Amplifiers

10 Amplifying Change Management

True Amplifiers play a critical role in bringing strategy to life. They amplify good change management strategies created by companies and fill in the gaps when companies undertake transformations without sufficient change management support. John Kotter essentially popularized what is known today as change management in the corporate setting.¹ His thinking and concepts were ground-breaking at the time. The trouble is, there has been little advancement of his theory in the past three decades. In fact, there has been as much literature written about why change initiatives fail and an equal amount written regarding why strategy initiatives fail. The world has evolved in several major dimensions since change management was established, yet the thinking has not kept pace. The purpose here is not to reinvent the classical change management thinking but to highlight the ways in which Amplifiers play a key role helping change leadership magnify business results.

The irony is not lost on us that one of the core disciplines of effective corporate execution—change management—has not progressed substantially since the days when John Kotter popularized the discipline. Yet most of these change efforts fail to deliver on their stated benefits. A similar percentage of large mergers or acquisitions also fail to achieve their intended goals. After layering in other large change initiatives, the numbers remain the same. This begs the obvious question: if so many ...