A Macat Analysis of John P. Kotter’s Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail

Publisher’s Weekly called John Kotter’s 1996 book Leading Change “a truly accessible, clear and visionary guide” to corporate transformation.



A professor at Harvard Business School, Kotter spent years coaching organizations—large and small; successful, less successful, and nearly bankrupt—through their own change processes. Some worked; others didn’t. Distilling wisdom from these experiences, Kotter identifies eight common mistakes managers make implementing change. He then uses them to propose an eight-stage model that he argues can lead to successful organizational transformation. Leadership is crucial to change. In Kotter’s view, unsuccessful transformations usually result from poor management decisions.



Management General named Leading Change the management book of the year in 1996. Nearly 20 years later, would-be change-makers still rely on Kotter’s highly readable, jargon-free combination of visionary guide and practical toolkit. An international bestseller, it remains a “must read” for anyone who wants to move from thinking about change, to actually making it happen.