Management
Leading change with the Kotter method
In Switzerland, change is rarely decided by one person: it is built by consensus, and that is often where it stalls. Two days on Kotter's eight steps, applied to a change you are actually leading, to move forward without bypassing consultation.
What you will be able to do
- Understand the human mechanisms of change, and adapt your posture as a manager accordingly
- Master the 8 steps of the Kotter method to steer a transformation project in a structured and effective way
- Identify and lift individual and collective resistance using communication tools and transactional analysis
- Mobilise key people around a shared vision and a coherent action plan
- Anchor change durably in the culture of your team or organisation
Programme
Opening and framing: where do you stand on change?
- Cross-introductions and the change projects each participant brings
- Your personal relationship to change: anchors, beliefs, posture
The natural stages of change: why people resist
- The main psychological phases of change (the change curve, behavioural models)
- Identifying which stage each team member has reached
- Practical tools: ownership, factual communication, transactional analysis
- Role-play: adapting what you say to the other person's profile
- Workshop: mapping your team in the face of change
The Kotter method, the frame that structures everything
- The 8 steps, from a felt sense of urgency to cultural anchoring
- Why each step matters, and what happens when one is skipped
- Concrete examples: reorganisations, relocations, service changes, customer transformation
Workshops: your change plan in action
- Working groups by project or by team, with canvases, step sheets and analysis grids
- Creating urgency, forming the coalition, building the vision
- Communicating, removing obstacles, creating quick wins, anchoring
- Trainer feedback on every piece of work, and public-speaking tips built into the workshops
Putting it into action and commitments
- Sequencing the change over time and choosing progress indicators
- The actions to launch the following week
- Three concrete commitments per participant, and cross-presentation of the action plans
Why this training
A reorganisation, a new system, a merger of departments, a new customer journey: change is constant. Yet transformation projects fail far more often on adoption than on strategy.
Two days on Kotter’s eight steps, applied from start to finish to a change that participants are actually leading.
Consensus: obstacle or lever
This is the subject that takes up the most room in groups in French-speaking Switzerland. A change imposed without consultation does not produce open opposition: it produces agreement on the surface, then an implementation that does not move, and nobody says why.
The two days treat consultation as a step in the process rather than as a constraint that slows it down. In practice: who needs to be consulted and on what, what is not negotiable and must be announced as such from the start, and how to obtain commitment that holds once the meeting is over.
Questions about this training
Do we work on a real case or on a case study?
On a real case. Participants bring the change they are leading and leave with the eight steps applied to it. A case study is easier to run and produces nothing usable on Monday.
Is Kotter compatible with a culture of consensus?
That is the central question of the two days. Kotter is often read as a top-down model, and applied as it stands in Switzerland it produces a polite and lasting rejection. The reading used here places consultation inside the coalition step rather than across the whole process, which makes it a source of structure instead of a source of delay.
How do you keep up the pace without forcing things?
By separating what is open to consultation from what is decided, and saying so at the start. Swiss slowness is rarely inertia: it is the legitimate expectation of being consulted on what is open to consultation. A timetable that plans for it moves faster than one that ignores it.
Does it suit a small organisation?
Yes, and the steps become shorter rather than fewer. In a company of forty people, the coalition is three people and the communication plan is a series of conversations, but skipping one stalls the change just the same.
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