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3.76 AVERAGE
3.76 AVERAGE
A bit dated, the majority of concepts in this book still hold up, albeit largely geared towards industry-minded business leveraging clear worker / manager separations (which may not hold up the same way with knowledge workers). Still, well worth the read, and pairs well with other change-related books like “Switch” and “Made to Stick” (Heath brothers) or “The Goal” / “The Phoenix Project”, depending on your context and intent.
challenging
medium-paced
I had to stop. I couldn't take anymore inane examples. I don't disagree that this 8 step process may help some organizations (although his audience seems to be exclusively large, turn-of-the-millenium, service corporations rather than any other organizations). But it's a boring, poorly disguised self-help book. And I despise self-help books.
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
We're all faced with changes nowadays, and maybe that makes reading Leading Change today lose a bit of that groundbreaking realization that it probably had when it was released. At the core of it is still a lot of learnings that haven't changed. That's the good part of this book. The 8-step model seems to correlate well with some of my own experiences and Kotter does put it quite clearly why each step follows each other. Leading Change is for me a great introduction to change management and I gain a lot from it.
But it's not a perfect book. Something about it just made it hard to read for me. Perhaps it was how each chapter could meander on too much with stories and not provide a clear overview of the topic. Or that it was too broad in many places and lacked detail. Or something about the writing style and the use of fancy words that made me lose track too often. These shortcomings and the general feeling of that the book could be even shorter detracted a bit from my experience.
All in all, I would still recommend it as a introduction to change management. It certainly still seems to be very true to this day and the future predictions made it the book certainly came true.
But it's not a perfect book. Something about it just made it hard to read for me. Perhaps it was how each chapter could meander on too much with stories and not provide a clear overview of the topic. Or that it was too broad in many places and lacked detail. Or something about the writing style and the use of fancy words that made me lose track too often. These shortcomings and the general feeling of that the book could be even shorter detracted a bit from my experience.
All in all, I would still recommend it as a introduction to change management. It certainly still seems to be very true to this day and the future predictions made it the book certainly came true.
informative
slow-paced
informative
reflective
medium-paced
I had to read this book for a leadership course. I was able to find quotes and phrases on each page that were relatable and relevant to my coursework, profession, and industry.
The worst thing about this book is that once you've read it and internalized it, you'll be forever annoyed by every panicked, prickly coworker who tries (and inevitably fails) to ram through process changes without building a change coalition, celebrating early wins, or any of the other steps that feel soft, but can utterly undo a change initiative if you don't put the work into them. When it seems like Kotter's method hasn't worked for implementing a change initiative, it's always been my experience that I can point to one or more steps that got fudged or skipped altogether.
hopeful
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
The core was good but I found the examples to be not detailed or interesting enough to learn from. Still got a lot out of it and would recommend to others who do change management in their jobs.