John Kotter
2011 Ranking: #34
John Kotter is a world-recognized expert on change management and leadership. He is the Konosuke Matsushita emeritus professor of leadership at Harvard Business School, and co-founder of consultancy Kotter International.
He is the author of eighteen books, eleven of which have been business best sellers and two New York Times best sellers.
In A Force for Change (1990), Kotter identified the human elements behind great leadership. He followed with Leading Change (1996). The eight-step process for implementing successful transformations outlined in the book is widely used by managers around the world and was listed by Time Magazine as one of the 25 most influential books ever written on business management.
Our Iceberg Is Melting (2006) revisits the ideas in the eight-step process in the context of an allegory about the survival of a group of penguins.
Subsequent books return to the human world. In A Sense of Urgency (2008), Kotter encourages us to avoid complacency and cultivate a sense of urgency instead.
More recently Kotter has written Buy In: Saving Your Good Idea from Being Shot Down (2010) (with Lorne Whitehead).
