Kotter's model as published by Kotter Inc. is eight steps, in a fixed order. Items ask for a step by number, ask what follows what, and give you a failing change effort to diagnose.
The order
- Create a Sense of Urgency
- Build a Guiding Coalition
- Form a Strategic Vision
- Enlist a Volunteer Army
- Enable Action by Removing Barriers
- Generate Short-Term Wins
- Sustain Acceleration
- Institute Change
Step one is urgency, not coalition building. Candidates start with the coalition because urgency feels like a precondition rather than a step. It is a step.
The step immediately after Enlist a Volunteer Army is Enable Action by Removing Barriers, step five.
Diagnosing from a scenario
- Sponsor attention and staff energy fading nine months before go-live, with nothing visible yet: Generate Short-Term Wins (step 6). Its whole purpose is visible early results that keep momentum and credibility alive through a long effort.
- Targets hit, but six months later managers have quietly reverted and the new structure exists only on paper: Institute Change (step 8), the step that anchors new ways of working so the organization does not revert.
- Removing barriers (step 5) is for obstacles blocking people during the change, not for backsliding after it.
Do not blur the models
- Eight steps, urgency through instituting change is Kotter.
- Five elements, awareness through reinforcement is Prosci's ADKAR.
- Three stages, unfreeze-change-refreeze is the classic Lewin framing.
- Seven interdependent elements kept mutually aligned is an alignment framework, not Kotter.
The BASK groups change approaches under one topic, which is why these get mixed up. Keep the counts straight: 8, 5, 3.