This entry is a follow-up on on why I apply Kotter to my own situation and what I did right.

Step 1: Acting with urgency

Gee was I busy in the beginning! I wanted to realise my change as quick as possible. But I had no plan and plenty of time. So I just started running around, without thinking. Thus I ended up going to useless meetings, connecting with the wrong people and developing services I would never provide. Kotter calls this false urgency.

Step 2: Developing the guiding coalition

I knew I needed to team up, so I quickly initiated strategic cooperations with a few companies. However I did not have a clear grasp of how I wanted to the cooperation to look like: my vision was not yet ready. Therefore it took some time before my ‘guiding team’ really started delivering.

Step 3: Developing a change vision

How compelling was my vision? I noticed that at meetings and receptions people were gazing away during my introduction. Because of the uncertainty about my position, I was too passive in choosing my own direction. It took me a while to notice that I was not leading enough my own change.

Step 4: Communicating the vision buy-in

My biggest communication tool is now this website and it was launched almost 2 years after I arrived. I started thinking of it quite early, but realising it seemed a burden. I did not know where to start and by the time it became urgent I had enough clients to care of, so putting off this activity was not difficult. I shouldn’t have.

Step 5: Empowering broad-based actions

I was raised with the virtue of taking care of my money. And with ample time to spend, why not do things myself? Well I now know that outsourcing your work as quick as possible is also a virtue. Because it allows focus on the things that are really important: thinking about, designing and delivering participative processes.

Step 6: Generating short-term wins

The short-term win felt like a stroke of luck. After 5 months of intense preparation of my own change this project came from nowhere. It did not feel like a quick-win I had realised myself. But it sure gave me a blow of confidence.

Step 7: Don’t let up

And suddenly there was a prolonged period in which project after project came in. I thought: it’s done! I’ve taken off! But without being aware of it, I ran out of fuel. That was too bad and it took me a lot of energy getting things up to speed again.

Step 8: Make change stick

How much have I really changed? What changes have I made stick within myself? I find it difficult to tell because in the end change looks so much like a continuum. Changes never really freeze into a new state. And so I wonder…