John Paul Kotter is a professor at the Harvard Biz School, who is regarded as an authority on leadership and change. In particular, he discusses how the best organizations actually "do" change.

He wrote a best sell book: A force for change: How leadership differs from management (1990). In this book, he described 8 reasons why most change processes fail. He also established an 8-step change management procedure. I read this book before and it is a really good book. Of course, you may not understand all until you practice a few times.


Here are 8-step for change:

Increase urgency - inspire people to move, make objectives real and relevant.
Build the guiding team - get the right people in place with the right emotional commitment, and the right mix of skills and levels.
Get the vision right - get the team to establish a simple vision and strategy, focus on emotional and creative aspects necessary to drive service and efficiency.
Communicate for buy-in - Involve as many people as possible, communicate the essentials, simply, and to appeal and respond to people's needs. De-clutter communications - make technology work for you rather than against.
Empower action - Remove obstacles, enable constructive feedback and lots of support from leaders - reward and recognise progress and achievements.
Create short-term wins - Set aims that are easy to achieve - in bite-size chunks. Manageable numbers of initiatives. Finish current stages before starting new ones.
Don't let up - Foster and encourage determination and persistence - ongoing change - encourage ongoing progress reporting - highlight achieved and future milestones.
Make change stick - Reinforce the value of successful change via recruitment, promotion, new change leaders. Weave change into culture.