eTail West: The Virtual Summit & Expo for E-commerce & Omnichannel Innovators
The Virtual Summit & Expo for eCommerce & Omnichannel Innovators
“Perhaps the greatest challenge business leaders face today is how to stay competitive amid constant turbulence and disruption.”
- John Kotter, Harvard Business School Professor and Chairman of Kotter International
Kotter’s thinking on change management resonates with Vertex’s emphasis on leadership and driving performance. I also suspect his approach to leading organizational change may be broadly applicable to a variety of change-intensive settings, including tax functions.
Inside Vertex, we talk a lot about the need for our successful leaders to drive organizational change. While this objective certainly sounds like it’s on the mark, it’s important for us to lift up the hood to truly understand what we mean by “successful.” When we sit down and reflect, we see that performance improvements occur through changes in people, process or strategy. As a result, leaders really need to be able to inspire and direct organizational change.
That’s easier said than done, of course. That’s also where Kotter’s change-management framework offers practical guidance. His methodology for leading organizational change contains eight steps that we’ve adapted to align with how we operate at Vertex:
That’s a decidedly high-level view of the steps our successful leaders strive to work through as we implement the changes necessary to thrive amid a constantly changing industry. This is also a partial view; leaders are not the only enablers of change, as I’ll discuss in a subsequent post on how employees also enable change.
Please remember that the Tax Matters provides information for educational purposes, not specific tax or legal advice. Always consult a qualified tax or legal advisor before taking any action based on this information.
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