I picked up Leading Change by John P. Kotter the way most people probably do, in the middle of something hard. I was working through a significant shift in how we approach change management within our Customer Experience at work, and someone I respected mentioned it. The book was first published in 1996. It shows. And yet, a lot of it is still uncomfortably accurate.

What the Book Is About

Kotter spent years studying large-scale organisational transformations and distilled his findings into a framework: eight common errors that cause change efforts to fail, and the eight-stage process to do it right. The errors are almost disarmingly familiar: allowing too much complacency at the start, failing to build a guiding coalition, underestimating the power of vision, undercommunicating that vision, not removing obstacles, skipping short-term wins, declaring victory too soon, and neglecting to embed change in the culture.

The book isn’t theoretical, it reads more like a retrospective on failure. Kotter doesn’t just tell you what to do; he’s very specific about how and why smart people get it wrong.

Leaders consistently underestimate how hard it is to drive people out of their comfort zones.

What Resonated

The section on vision hit me hardest. Kotter argues that vision is what separates meaningful transformation from a pile of disconnected initiatives. Without it, people can’t answer the most basic question: why are we doing this?

His rule of thumb: if you can’t describe the vision driving a change effort in five minutes in plain language, you’re already in trouble. I’ve tested this. It works. When I’ve been able to articulate the “why” clearly, to the people closest to the work, in their own terms, things move. When I haven’t, confusion and resistance follow, even when the change itself is genuinely a good idea.

The point about undercommunicating also landed. Kotter notes that communication comes in both words and deeds, and the deeds tend to matter more. You can write a change announcement and still have people feel blindsided, because the lived experience of the change doesn’t match the story you told. That gap is where trust breaks down.

I also appreciated the emphasis on guiding coalitions. Not just top-down mandates, but the recognition that change travels through the people closest to the work. In distributed teams especially, you simply can’t centralise change leadership, it has to be distributed.

What You Can Actually Take From It

Reading this while actively navigating change wasn’t just interesting, it was clarifying. A lot of what Kotter describes as errors I’d already seen firsthand. Rollouts that moved too fast. Changes where the “why” was assumed rather than explained. Wins that got declared before the change had actually taken hold.

The most useful thing you can take from this book isn’t the eight steps as a checklist, it’s the underlying logic. A few ideas that translate into almost any context:

Make the problem visible before you pitch the solution. Kotter’s first step is creating urgency, which is really about making sure people genuinely understand why the status quo isn’t working. If you skip this, you’re asking people to change without giving them a reason to care. That’s a recipe for passive resistance.

Build your coalition before you launch. Change doesn’t travel through org charts, it travels through people who trust each other. Identifying the informal influencers, the sceptics worth converting, the people whose voices carry weight on the ground: this is real work, and it matters far more than a polished announcement.

Say the “why” more than feels necessary. Kotter has a rule of thumb: if you can’t describe the vision driving a change in five minutes in plain language, you’re already in trouble. And even when you can, you’ll need to repeat it, through your words, and more importantly, through your actions. The gap between what leaders say and what people experience is where change efforts quietly die.

Plan for wins, not just milestones. Short-term wins aren’t just morale boosters, they’re evidence that the change is working. Teams need proof, not promises. Building early, visible demonstrations of progress into your rollout plan is the difference between momentum and scepticism.

Don’t declare victory too soon. This one is almost embarrassingly common. The announcement goes well, a few early adopters are enthusiastic, and it feels done. But the change hasn’t been embedded yet, it’s just been introduced. Kotter is firm on this: until the new behaviour is actually woven into how things get done, the old patterns will creep back.

Where I’d Push Back

The book is very corporate. The examples skew heavily toward large hierarchical organisations with CEOs who have the authority to move mountains. Kotter assumes a fairly linear chain of command, and his prescription for building urgency often involves dramatic, bold leadership moves at the top.

In distributed, async, flat-ish teams, change leadership is different The “guiding coalition” isn’t always obvious. Change has to be built differently, from the middle outward, through documentation and discussion and patient coalition-building, rather than from the top down.

I also think the book undersells how much culture does the work before any formal change effort begins. Kotter talks about anchoring change in culture at the end, as Step 8, but I’d argue culture shapes whether your change effort is even possible before you start. If candour isn’t valued, if feedback loops don’t exist, if people don’t trust that the “why” will be shared with them, the eight steps won’t save you.

That said: none of this makes the framework wrong. It makes it a useful starting point that needs translating.

Who Should Read It

If you work in any kind of leadership, operations, or people-facing role and you’re navigating change, yes, read it. It’s short, direct, and the core ideas are durable. Just read it with a translation lens if your context is remote, flat, or fast-moving. Ask yourself: what’s the equivalent of a “guiding coalition” in my team? What does “creating urgency” look like when there’s no all-hands meeting? How do I anchor change in culture when culture lives in Slack threads and P2 posts rather than office hallways?

The answers won’t come from this book. But the questions will.