John Kotter

John Paul Kotter is a Harvard Business School professor who is widely regarded as the world’s foremost authority on leadership and change. His is the premier voice on how the best organizations actually “do” change.

Dr. Kotter is a graduate of MIT and Harvard. He joined the Harvard Business School faculty in 1972. In 1980, at the age of 33, he was given tenure and a full professorship.

Business Week magazine rated Kotter the #1 “leadership guru” in America based on a survey it conducted of 504 enterprises.

Professor Kotter is the author of 17 books, a collection that has given him more honors and awards than any other writer on the topics of leadership and change. In addition to A Sense of Urgency (2008), Our Iceberg Is Melting (2006), and Leading Change (1996), Professor Kotter is the author of The Heart of Change (2002), John P. Kotter on What Leaders Really Do (1999), Matsushita Leadership (1997), The New Rules (1995), Corporate Culture and Performance (1992), A Force for Change (1990), The Leadership Factor (1988), Power and Influence (1985), The General Managers (1982), and five other books published in the 1970s. Professor Kotter’s books have been printed in more than 120 foreign language editions, and total sales exceed two million copies. His books are in the top 1% of sales from Amazon.com.

John Kotter’s articles in The Harvard Business Review over the past 20 years have sold a million and a half copies—more than any of the hundreds of distinguished authors who have written for that publication during the same time period.

Professor Kotter’s honors include an Exxon Award for Innovation in Graduate Business School Curriculum Design and a Johnson, Smith & Knisely Award for New Perspectives in Business Leadership. In 1996, Professor Kotter’s Leading Change was named the #1 management book of the year by Management General. In 2003, a video version of a story from his book, The Heart of Change won a Telly Award. In 2006, Kotter received the prestigious McFeely Award for “outstanding contributions to leadership and management development.” In 2007, his video Succeeding in a Changing World was named best video training product of the year by Training Media Review and also won a Telly Award.