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A Sense Of Urgency (2008)

by John P. Kotter(Favorite Author)

3.71 of 5 Votes: 2

ISBN

1422179710 (ISBN13: 9781422179710)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Harvard Business Review Press

review 1: A book that describes the pitfalls of complacency and having a false sense of urgency, and suggests tactics to improve a company´s sense of urgency. It all starts with understanding that big and recent successes increase complacency. Then, after planning for it (because it will happen), 4 tactics are proposed to increase the real sense of urgency:1 - Bring the outside environment inside the company --> through soft or hard ways, bring data from the outside world to the company in meaningful ways (heart and mind)2 - Always act with a sense of urgency, and communicate to your co-workers and employees. Let it be transparent on your meetings, calls, emails, and interactions with employees. Delegate, eliminate the useless, and walk fast.3 - If there are no crises at the moment... more and complacency is increasing, create a crisis. Crises are potential opportunities for growth4 - Find the resistance (NoNos) and deal with them --> distract them with other projects, fire them, or use social pressure against them
review 2: A Sense of UrgencyBy: John P. KotterRead: September 2009Reviewed: November 2009Copyright: 2008A Sense of Urgency is the second book I have read by Kotter. The first was Leading Change which was written about 11 years prior. A Sense of Urgency builds upon a subset of the content from Leading Change.Kotter starts out by comparing a sense of urgency to complacency and false urgency. Often in business people become complacent when success has been had. Even if there is a brief sense of urgency, due to some problem, once things are back into place complacency prevails. Many also have a false sense of urgency. They are very busy doing a lot of work they believe is urgent, when in fact the work is just an overabundance of busy-work. It is not important and really has no use to be urgent. It simply satisfy’s the person doing the work because they appear to be and feel very busy.Kotter highlights 4 tactics to drum up urgency. First is to bring the outside in. Often people are complacent because they are around the same, also complacent, people day after day. They never look outside to see others in the industry, including competition. Bringing the outside in will enlighten folks and often spark urgent desire to change something. Secondly, behave with urgency every day. This involves setting an example and not settling for typical non-urgent behavior. Do something and cause others to do something NOW. A common obstacle to this is usually full calendars of useless, non-urgent meetings. Clearing one’s calendar, delegating, speaking with passion, and making this example visible to others is behaving with urgency every day. The third tactic is simple: Find opportunity, for urgency, in crisis. Use crisis situations to spark urgent behavior. Lastly, or perhaps not lastly, deal with what Kotter calls “NoNos” NoNos are negative people that shoot down urgency by constantly taking the negative side of everything. It is important to not confuse a NoNo with a skeptic, and Kotter provides guidance to distinguish between the two. While Kotter’s title alone should not be taken literally, the full content of the book should. This was also a much easier book to grasp than Leading Change. This would be a great companion to read along side of the book It’s Called Work For a Reason by Larry Winget. less

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