lecture 3 new

7/29/2019 Lecture 3 NEW

1/13

Establishing a Sense of Urgency

John P. Kotter

Lecture 3Instructor: Sara Aslam


2/13

Establishing a sense of urgency

Establishing a sense of urgency is crucial to gainingneeded cooperation. With complacency high,

transformation usually go nowhere because fewpeople are even interested in working on thechange problem.

With urgency low, it is difficult to put together a

group with enough power and credibility to guide theefforts or to convince key individuals to spend thetime necessary to create and communicate achange vision. (see case 1)


3/13


4/13

Never underestimate the magnitude of the

forces that reinforce complacency and that

help maintain the status quo.

A Good Rule of

Thumb!


5/13

Pushing up the Urgency Level

Increasing urgency demands that you remove sourcesof complacency or minimize their impact: for instance,eliminating such signs of excess as a big corporate air

force; setting higher standards of both formally in the

planning process and informally in day-to-dayinteraction;

changing internal measurement systems that focus onthe wrong indexes;

vastly increasing the amount of external performancefeedback everyone gets;


6/13

Pushing up the Urgency Level(contd)

rewarding both honest talk in meetings and people whoare willing to confront problems;

stopping baseless happy talk from the top


7/13

Ways to raise the Urgency Level

1. Create a crisis by allowing a financial loss, exposingmanagers to major weaknesses vis-a-vis competitors, orallowing errors to blow up instead of being corrected at the

last minute.2. Set revenue, income, productivity, customer satisfaction,

and cycle time targets so high that they cant be reached byconducting business as usual.

3. Stop measuring subunit performance based only on narrowfinancial goals. Insist that more people be held accountablefor broader measures of business performance. (shift fromdepartmental approach to organisational approach)


8/13


4. Send more data about customer satisfaction and financialperformance to more employees, especially informationthat demonstrates weaknesses vis-a-vis competition.

5. Insist that people talk regularly to unsatisfied customers,unhappy suppliers, and disgruntled shareholders.

6. Use consultants and other means to force more relevantdata and honest discussion into management meetings.

7.

Put more honest discussions of the firms problems incompany newspapers and senior management speeches.Stop management happytalk


9/13


8. Bombard people with information on future opportunities,on the wonderful rewards for capitalizing on thoseopportunities, and on the organizations current inability to

pursue those opportunities in the key jobs. If they duck thatresponsibilities, as they sometimes do, they are failing todo the boards most essential work.


10/13

The role of Crisis

Visible crises can be enormously helpful in catchingpeoples attention and pushing up urgency levels.Conducting business as usual is very difficult if thebuilding seems to be on fire. But in an increasingly fast-

moving world, waiting for a fire to break out is dubiousstrategy. and in addition to catching peoples attention, asudden fire can cause a lot of damage. (see Case 3 & notesbelow)


11/13

The Role of Middle and Lower-Level Managers

If the target is plant, sales office, or work unit at thebottom of a larger organization, the key players will bethose middle or lower-level managers.

They will need to reduce complacency and increaseurgency. They will need to create a change coalitiondevelop a guiding vision, sell that vision to others, etc.If they have sufficient autonomy, they can often do so

regardless of what is happening in the rest of theorganization. Ifthey have enough autonomy.


12/13

The Role of Middle and Lower-LevelManagers (contd)

Without sufficient autonomy in a firm wherecomplacency is rife (not an unusual situation today), achange effort in a small unit can be doomed from the

start. Sooner or later the broader forces of inertia willintervene no matter what the lower level changeagents do. (see notes below)


13/13

How much urgency is enough?

Regardless of how the process is started or bywhom, most firm find it difficult to make muchprogress in phases 2-4 of a major change effort

unless most managers honestly believe that thestatus quo is unacceptable. Sustaining atransformation effort in stages 7 and 8 demandsan even greater commitment. A majority of

employees, perhaps 75 percent of managementoverall, and virtually all of the top executives needto believe that considerable change is absolutelyessential.

lecture 3 new

Documents