A sense of urgency by Kotter John P. 1947-

Author:Kotter, John P., 1947-
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Organizational change
ISBN: 1422179710
Publisher: Boston, Mass. : Harvard Business Press
Published: 2008-09-19T16:00:00+00:00

watch out that you don’t create a false sense of urgency

One final, very important, point. External reality, mindlessly dumped into an organization, does not automati-

tactic one: bring the outside in

imagine

We call this a thought experiment.

Imagine, if you will, an organization where people up and down the hierarchy, and systems throughout the organization, help pull the outside in through

• Sending out people

• Bringing in people

• Bringing in relevant data in an eye-catching manner

• Listening to customer-interface employees

• Creating video about the outside

• Widely sharing what is learned instead of shielding others from possibly troubling news

• Changing the visuals

Nearly anyone in an organization can use these tactics to create more urgency among peers or their bosses. Imagine what would happen to complacency if many people at many levels did so.

cally create real urgency. It can create the anxiety, anger, and dysfunctional flurry of behavior associated with false urgency. It’s usually best to avoid this problem in the first place. But if that is impossible, the challenge is always to convert the false into the true, and with speed.

Avoiding the problem of creating false urgency—with the outside-in tactics or any of the other tactics described later in this book—requires judgment. Given whom the people are, and given their current emotional state, will importing a specific set of people, at a specific time, to a specific place, in a specific way build a gut-level determination to move, and win, now? Or will it mostly create anger, frustration, and anxiety?

There are times when the only way to break through cement-like complacency is to blast people’s emotions. Blasted emotions usually turn negative. Then the task is to convert negative to positive as quickly as possible.

The key to converting false urgency to real urgency is any source of real urgency, and as much real urgency as possible. Here I mean behavior that is visible, determined, self-confident, nonblaming, passionate, and competent, behavior that tends to be highly fulfilling to the person who acts that way and that can also help urgency grow within others. This sort of action is so important that it is an entire tactic by itself—one of the four discussed in this book. And that’s the topic of the next chapter.

5 .

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.