reflections on Kotter’s change model and appreciative inquiry

Should organizations be looking at how to change themselves to adapt to an environment or should they look for environments in which their organization is prone to succeed and stay with what they know?

Those who believe in the latter approach, are advocates of the core competency model.

Kotter‘s model is concerned about minimizing error or avoiding it altogether. Can his model be reconciled with the positivist approach of appreciative inquiry?

Kotter’s model seems to emphasize the top-down approach through leadership, beginning with vision and having the leaders drive the change direction and change management. Only after the vision is established does he talk about communicating for buy-in. Does this bypass stakeholders for the sake of efficiency? Is there room in the Kotter model for good ideas from the bottom to dictate the direction of the organization?

Is it reasonable to expect that people at the bottom levels of the organization have sufficient strategic insight to be able to offer good advice on strategy?  In other words, is everybody’s opinion equally valuable?

In the face of resistance, how do we know when it’s time to persevere and push through or time to adapt?  One man’s persistence is another man’s stubbornness.

One of the principles of action research when it comes to making change stick is the importance of making changes in infrastructures and policies. That doesn’t seem to be part of Kotter’s eighth step. Is that an oversight?

When is innovation the enemy of efficiency? How do we know whether to prefer the new change over improving our current process through standardization and eliminating waste?