Kotters Leading Change Essay Example for Free

Kotters Leading Change Essay John P. Kotter is an American educator and author. He earned a Bachelor of Science in electrical engineering and computer science in 1968 from Harvard University, a Master of Science from MIT in 1970, and a Doctor of Business Administration from the Harvard Business School in 1972. He joined the Harvard Business School in 1972 and is currently the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus, at Harvard Business School. He is cofounder of Kotter International, a leadership organization that helps Global 5000 company leaders accelerate the implementation of their change strategies in a complex environment. He has authored eighteen books including twelve best sellers. This book was written in the mid-1990s when the leadership meta-discipline of change was receiving significant attention both in academia and business. Summary of Concepts The primary thesis of Leading Change is that for organizations to be successful in a significantly changing environment they need to identify where and how top performers derail during the change process, and they need to follow an 8-step process to manage significant change to achieve transformational results. The work begins by showing how the rate of change in the business environment is significant and increasing. This is due to several forces outside an organization including increased competition, globalization, technology improvements, and social trends. The author asserts that organizations have not operated well in this rapidly changing environment as many of their structures, systems, methods, and culture have been more of a drag on change rather than a facilitator of change. Based on the author’s experience, some of the â€Å"common errors† organizations make include allowing too much complacency, not adequately leveraging effective leadership and vision, not sustaining momentum, and not incorporating a culture of change. The work outlines the eight stages that significant change initiatives should proceed through to address these common errors. Stage 1 establishes a sense of urgency by providing more information to more people more often and encourages a willingness to deal honestly with this feedback. Establishing the right sponsorship for change is Stage 2 and includes forming executive teams or coalitions that are key decision-makers, influencers, and resource owners. Stages 3 – 5 leverage leadership best practices (as compared to management practices) with an emphasis on developing a clear and compelling vision, clearly communicating that vision, and engaging employees throughout the organization through increased delegation and responsible risk taking. Stages 6 – 7 maintain change momentum by delivering and celebrating short-term wins and by consolidating those wins into clear results. Stage 8 incorporates these chan ge best practices into the corporate culture to facilitate on-going change. The work concludes with an emphasis on developing leaders through a culture of life-long learning and leadership development. Critical Evaluation Kotter’s purpose is to present a practical approach for organizations to use to implement significant change programs. This approach intends to address the author’s assumption that businesses have not performed well based on common errors such as complacency, unclear vision, lack of change momentum, and lack of a culture of change. The strength of the 8-step change process is that it is easy to understand and implement. Another strength is that the differences between management practices and leadership practices are clearly delineated. It strongly emphasizes the point that successful change initiatives need to be leadership driven. The 8-step process outlines how to leverage these leadership practices. The work falls short in a number of areas. First, and through the author’s own declaration, there is no attempt to cite other sources as evidence to bolster his conclusions. The work is based on the author’s experience and writings. There is no research pre sented that supports the efficacy of the 8-step change process. Second, the change process is presented sequentially making it an oversimplification. Although the author briefly acknowledges that many of the stages are concurrent, there is no advice on how to manage multiple, concurrent stages. Third, the work links the eight common errors to the eight change stages, but the logic that links these is not always very compelling. For example, error #2, fail to create a guiding coalition is answered by Stage 2, create a guiding coalition. It would have been more persuasive to say that individuals have neither the time nor the expertise to absorb rapid significant change and that a coalition of sponsors could leverage their relative strengths. Finally, the work falls short in addressing organizational culture change. The author suggests in Stage 8 that the culture needs to be adapted. Although culture is defined and its benefits are extolled, there are no real insights or methods offere d. Overall, the author does achieve the goal of laying out a practical and implementable change process for organizations to leverage in their change journeys. All business executives considering significant change programs should read Leading Change.

Utopia :: essays research papers

Education, Science, Philosophy Summary Though, as has been mentioned earlier, only certain accomplished people are allowed to give up manual labor for intellectual studies, every Utopian child receives a thorough education. The Utopians believe that it is through education that the values and dispositions of citizens are molded. The success of the Utopian educational system is evident in the fact that while most Utopians are engaged in manual labor as a career, in their free time Utopians choose to follow intellectual pursuits. Utopians conduct all of their studies in their native language. In science the Utopians are rational and accomplished. They have the same general level of understanding as Europeans in the fields of music, logic, arithmetic, and geometry. They are adept at astronomy and no one believes in astrology. They are able to predict changes in weather, though, like the Europeans, the underlying causes of these changes remain at the moment beyond their grasp. In philosophy, the Utopians are uninterested in the abstract suppositions that are the rage in Europe and which Hythloday finds empty. The foremost topic of Utopian philosophy is the nature of happiness, and the relation of happiness to pleasure. In such matters they ground their reason in religion, believing reason alone is ill equipped to handle such an investigation. Utopians believe the soul is immortal and that there exists an afterlife in which the deeds of life are rewarded or punished. They further believe that if people were skeptical of an afterlife, all intelligent people would pursue physical pleasure and ignore all higher moral laws. Belief in an afterlife means that pleasure exists only in acts of virtue, because it is these acts that will ultimately be rewarded. Utopians make a distinction between true and counterfeit pleasure. True pleasure involves any movement of body or mind in which a person takes a natural delight, such as reflecting on true knowledge, eating well, or exercising. Counterfeit pleasures are those sensations that are not naturally delightful, but that distorted desires have tricked people into believing they pleasurable.

How Feasible Is Long Term Sustainability Environmental Sciences Essay

It seems improbable that it will of all time be possible to build a fixed set of societal and economic agreements that would be for good sustainable in environmental and other footings, given that the universe itself alterations and evolves. Speciess develop, flourish and perish, the composing of the ambiance alterations, and the dynamically-interrelated web of relationships that constitutes the planetary ecology bit by bit transforms over clip, thereby altering the ecological parametric quantities within which the homo species has to run. The development of biological and ecological systems on this planet was and is a contingent and heuristic procedure. Literature Review The Earth is about four and a half billion old ages old, someplace between one one-fourth and one half of the age of the existence. It is the lone planet in the universe presently known to back up life. Life began on this planet about four billion old ages ago, so the narrative of life on Earth is merely a small shorter than that of the planet itself. ( Silvertown, 1990 ) The human species is of comparatively recent beginning. Worlds have existed for some 0.005 per cent of the clip during which there has been biological activity on the planet, a ratio about tantamount to one twenty-four hours in a 55 twelvemonth lifetime. The initial divergency from other apes occurred some 7 million old ages ago. The precursor Australopithecus lived from 7 to 2 million old ages ago. Homo Erectus evolved, via Homo Habilis, some 1.7 million old ages ago. Our immediate ascendants, Homo Sapiens, evolved from Homo Erectus perchance every bit small as 200,000 old ages ago. From about 100,000 old ages ago Homo Sapiens occupied parts of Africa, and the heater parts of Europe and Asia. It is non clear at what phase we became a cultural species. It has been suggested that there is grounds for cultural behavior from as far back as 60,000 or even 100,000 old ages ago. However, the earliest unambiguous grounds for sophisticated cultural behavior, including a engineering of tools and arms, entombment of the dead, birthrate worship, pictures, sculptures and so on day of the months from some 40,000 old ages ago, as modern adult male, Homo Sapiens Sapiens, spread across Europe and replaced Neanderthal Man ( now by and large considered to be a member of the species Homo Sapiens ) . Humans reached Australia some 35,000 old ages ago, North America possibly 20,000 old ages ago, and had spread across most of the ice-free universe by the terminal of the last ice age, some 15,000 to 12,000 old ages ago. The first domestication of workss and animate beings happened some 12,000 old ages ago, and there were farming communities in assorted parts of the universe by some 8,000 old ages ago ( Moore, 1992 ) . Some of these small towns grew into the first little metropoliss some 6,000 old ages ago. In comparing to the continuance of life on Earth, hence, modern-day human civilization is of really recent beginning. Human existences are destructing the biological diverseness of the planet with the heedlessly expansive moving ridges of a sovereign or a lunatic. The current extinction crisis is determining up as the worst in 65 million old ages. Unless ecological sustainability is valued along with economic development, the effects will be ruinous. More than 99 per cent of all species that of all time lived are nonextant. Speciess have really varied lifetimes, and while the bluish green algae have been here for approximately 3 billion old ages, the typical lifetime is really much shorter. The possible lifetime of the human species is unknown, but non infinite. However, premature extinction would be too bad. The alterations in the planetary ecology indicate that we need to go more cognizant of the effects of our actions, and to get down to pull off our personal businesss more consciously than has by and large been the instance in the yesteryear. This may intend that it will be necessary to germinate new political and economic constructions and decision-making mechanisms in order to react to these emerging planetary environmental demands. However, as indicated earlier, we may hold to make so from a place of comparative political and economic instability. This is likely to be a ambitious procedure. Many bing organizational, political, and economic constructs and constructions are likely now inappropriate and unhelpful. It is improbable that the necessary constructions for international coordination, for illustration, will be evolved without some grade of organizational and political transmutation. This in bend is improbable to go on without a parallel development of the cultural and psychological constructs on which political and economic constructions are finally based. This is why any analysis, to be equal, must include the relevant environmental, political, economic and socio-cultural factors. The sustainability of the human species can merely be defined, finally, at the degree of the interaction between the full composite of human systems and all straight implicated environmental systems. To understand sustainability therefore requires some apprehension of the behavior of systems in general and of homo and environmental systems in peculiar. There are a figure of definitions of sustainability presently in usage. There is some consensus that a passage to a sustainable manner of life agencies taking stairss to seek to cut down the hazard that environmental and related jobs will earnestly impact or endanger the human species at some future clip, and thereby to guarantee that future coevalss have a sensible chance of a worthwhile being. The inquiry of sustainability is, hence, one of enlightened opportunism. It requires happening ways in which the human species can populate on this planet indefinitely, without compromising its hereafter. All species interact, alteration, and co-evolve with their environment. The human species is no exclusion. We are sole, nevertheless, in our ability to modify consciously some elements of the form of our interaction with the environment. It is no longer possible, given the current extent of human activity, to avoid doing these direction determinations as to how we wish to interact with the planet. For illustration, a determination non to cull the Scots ruddy cervid, given that of import natural marauders no longer be, is now a direction determination, merely every bit much as a determination to cull the cervid. Every substitution of all determinations of this type has ecological effects. Similarly, a determination to ignore information on current planetary ecological tendencies is a direction determination, every bit much as is the determination to try to accomplish some peculiar human-ecological balance. While many would now hold that there is a demand to happen ways of life that are sustainable, the treatment to day of the month has yet to bring forth a cardinal account that spans the issues and provides a consistent ground and way for societal alteration. The writers believe that the best chance for an effectual response to the planetary crisis lies in developing an analysis that can offer both ; one that can both warrant and inform a long-run, incorporate and consistent scheme for alteration. Such an attack is somewhat unfamiliar in the UK. This is because Britain has a general philosophical ethos that is more empirical and musician than the mainland European rational tradition. Pragmatism and practicality are valued, abstract analysis is distrusted. This ethos underlies a state of affairs in which specific and concrete responses to jobs are valued ( as bespeaking pragmatism and practicality ) while more abstract assessments ( which might take to more cardinal and comprehensive solutions ) are frequently seen as being less utile. ( Spash and Clayton, 1995 ) The interaction between worlds and their environment can be thought of as traveling the planetal system along assorted axes at the same time. If this happens at a rate that exceeds the rate at which other systems can accommodate, that is, at a rate that exceeds the hold factor with which the stage infinite part that defines sustainability can travel to follow the point at which the planet is positioned in stage infinite, so these other systems will go nonextant. The species extinction rate therefore provides a partial step of the rate of motion through stage infinite. Global heating is likely to supply a figure of illustrations of this consequence. Vegetation distribution typically shifts some 200 kilometers towards the poles with each 1 & A ; deg ; C rise in temperature. The forest migration rates at the terminal of the last glacial period were some 20 to 100 kilometers per century. However, the jutting rate of planetary heating will be possibly 100 times faster than the rate of warming at that clip. Many tree species will be unable to migrate at the necessary velocity, which will in bend affect a big figure of dependent species. Multi-dimensionality is present in the construct of ‘primary environmental attention ‘ ( PEC ) , which is obviously related to sustainable enlargement and has become far and broad bing among development administrations in their attempts to set sustainable development into public presentation. PEC is classified as ‘the diversified for development promotions in the synergistic part between economic, environmental and societal systems ‘ ( Holmberg and Sandbrook 1992:31 ) . Its ‘essential components ‘ are: Associating and fulfilling of indispensable needs-the economic end ; Safety and best usage of the environment-the environmental end ; And authorizing of groups and communities-the societal end. Environmental sustainability needs the saving of imperative maps. Each of these rules has related with it a sustainability theoretical account ( e.g. stable clime, sustainable crop, critical burden of pollution for an ecosystem, criterions of air or H2O quality to support human wellness ) and a figure of likely markers of environmental force per unit area ( e.g. discharges ) or environmental province ( e.g. concentration of pollutant ) to demo whether the criterion is at present being acted in conformity with with. Economic sustainability depends on the care of the capital stock. ( Daly, 1990, 1-6 ) Decision It seems improbable that it will of all time be possible to build a fixed set of societal and economic agreements that would be for good sustainable in environmental and other footings, given that the universe itself alterations and evolves. Speciess develop, flourish and perish, the composing of the ambiance alterations, and the dynamically-interrelated web of relationships that constitutes the planetary ecology bit by bit transforms over clip, thereby altering the ecological parametric quantities within which the homo species has to run. The development of biological and ecological systems on this planet was and is a contingent and heuristic procedure. It is improbable that the visual aspect of the human species, for illustration, was an inevitable result of the procedure of development, merely as the continued endurance of the human species is in no sense guaranteed. There have been a figure of points in the history of this planet at which events could likely hold taken a differen t bend, and at that place will likely be many more such points in future. It is impossible to extinguish all hazard in such a contingent procedure. It is likely more accurate, hence, to believe in footings of cut downing instead than extinguishing the overall hazard to which the human species might be exposed, and of cut downing the figure and impact of activities agreed to be unsustainable instead than taking for a definable province called sustainability. In order to make this, it will likely be necessary to command peculiar activities, by curtailing actions, for illustration, that place undue force per unit area on peculiarly sensitive or critical ecological maps. The key to accomplishing sustainable development, hence, is to understand and determine the interaction between complex adaptative natural systems and soft socio-economic systems in order to guarantee that we ever remain within our survival part at the intersection of the survival parts of all the systems on which we are dependent ( Bergstrom, 1990, 215-228 ) . Of class, the nature of this interaction between natural and socio-economic systems is itself invariably germinating, as species regenerate or become nonextant, resources are exhausted or new militias discovered, societal and economic systems expand and prostration and new engineerings are developed, disseminated and superseded. Thus both jobs and solutions are dynamic.

How to Get Help from Your Professor

Few students make it through college or graduate school without seeking assistance from a professor for help at one time or another. In fact, its important to seek help rather than let problems fester and intensify. So, how do you approach a professor for one-on-one time? First, lets look at common reasons students seek assistance. Why Seek Help? What are common reasons why you might seek out professors for assistance? Youve fallen behind in class because of illnessYouve failed a test or assignment and do not understand the course materialYou have questions about the requirements of a given assignmentYou need advice on the subject of your majorYou cannot reach the class teaching assistant during his or her posted hoursYou need clarification on policies and/or schedules OK, so there are lots of reasons to seek assistance from professors. Why Do Students Avoid Seeking Professors Help?Sometimes students avoid asking for assistance or meeting with their professors because theyre embarrassed or intimidated. What are common anxieties experienced by students? Feeling out of the loop after missing several classesFear of asking a dumb questionFear of confrontationShynessDiscomfort over approaching a professor of a different age, gender, race, or cultureTendency to avoid interactions with those in authority If youre going to progress as a student -- and especially if you wish to attend graduate school, you must set your intimidation aside and ask for the help that you need. How to Approach Your Professor Contact. Determine the preferred mode of contact; check the course syllabus as professors indicate their preferred methods of contact and related information. Ask yourself: Is this urgent? If so, then contact by phone or stopping by his or her office during office hours is probably the most logical step. Otherwise, you can try e-mail. Wait a few days for a response (remember that teaching is a professors job, so dont expect replies over evenings, weekends, or holidays). Plan. Check the syllabus for the professors office hours and policies before you make your request so that you are already familiar with their schedule. If the professor requests that you return at another time, do your best to meet at a time which is convenient for him or her (e.g., during office hours). Dont ask a professor to go out of his or her way to meet you at a time that is inconvenient because professors have many more responsibilities than teaching (e.g., lots of meetings within the department, university, and community). Ask. Asking is the only way to learn your professors preferences. Say something like, Professor Smith, I need a few minutes of your time so that you can help me with a question/problem Im having with ___. Is this a good time, or can we set up something that is more convenient for you? Keep it short and to the point. Prepare for Your Meeting Pull your thoughts together beforehand (as well as all of your course materials). Preparation will permit you to remember to ask all of the questions that you need to be answered and arrive with confidence to your meeting. Questions. If you are anxious at all about talking with your professor, prepare a list of your questions beforehand. Be efficient and try to accomplish everything in one meeting, rather than coming back time and time again with further questions. Materials. Bring your class notes and syllabus with you to refer to, if you have questions specifically related to course materials so that you have all the details you need. If you need to refer to a textbook, bookmark the pages that you will need to refer to so you can get to them quickly. Notes. Come prepared to take notes (i.e., bring a pen and paper to your meeting). Notes will help you record and remember the responses to your questions and prevent you from asking the same questions later in the course. At the Meeting Be punctual. Punctuality signifies respect for your professors time. Do not arrive early or late. Most professors are pressed for time. If you need to meet with your professor again, ask him or her if you can set up another appointment, following the suggestions above. Use the appropriate form of address. Unless your professor has indicated otherwise, address him or her by last name and with the appropriate title (e.g., Professor, Doctor). Show some gratitude. Always thank the professor for his or her time and express any gratitude that you feel is appropriate for the specific help that he or she has provided. This rapport will leave the door open for future appointments.