Kotter’s 8 Stage Change Model

This is a model used for change management which can help make your projects easier to develop and helps change become embedded into the team from an early stage making it more acceptable to the team and your department as well as keeping you focussed on the change you are trying to achieve.

Step 1: Create urgency

When starting a project to change the way you are working or the department you work in it’s important to know why it’s important for this change to happen now. What’s the impact of the change? You want the team to be talking about your change and its benefits so spread the word and create an environment where the people you work with are excited about your change.

Step 2: Form a Powerful Coalition

Whilst you can take a project on single-handedly it is important when leading change that you being together a group of people to start the project fully. It’s important to convince people that change is necessary. Talk to your consultants/department leads/quality improvement leads first to ensure that your project will work and be acceptable to your department. Then speak to colleagues about the project and try to build a group of interested people. To make the most effective change think about who in your organisation needs to be part of your coalition - who is going to need to be involved in your project and the changes you want to make? If you can involve key people from the beginning you may be able to avoid conflict later.

Step 3: Create a Vision for Change

When you first try to visualise your change you may have a number of ideas or solutions to problems that you want to try. Lots of ideas can be confusing for the team as they make not know where the ideas are heading or how everything fits together. Try to link the ideas together to form a vision. A clear vision will help everyone understand why you’re asking people to do something and will be easy to remember.

Step 4: Communicate the Vision

Now you have your vision you need to communicate it to the team. However having special meetings to talk about may not be that helpful. Embed your communications into everyday conversations with the team. You want the team to know about the vision and start to think about it often. It will have two main impacts: the team will be more aware of your project, its aims and what they are required to do and it will hold you accountable for achieving the vision. Start to demonstrate the vision - if the vision involves a behaviour change start to show that behaviour from the beginning of your change. If your team see you leading the way they’ll be more likely to follow.

Step 5: Empower Action

Now that the team and department know about your project it’s time to empower action. Try to think of barriers to your change and whether you can change these to make it easier for the actions to take place. Allow your team to take the actions you desire in the easiest possible way!

Step 6: Create Quick Wins

When making a change, small changes are easier to embed into the team and quicker to see results from. Overall your project may have many aspects to it so recognise each part as a smaller project of its own and celebrate its individual success.

Step 7: Don’t Let Up

Keep going with the quick wins! They will add up to create a sustainable change and contribute to the bigger picture. By being persistent the overall vision becomes more credible and you should start to be able to see your vision take shape.

Step 8: Make Change Stick

Recognise the change that has been made and the improvements in different aspects of that change - e.g. staff behaviour, patient care. Evaluate your changes to ensure that valued practices remain and reinforce new mindsets and ways of working. By ensuring small steps along the way the change should stick with the team more easily.