John Kotter on urgency

It was a rainy day Sunday afternoon yesterday, so I started to read a book by famed Harvard management professor John Kotter: “A Sense of Urgency.” The book has been in a pile for a couple of months, and let’s just say I wish we’d had more rain earlier.

I’m a fan of Peter Drucker’s writings, but in recent years, I’ve become skeptical of many management books. I’ve read my fill of books that were at best an article and at worst a pamphlet for expensive consulting. To me the test is simple: Will this book help me do a better job and provide more value to my employer? In the case of Kotter’s latest book, the answer is “yes and absolutely.”

Weighing in around 200 pages, it’s not a long book. You can finish it in a couple of evenings or on one long flight. And I guarantee it will fire you up. For a lot of companies that are struggling to deal with competitive pressures or a tough economic climate, this is exactly what is needed.

Kotter describes in sobering terms the rather sad statistics around corporate initiatives to implement substantial change: 70 percent of them failed to deliver the change, were never completely rolled out, or ran over budget or over schedule. But in 10 percent of the cases, results were better than expected. What makes the difference? A lot of it boils down to whether a sense of urgency is created through out the organization. It’s about creating a gut-level determination to move, and win, now.

But don’t fall into the trap of thinking that change means task forces and committees. Kotter distinguishes between urgency and the time-wasting, energy-sapping make-work that is often found in ineffective organizations:

Far too often, managers think they have found the solution to this problem when they see lots of energetic activity: where people sometimes run from meeting to meeting, preparing endless PowerPoint presentations; where people have agendas containing a long list of activities; where people seem willing to abandon the status quo; where people seem to have a great sense of urgency. But more often than not, this flurry of behavior is not driven by any underlying determination to move and win, now. It’s driven by pressures that create anxiety and anger. The resulting frantic activity is more distracting than useful. This is a false sense of urgency that may be even more destructive than complacency because it drains needed energy in activity and not productivity.

A lot of the problems companies face is that a level of complacency that builds up through the years. Often, that’s a result of a company’s great success in early years. But over time, it creates an organization that becomes inwardly focused and blind to what’s happening in the marketplace. Even very smart managers become oblivious to the problem of complacency, believing that things aren’t so bad, or that the problems lie in some other department. I wonder how often that has been said at Yahoo or GM recently.

Kotter goes on to describe the ways to enact change in an organization. It all begins with creating a sense of urgency by appealing to the hearts and minds of others in the firm. Kotter shows you how to do it with practical examples taken from real companies, including how to identify red flags, how to overcome complacency, and so on. You can read two brief excerpts from Harvard Business Press.

Kotter also describes how to deal with skeptics as well as corporate “NoNos” — those whose comments always begin with “No, no, you see…” Kotter recognizes that there are those in companies who will simply resist all change and will ultimately undermine what needs to be done. He gives some good advice in dealing with these folks. (Short version: Fire them.)

If you read just one management book this year, read “A Sense of Urgency.”

Given the ever accelerating pace of change we live in today, this book can better enable you to be part of the change rather than a victim of it. If you sense your organization is in denial about the issues or scurrying around in a panic without making real change, this book will give you the tools to make things happen.