According to John Kotter
John Kotter
John Paul Kotter is the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus, at the Harvard Business School, a New York Times best-selling author, and the founder of Kotter International. He is a well-known thought leader in the fields of business, leadership, and change.
What is Kotter’s “creating a sense of urgency?
I’ll start with the first step of Kotter’s model, Creating a Sense of Urgency. So, what is a sense of urgency? Two explanations of the word urgency are useful for understanding what leaders do as agents of change: First, leaders take actions that capture the attention of critical organizational stakeholders.
How do you create a sense of urgency in your organization?
With the first step of creating a sense of urgency, Kotter emphasizes the importance of getting the stakeholders impacted by the change involved. He has found that, without the foundation of urgency, people get stuck in complacency and simply accept the status quo. Complacency leads stakeholders to believe everything is ok as it is.
What is the first step of Kotter's model of change?
In this lesson, we will focus on the first step of Kotter's 8-stage model of change, establishing a sense of urgency. Kotter argues that urgency is needed in the change process, because without it, people often won't give the needed extra push of hard work.
How do you communicate the urgent need for change?
Communication is critical and the communications about the urgent need for change must be honest. A manufactured sense of urgency will soon be seen for what it is and this will doom a change effort to mediocrity. With a sense of urgency, the organization understands why change is no longer optional. Click To Tweet
How do you create a sense of urgency?
7 ways to create a sense of urgencyBuild a culture of urgency before its required. ... Educate everyone on the rationale for urgency. ... Make it personal. ... Model unruffled but urgent behaviors openly and often. ... Leaders, calm thyselves. ... Empower employees to deliver. ... Stay with your team.
How does a leader set a sense of urgency for change in an organization?
Leaders create a sense of urgency by both selling the value of a future state to organizational stakeholders and making the status quo a dangerous place for the stakeholders to remain.
What is urgency in leadership?
Having a sense of urgency means you always see things as urgent and want to take care of them as quickly as possible. Someone who has a sense of urgency: Doesn't wait for things to happen and then react, they proactively address situations as soon as possible.
What is sense of urgency at work?
In a business context, to have a sense of urgency is to act promptly and with intention to make things happen efficiently and effectively. Having a sense of urgency means doing what needs to be done immediately, without being asked and in the most thorough way possible in order to create change.
How do you live with a sense of urgency?
Four Steps to Start Living with More UrgencyStep 1: Build an Inspiring Vision for the Future. Your first step is to set an inspiring vision for the future. ... Step 2: Break You Goals Down into Parts. ... Step 3: Find Reasons to Move Forward. ... Step 4: Create Penalties and Rewards.
How do you implement change with Kotter's 8 step change model?
The 8 Steps in Kotter's Change Model1) Create a Sense of Urgency. ... 2) Form a Guiding Coalition. ... 3) Create a Strategic Vision. ... 4) Initiate Change Communication. ... 5) Remove Barriers to Change. ... 6) Generate Short-Term Wins. ... 7) Make Change a Continuous Process. ... 8) Incorporate Changes in the Org Culture.
What causes lack of urgency?
A sense of urgency first requires a grasp of reality and an effort to make good judgments. That lack of urgency you are observing in your employees could reflect their misunderstanding of the situation. A flat affect — stone looking or glazed over face — is an indicator of confusion.
How do you use sense of urgency in a sentence?
Not only did this sense of urgency give birth to pronatalist social policies, so too did it inspire general health care reform. He set the tempo of the enterprise and maintained the sense of urgency. Private actors also bring a sense of urgency and a need to move quickly that other leaders often lack.
What is false sense of urgency?
False Urgency is rooted in anger and anxiety, and creates a lot of activity without productive results. This anger creates conflict, battles, and a list of meetings. It is often created by pressure from above, with actions that are not aimed at the root cause or real solutions.
What's another way to say sense of urgency?
In this page you can discover 40 synonyms, antonyms, idiomatic expressions, and related words for urgency, like: compelling, vehement, instancy, stress, importance, need, urging, gravity, clamant, seriousness and exigency.
What is urgency in Kotter's plan?
In Kotter's plan, urgency is the opposite of complacency. If employees are complacent, there's no real reason to work on the project related to the change because you have not gained employee interest or convinced employees that putting in effort would be worth their time or energy.
Why is urgency important in change?
Kotter argues that urgency is needed in the change process, because without it, people often won't give the needed extra push of hard work. Establishing a sense of urgency helps managers of companies and leaders of change to fight against complacency.
What is the main thrust of Kotter's book Leading Change?
In his book Leading Change, Kotter argues that there are forces at work pushing organizations towards change, including globalization and technological advances. Globalization describes the borderless world of businesses today, meaning that all businesses, no matter how small or large, are facing competition from around the world. This is closely related to one of the largest technological advances, the Internet, which increases a company's ability to compete with others from around the world.
What does urgency mean in a work environment?
Establishing a sense of urgency means you're trying to change the status quo, to push employees to no longer be complacent and to help employees see that it is critical to move forward sooner rather than later . In Kotter's plan, urgency is the opposite of complacency.
How to create a change strategy?
The eight steps include: 1 Establishing a sense of urgency 2 Creating the guiding coalition 3 Developing a vision and strategy 4 Communicating the change vision 5 Empowering broad-based action 6 Generating short-term wins 7 Consolidating gains and producing more change 8 Anchoring new approaches in the culture
Who is John Kotter?
John Kotter is a professor at Harvard Business School and the founder of Kotter International. He was named a leadership guru by Bloomberg BusinessWeek in 2001 and was named to the Thinkers50 in both 2011 and 2013. In addition, Kotter is a New York Times best-selling author. His books include Leading Change, in which he outlines an 8-stage model of change. In this lesson, we will focus on the first step of Kotter's 8-stage model of change, establishing a sense of urgency. Kotter argues that urgency is needed in the change process, because without it, people often won't give the needed extra push of hard work.
What is the first step in the change process?
This first step starts the process of shifting the thinking of employees from accepting the status quo to being ready to embrace and champion change.
Who discusses urgency in his video?
Kotter discusses this in detail in his video "Importance of Urgency."
What is the first step in Kotter's leading change?
Kotter's Leading Change Step 1: Establishing a Sense of Urgency. Kotter’s Leading Change Step 1: Establishing a Sense of Urgency.
Why is urgency important?
A sense of urgency provides motivation for the change to happen. Change can be difficult to achieve and without a strong uniting force that reinforces why the change is necessary to the survival of the organisation, it is unlikely to gain traction and succeed. Therefore, this first step is critical to the success of the remaining steps. It can be more difficult to achieve than is usually anticipated.
What is the rate of urgency high enough to drive the change?
Kotter's research indicates that the rate of urgency high enough to drive the change is when " 75% of a company's management is honestly convinced that business as usual is totally unacceptable. " If it is an organisation wide change that is proposed, then it must be the Head / CEO that believes in and drives the change as a Change Champion to ensure success.
Sources of Complacency
The absence of a major and visible crisis, especially for adrenal driven organizations.
Sources of False Urgency
Frenetic activity directly resulting from veiled threat, such as unrealistic performance standards and/or reward standards.
Some tactics to consider
Bring the outside into the organization by clearly reconnecting internal reality with external opportunities and hazards and ensuring that compelling data, people, video, sites, and sounds are part and parcel of the organization.
Sources for Creating A Real Sense of Urgency
Create a crisis allowing a financial loss, exposing management to major weaknesses vis-a-vis competitors, or allowing errors to blow-up instead of being corrected at the last minute.
How to create urgency in a team?
There are several steps leaders can take to create a sense of urgency and gain the commitment of managers, employees, and other stakeholders. Ensuring organizational decisions and management actions are in agreement with change communications ( walk the talk ).
What does it mean when leaders create a sense of urgency?
When leaders create a sense of urgency, they alert the organization that change must occur and the leaders also begin preparing the organization for the change process. When leaders create a sense of urgency, they alert the organization why change must occur. Click To Tweet. Back to Top.
How do leaders create urgency?
Leaders create a sense of urgency by both selling the value of a future state to organizational stakeholders and making the status quo a dangerous place for the stakeholders to remain.
Why is urgency important?
Urgency is important because meaningful organizational change cannot occur without the cooperation of the affected stakeholders. This is why creating a sense of urgency for a needed change is the first step leaders must take to gain the cooperation of management and employees. Leaders create a sense of urgency by both selling the value ...
What is urgency in leadership?
Two explanations of the word urgency are useful for understanding what leaders do as agents of change: First, leaders take actions that capture the attention of critical organizational stakeholders. Second, leaders explain the importance of making speedy changes to the existing condition. When leaders create a sense of urgency, ...
Can you create urgency without effectively communicating to your team why change is necessary?
You cannot create urgency without effectively communicating to your team why change is necessary. Click To Tweet
Sources of Complacency
The absence of a major and visible crisis, especially for adrenal driven organizations.
Sources of False Urgency
Frenetic activity directly resulting from veiled threat, such as unrealistic performance standards and/or reward standards.
Some tactics to consider
Bring the outside into the organization by clearly reconnecting internal reality with external opportunities and hazards and ensuring that compelling data, people, video, sites, and sounds are part and parcel of the organization. Behave with urgency and passion every day by never acting content, anxious, or angry and demonstrate your own sense of urgency in meetings, one-on-one interactions, memos, and email to as many people as possible. Find opportunity in crisis by always being alert to see if the crisis can be an ally and not just a dreadful enemy, often hidden is complacency, while acknowledging that any crisis can be deadly and therefore should never be approached without respect. Deal with the No-No birds that do everything in their power to kill change and any sense of urgency.
Sources for Creating A Real Sense of Urgency
Create a crisis allowing a financial loss, exposing management to major weaknesses vis-a-vis competitors, or allowing errors to blow-up instead of being corrected at the last minute.
Sources of Complacency
Sources of False Urgency
- Frenetic activity directly resulting from veiled threat, such as unrealistic performance standards and/or reward standards.
- Power-point presentations supersede clearly directed and aligned actions throughout the organization, with more criticality if at the top.
- Meetings to address all issues, including follow-up, when periodic phone calls, one-on-one up…
- Frenetic activity directly resulting from veiled threat, such as unrealistic performance standards and/or reward standards.
- Power-point presentations supersede clearly directed and aligned actions throughout the organization, with more criticality if at the top.
- Meetings to address all issues, including follow-up, when periodic phone calls, one-on-one updates can be used to shape and refine what is desired and realistic in the organization.
- Projects tend to geometrically grow without clearly integrating them into alignment with the organization's vision and mission.
Some Tactics to Consider
- Bring the outside into the organization by clearly reconnecting internal reality with external opportunities and hazards and ensuring that compelling data, people, video, sites, and sounds are part...
- Behave with urgency and passion every day by never acting content, anxious, or angry and demonstrate your own sense of urgency in meetings, one-on-one interactions, memos, and e…
- Bring the outside into the organization by clearly reconnecting internal reality with external opportunities and hazards and ensuring that compelling data, people, video, sites, and sounds are part...
- Behave with urgency and passion every day by never acting content, anxious, or angry and demonstrate your own sense of urgency in meetings, one-on-one interactions, memos, and email to as many peop...
- Find opportunity in crisis by always being alert to see if the crisis can be an ally and not just a dreadful enemy, often hidden is complacency, while acknowledging that any crisis can be deadly an...
- Deal with the No-No birds that do everything in their power to kill change and any sense of ur…
Sources For Creating A Real Sense of Urgency
- Create a crisis allowing a financial loss, exposing management to major weaknesses vis-a-vis competitors, or allowing errors to blow-up instead of being corrected at the last minute.
- Eliminate obvious examples of excess.
- Set revenue, income, productivity, customer satisfaction, and cycle time targets so high that they cannot be reached by conducting business as usual.
- Create a crisis allowing a financial loss, exposing management to major weaknesses vis-a-vis competitors, or allowing errors to blow-up instead of being corrected at the last minute.
- Eliminate obvious examples of excess.
- Set revenue, income, productivity, customer satisfaction, and cycle time targets so high that they cannot be reached by conducting business as usual.
- Stop measuring subunit performance based only on narrow functional goals. Insist that more people be held accountable for broader measures of business performance.