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GoldLyrics.com - A Sense of Urgency
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List Price: $22.00
Our Price: $14.96
Your Save: $ 7.04 ( 32% )
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Manufacturer: Harvard Business School Press
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 658.406
EAN: 9781422179710
ISBN: 1422179710
Label: Harvard Business School Press
Manufacturer: Harvard Business School Press
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 128
Publication Date: 2008-09-03
Publisher: Harvard Business School Press
Studio: Harvard Business School Press
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Editorial Reviews:
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Most organizational change initiatives fail spectacularly (at worst) or deliver lukewarm results (at best). In his international bestseller Leading Change, John Kotter revealed why change is so hard, and provided an actionable, eight-step process for implementing successful transformations. The book became the change bible for managers worldwide.
Now, in Urgency, Kotter shines the spotlight on the crucial first step in his framework: creating a sense of urgency by getting people to actually see and feel the need for change.
Why focus on urgency? Without it, any change effort is doomed. Kotter reveals the insidious nature of complacency in all its forms and guises.
In this exciting new book, Kotter explains:
How to go beyond "the business case" for change to overcome the fear and anger that can suppress urgencyWays to ensure that your actions and behaviors -- not just your words -- communicate the need for changeHow to keep fanning the flames of urgency even after your transformation effort has scored some early successes
Written in Kotter's signature no-nonsense style, this concise and authoritative guide helps you set the stage for leading a successful transformation in your company.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Changing the idea of change management
Comment: A Sense of Urgency is a book that is sorely needed in today's times as the difference between urgency and change will make the difference between survival and liquidation in today's economy. Executives need to recognize the difference between the two. Urgency creates a motivating force on results and teaming. Change is imposed from above, the subject of skepticism and Dilbert cartoons.
Every organization needs to change, that is commonly understood and the subject of endless books, including those by John Kotter. We have become complacent in our approaches to change management as every one of those books deals with change as a process, an event something that happens and then happens again at a latter date. This gives executives the belief that there is a change management recipe, based on principles like the burning platform, communication, and executive sponsorship. That recipe has lost its meaning and its time for use to change the approach to change management.
I recommend this book to any executive, manager, team leader, and concerned professional as a way for them to lead and create results in a powerful way. The book is easily read over a weekend, a couple of airplane rides, etc. The charts and tools are clearly presented and actionable. Overall a must read part of any management library.
Why? Because change has lost its potency. It's become routine and we have lost sight of its fundamental roots. Change and enterprises have become internally focused, concerned with themselves, their processes, their investments etc.
Kotter reminds us that the root of success involves sense of Urgency. Urgency is the highly positive and focused forces that give people the determination to move and win now. It's a simple definition but one that is powerful and well executed throughout the book.
A sense of urgency is a focused book concentrating on the actions and practices involved in creating and sustaining a sense of urgency. Kotter provides four core tactics for driving urgency into an organization. These tactics are supported by anecdotal stories and detailed tools which make the book actionable and practical. The tactics are:
Bring the outside in
Behave with urgency every day
Find opportunity in crisis
Deal with NoNo's
This can give the reader the sense that there is `a recipe for urgency' and I guess that is unavoidable, but internalizing the books message you can readily get a sense of how this all fits into your context.
The strengths of the book centered on its clear and focused organization of these ideas in a way that Executives can easily read on a plane ride or afternoon and apply these practices right away. Kotter accompanies each Urgency Tactic with the details that not only make it real, but also really applicable. Here is a detailed example for the first tactic:
Bring the outside in:
a. Recognize the pervasive problem of internal focus
b. Listen to customer-interfacing employees
c. Use the power of video
d. Don't always shield people from troubling data
e. Redecorate
f. Send people out
g. Bring people in
h. Bring data in, but in the right way
i. Watch out that you don't create a false sense of urgency
Each sub tactic contains a focused page and a half discussion of what they are and how leaders can implement the idea. This detail and its presentation is what really distinguishes the book and brings something new to the debate.
The book's primary weakness is that it is not specific in their examples. There are discussions of nondescript companies that dilute rather than support the messages. Most of the case stories do not have a conclusion - the results companies were able to achieve. This makes the examples more fables that case studies. It's really a shame as strong specific stories are the one thing that is missing that would make this a killer book.
Finally, there are some surprising gaps in the book that by themselves do not diminish the book, but in total they certainly take away from its power. First the book does not recognize that there are other approaches to change management and urgency. This denies the reader the ability to put A Sense of Urgency in the context of the broader literature. This is really unfortunate as this book should replace some ideas and enhance others - Kotter leaves that up to the reader rather than providing a recommendation. Second, the book has no index, which not only makes it tougher to use after the fact, but also is a silly omission.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: More on Urgency
Comment: John Kotter's A Sense of Urgency builds on his earlier works on change - Leading Change, Heart of Change, and Our Iceberg is Melting. Unlike these other titles Kotter focuses on one step in the change process. He offers many useful suggestions about creating a sense of urgency. Anyone involved in leading change should take this seriously because urgency is foundational to change. No urgency, no change. And arousing a sense of urgency is not as easy as it sounds. People and organizations want to hang on to the familiar, the current way of operating. So, like No-No in Our Iceberg is Melting, they will stubbornly resist change, locking themselves into their comfort zone. My sense is that many change efforts fail because no sense of urgency has been created. So Kotter's book is a welcome addition to the literature and the practice of change.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A solid read for any business manager
Comment: Speed is an underrated and powerful aspect of business that oft goes ignored. "A Sense of Urgency" is a guide to business urgency and keeping the sense of it going to increase productivity and efficiency. Urgency brings speed, speed brings changes, and changes bring opportunities, and opportunities bring profit. A must for improving one's business while not stressing employees out, "A Sense of Urgency" is a solid read for any business manager.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Move!!!
Comment: In this book Kotter focuses on the first of the eight steps outlined in his book Leading Change. According to Kotter, creating a sense of urgency is the single most important part of a change effort. I would have to agree. In the company I just left, we could see the threats in the business environment at the unit level. But at the corporate level, there was an attitude of "we have time, we've been here before".
Kotter helps us identify complacency, and gives us strategies to fight it. Leading Change was one of the texts in the University of Nevada, Reno's 400 level change management course, and this book is a great tool to help build on the concepts in Leading Change.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Get Off the Dime and Pick Up the Big Bucks for Your Organization
Comment: Whenever I meet CEOs, they invariably tell me that they wish their people had more "fire in the belly" or more of a sense of urgency. What are they talking about? Their organizations go about saving someone's life in such a slow methodical fashion, that no life would ever be saved. It's as though a fire truck arrived at a fire and never unrolled any hoses or attached them to any fire hydrants. Instead, they are checking the equipment before getting started.
I have seen this in my own organizations. Hire a new marketing person, and you can be sure that not much more will be accomplished in the first six months than to have the company stationery, business cards, and promotional material redesigned.
What the leaders often don't realize is that their behavior facilitates this "business as usual" slow-motion sleep walk. If you want to get beyond that frustration into effectiveness, this book can help you.
Professor John Kotter knows all this. In his excellent books on change management such as Leading Change and The Heart of Change, he documented that change requires these characteristics be present:
1. A sense of urgency
2. An effective guiding team
3. Appropriate visions and strategies
4. Communications that cause the right messages to be understood by all
5. Allowing people to make necessary changes
6. Making regular progress that inspires people
7. Keeping at making useful changes
8. Not letting the helpful changes unravel
As you can see, it all starts with a sense of urgency. In this book, Professor Kotter gives us his most in-depth look at how a leader can instill and take advantage of a sense of urgency to overcome complacency and bad habits.
He proposes that leaders engage a strategy of continual action based on sensing changes outside the organization that provide opportunities or present threats while eliminating activities that don't add much value. Such a strategy should be implemented in a way that appeals to your organization both rationally and emotionally.
To implement that strategy he suggests these tactics (see pp. 60-61):
1. Bring the outside in with engaging information so that the outside is acknowledged, understood, and acted on.
2. Demonstrate urgency every day as a leader and expect everyone else to do the same.
3. Find appropriate opportunities to change and improve from crises that threaten the organization.
4. Wall off, neutralize, or eliminate those who oppose or slow down change for no good reason.
The book goes on to provide lists of questions, examples of good and bad behavior, and check lists to help you follow Professor Kotter's advice.
I found a few flaws in the ointment that concerned me about the book that I think you should be aware of:
1. In the book's beginning, there's a lot of attention paid to what is described as a "false sense of urgency." He characterizes people with this attitude as feeling that change must be made but whose actions aren't very helpful (like the new marketing people who spend a lot of effort redesigning the stationery). I don't think that's the only syndrome that you have to deal with. I also see people who have a real sense of urgency, but who don't have the management skills to know how to fix whatever it is that needs to be fixed. I would characterize that as incompetent management. Professor Kotter fails to address what to do about incompetent change management.
2. The sections on the tactics don't contain many examples, and many of the examples are ones that he has shared in earlier books such as The Heart of Change. I would have liked to see more examples and more details about how to pursue these tactics in organizations with different kinds of cultures. As a result, I didn't feel like I gained very much information about the tactics beyond what the description of the tactic provides.
3. Can leadership be defined and parsed like management is? To some extent. I think that Professor Kotter doesn't feel comfortable trying to do so. As a result, the book is a little on the superficial side for a reader who hasn't seen an effective change leader in operation.
4. There are many other tactics for leading successful change that require the use of new business models and those ideas are totally missing from the book.
But I don't know of a better book on the challenges of creating a sense of urgency in leading change. So do read this one and make the best use of it you can.
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