was originally published in March-April 1995 and was republished in January 2007 as an HBR Classic.

Businesses hoping to survive over the long term will have to remake themselves into better competitors at least once along the way. These efforts have gone under many banners: total quality management, reengineering, rightsizing, restructuring, cultural change, and turnarounds, to name a few.

In almost every case, the goal has been to cope with a new, more challenging market by changing the way business is conducted. A few of these endeavors have been very successful. A few have been utter failures. Most fall somewhere in between, with a distinct tilt toward the lower end of the scale. John P. Kotter is renowned for his work on leading organizational change. In 1995, when this article was first published, he had just completed a 10-year study of more than 100 companies that attempted such a transformation.

Here he shares the results of his observations, outlining the eight largest errors that can doom these efforts and explaining the general lessons that encourage success. Unsuccessful transitions almost always founder during at least one of the following phases: generating a sense of urgency, establishing a powerful guiding coalition, developing a vision, communicating the vision clearly and often, removing obstacles, planning for and creating short-term wins, avoiding premature declarations of victory, and embedding changes in the corporate culture. Realizing that change usually takes a long time, says Kotter, can improve the chances of success.

Learning Objective:

To understand the eight stages a large-scale organizational change initiative must progress through and the pitfalls to avoid at each stage.

Additional Resources

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The work of John P. Kotter offers research-based information on the phases of change. His article “Leading Change: Why transformation efforts fail” highlights his findings from a 10-year study of more than 100 companies that attempted major transformations. While he shares the eight largest errors that can doom these efforts, the conference call adapted these errors to into strategies for success in the children’s behavioral field.

How is change perceived in your organization?
How have you helped promote change and transformation?
Did you encounter or skip these phases of change? What happened?
How can you improve the change process so it will go smoother?
Can people be taught or led to enjoy change?

Listed below are several quotes on change. We encourage you to post your reactions and thought as you reflect on these quotes, and look forward to your responses.

Nothing endures but change.
- Heraclitus

Change means movement. Movement means friction. Only in the frictionless vacuum of a nonexistent abstract world can movement or change occur without that abrasive friction of conflict.
- Saul Alinsky (1909-72), U.S. radical activist. Rules for Radicals, "The Purpose" (1971)

Change has a considerable psychological impact on the human mind. To the fearful it is threatening because it means that things may get worse. To the hopeful it is encouraging because things may get better. To the confident it is inspiring because the challenge exists to make things better.
- King Whitney, Jr.

We must become the change we want to see.
- Mahatma Gandhi

What are your thoughts (submit comments below)?

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Recent Comments

Great discussion. I recently took strategic planning training which included several people from different national organizations. I have to say it was great and it fits right in with this discussion about change. If you don't manage change, change will manage you. I recently started planning to manage change and it has made a huge difference in the response of staff as well as the need for supervisors to respond to outfall from the changes. Nice resource. Keep it going. (01/25/07)

I would like to write an article for data matters on our Washington State Transforamtion Evaluation activities. We have created a mini-grant program that tagets consumer youth and family driven and run organizations and provides extensive TA from the University of Washington on how to apply for grants, create studies and measurements and dissiminate information. Stephanie Lane Consumer/Program Manager Transformation Grant WA (02/08/07)

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