Managerial Behavior: Kotters Model for Organization Change - Essay Example

He based his model on many years of consulting experience that gave him insights on the many complex difficulties that organizations face with their change efforts, around which he developed a platform of central themes that involve an eight-step process for implementing successful organizational transformations. Kotter's guiding principle in the book, which is that most organizations today lack the leadership they need,is based on a series of six articles that he originally published in The Harvard Business Review.

To summarize, his eight-step change process prescribes: In a variety of practical ways, Kotter's model has chiefly concerned itself with social psychology because, to achieve any meaningful transformation, an organization must deal with people and change. It is for this very same reason that he goes to great lengths to establish a distinction between management and leadership. He has argued (1996), for example, that "successful transformation is 70 to 90 percent leadership and only 10 to 30 percent management" (p. 26). He has defined management to be "a set of processes that can keep a complicated system of people and technology running smoothly," to include planning, budgeting, organizing, staffing, controlling, and problem solving (p. 27). Leadership, by contrast, he defines to be a driving force that is "a set of processes that creates organizations in the first place or adapts them to significantly changing circumstances" (p. 27). Leadership, Kotter has contended, defines what the future should look like, aligns people with that vision, and inspires them to make it happen despite the obstacles.

The potential for application of Kotter's eight-step change process to real life scenarios is virtually endless, as the extensive number of case studies, hypothetical situations and best practices detailed in his book can attest. If any one thing is clear it is Kotter's belief that the leadership task can no longer be left to a larger-than-life hero figure, but must instead receive modest contributions from all people within an organization, because everyone can assist with the leadership agenda in their individual spheres of activity.

Managerial Behavior 4The implications of Kotter's model as it might apply to a surgical nurse is that, rather than managing change, he or she can make modest contributions to the organization by leadingit on the front lines where matters of life and death are concerned. In considering that the first stage of the eight-stage change process is establishing a sense of urgency, it is logical that a surgical nurse could be the individual best positioned to observe and make suggestions to supervisors for improvements in patient care,