Kotter's 8 Steps & ADKAR

Overview

Kotter's 8 Steps was developed by John P. Kotter, Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership at Harvard Business School. First published as "Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail" in Harvard Business Review (March–April 1995), then expanded in the book Leading Change (1996, Harvard Business School Press; updated edition 2012). Kotter's research studied over 100 organizational change efforts across industries and identified the recurring patterns of failure — and the discipline required to avoid them.

The 8 Steps operate at the organizational level: what does the leadership team need to do to successfully drive a large-scale change?

1. Create a sense of urgency — help people understand why the change is needed now; without urgency, complacency wins
2. Build a guiding coalition — assemble a group with enough power, credibility, and diversity to lead the change effort
3. Form a strategic vision and initiatives — clarify how the future will be different and how to get there
4. Enlist a volunteer army — engage large numbers of people across the organization who are willing to drive the change
5. Enable action by removing barriers — identify and remove structural obstacles — processes, structures, incentives — that block people from acting on the vision
6. Generate short-term wins — create visible, unambiguous early successes that demonstrate the change is working and reward the people driving it
7. Sustain acceleration — use early momentum to drive deeper change; don't declare victory too soon
8. Institute change — embed the new behaviors in culture, processes, and leadership development so they survive the departure of the champions

ADKAR was developed by Jeff Hiatt, founder of Prosci (a change management research and training organization), and published in ADKAR: A Model for Change in Business, Government and our Community (2006, Prosci Learning Center Publications). ADKAR operates at the individual level: what does each person need to move through a change?

• Awareness — of the need for the change and why the status quo is no longer acceptable
• Desire — to support and actively participate in the change (not just tolerate it)
• Knowledge — of how to change: what new behaviors, processes, and skills are required
• Ability — to demonstrate those new skills and behaviors in practice, not just in theory
• Reinforcement — that sustains the change; without reinforcement, people revert

The two frameworks are complementary, not competing. Kotter describes the organizational change program — the big picture. ADKAR describes the individual journey — what happens inside each person as the change rolls over them. A change program can succeed at the organizational level (strong coalition, clear vision, early wins) and still fail because individuals never moved past Awareness into Desire, or have Knowledge but not Ability. ADKAR diagnoses where individuals are stuck; Kotter prescribes what leadership should be doing.

When to Use It

Whenever a client is leading a significant organizational change — a merger or acquisition, a strategic pivot, a technology transformation, a culture shift, a major restructuring. Both frameworks are most valuable when the change is large enough that individual resistance is a real risk, and when the change requires people to behave differently on an ongoing basis, not just once.

How It Works

Using Kotter diagnostically: for each of the 8 steps, ask "where are we on this?" A client whose change effort is stalling usually shows clear gaps in Steps 1 (not enough urgency) or 5 (structural barriers haven't been removed). The framework becomes a change program audit.

Using ADKAR diagnostically: for the target population of the change, ask: where are most people on the ADKAR model? If they have Awareness but not Desire, no amount of training (Knowledge) will help — you haven't addressed the motivation gap yet. The model has a sequential logic: you can't skip stages.

Using both together: map the Kotter steps to the ADKAR outcomes they're designed to produce. Steps 1–3 primarily drive Awareness and Desire. Steps 4–5 enable Knowledge and Ability. Steps 6–8 reinforce the change and create Reinforcement. When a Kotter step isn't working, ADKAR often explains why — because the individuals it's targeting haven't moved through the prerequisite stages yet.

Common Pitfalls

• Declaring victory too soon — Kotter's Step 7 exists specifically because most change programs stop after the early wins; the culture hasn't actually changed until the old behaviors stop being rewarded
• Skipping urgency — Step 1 is the most commonly shortcut; leaders who know the change is needed often forget that others don't feel the same urgency yet
• ADKAR as training plan — treating ADKAR as a framework for learning interventions misses the point; if people lack Desire, training is wasted
• Individual vs. organizational confusion — applying ADKAR questions to the organization as a whole rather than to specific groups of individuals loses the diagnostic precision
• Change as a project with an end date — both frameworks emphasize that culture change is the final destination, and cultures take years to shift; a 90-day change program is usually a change program for the announcement, not the change

Recommended Books

• Leading Change — John P. Kotter
• ADKAR — Jeff Hiatt
• Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard — Chip Heath & Dan Heath