Tuesday, October 17, 2006

Leavitt 10: Kotter 8 - some useful principles

Both Secretary of HHS Mike Leavitt and Harvard Professor John Kotter have given 10 reasons for success (Leavitt) or failure (Kotter) in complex enterprises.


Kotter's 8 points:
  1. Establish a sense of urgency
  2. Form a Powerful Guiding Coalition
  3. Create a vision
  4. Communicate the vision
  5. Empowering others to act on the vision
  6. Planning for and creating short-term wins
  7. Consolidate improvements and produce still more change
  8. Institutionalizing new approaches
Leavitt's 10 Points:

  1. Common pain – It may be opportunity, greed or fear.
  2. A convener of stature. Some individual or group has to bring everyone together.
  3. A critical mass of players (market players).
  4. A non-proprietary neutral venue and neutral governance process.
  5. Clear and appointed leader or leaders. They keep things moving forward and the right people at the table.
  6. Every participant has to have financial interest in the process.
  7. There must be a sufficient narrow purpose. Achievable goal that can be built on.
  8. Defining outcomes and not directly working on standards themselves. Focus on the outcomes, not on how we get to the outcomes.
  9. Open architect[ures]
  10. The end product can be commercialized
Leavitt's points were made in context with his experience in other regulatory areas. He also raised the question: How are governance processes and standards created? His options:
  • One way is federal government compels others to follow standards
  • Second way is the last vendor standing method. We let the vendors do battle until one is standing and then we adopt those standards or governance processes.
  • The third way is a process of organically growing the standards. People have to leave their proprietary stuff at home. Then a neutral stand can be made and can actually become the charter.

Follow this link to the talk notes and audience Q&A