Leading Change

Kotter is the author of Leading Change, which is his ninth book of 21 total works, of which 12 are bestsellers. He earned degrees at both the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard Business School, and he began teaching at Harvard Business School in 1972. Kotter earned tenure and full professorship at Harvard Business School in 1980, making him one of the youngest professors to earn the position at 33 years old. At the time Leading Change was published, Kotter was the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership at Harvard Business School, and he has remained a professor emeritus there. Kotter’s articles in the Harvard Business Review set records for sales of reprints, and his work “Accelerate!” won the first-place McKinsey Award in 2012 for best Harvard Business Review article. In 2010, Kotter founded Kotter International, a firm that provides training, certification, and consultation services relating to change in business. Using Kotter’s methods, Kotter International offers programs to improve operational efficiency, develop leadership skills, and change company cultures. Kotter himself, and Kotter International, are respected names in business, specifically in the field of change and leadership development. In 2009, Kotter received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Society for Training and Development in recognition of his prolific work and contribution to the training and development field. Kotter’s book Buy-in: Saving Your Good Idea From Getting Shot Down, co-authored with Lorne A. Whitehead, won the Axiom Business Book Award for Communication Skills and Networking in 2011.

The rich examples that punctuate Kotter’s discussions in the text come in large part from Kotter’s experience interacting with and speaking at companies across the country. In the book, he focuses on presenting his own views and opinions over those of other studies and researchers. Leading Change is akin to a lecture in its use of diagrams and informal hypothetical examples, reflecting Kotter’s broad experience as a speaker in the field of change. Kotter also draws on real-world experience; though he has likely changed the names of those he mentions to protect their identity, he claims to have indeed encountered many of his examples in the real world. The personal nature of Leading Change marks it as a unique expression of Kotter’s worldview, giving the reader direct insight into an important figure in the field of change and leadership. Kotter does not merely theorize. Rather, he amalgamates his decades of experience in business into accessible, straightforward writing that attempts to offer an insider’s perspective into how businesses enact change.

In a sense, Kotter’s role in the narrative is a combination of narrator/author and sage/mentor, as he does not take an active role in his own examples beyond periodically asking questions or offering advice. The sage archetype is known for providing knowledge and wisdom to the protagonist. By adopting characteristics of this archetype, Kotter inserts the reader into the work as a kind of protagonist figure, one receiving the wisdom Kotter has to offer. Though the work is informative, Leading Change is primarily an opportunity to learn from Kotter’s life and experiences, much as students would in Kotter’s classroom.