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Een Gevoel Van Urgentie! Hoe Krijg Je Mensen In Beweging Om Succesvol Te Veranderen? (2008)

by John P. Kotter(Favorite Author)

3.71 of 5 Votes: 1

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English

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Nonfiction

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Business Contact

review 1: A SENSE OF URGENCY BY JOHN KOTTER SUMMARYTrue urgency focuses on critical issues. It is driven by the deep determination to win, not anxiety about losing. Many people confuse it with false urgency. This misguided sense of urgency does have energized action, but it has a frantic aspect to it with people driven by anxiety and fear. This dysfunctional orientation prevents people from exploiting opportunities and addressing real issues.A big reason that a true sense of urgency is rare is that it’s not a natural state of affairs. It has to be created and recreated. In organizations that have survived for a significant period of time, complacency is more likely the norm. Even in organizations that are clearly experiencing serious problems, devastating problems, business-as-usu... moreal can survive.HOW TO RECOGNIZE EPISODIC AND CONTINUOUS CHANGEEpisodic change requires urgency in spurts. The urgency must be there to sustain the sprint. Episodic change revolves around a single big issue such as:• Major restructuring• New product launch• Acquisition• IT integration• Growing revenueContinuous change is a ceaseless flow of change. It's a marathon. Becoming adept at change must be an asset of the company to succeed for the long term.HOW TO RECOGNIZE URGENT BEHAVIORUrgent behavior is not driven by a belief that all is well, or that everything is a mess but instead, that the world contains great opportunities and great hazards. Even more so, urgent action is not created by feelings of contentment, anxiety, frustration, or anger, but by a gut-level determination to move and win, now. These feelings quite naturally lead to behavior in which people are alert and proactive, in which they constantly scan the environment around them, both inside and outside their organizations, looking for information relevant to success and survival. With complacency or false urgency, people look inward, not out, and they miss what is essential for prosperity.With a real sense of urgency, when people see an opportunity or a problem of significance to their organization, and others don’t, they quite naturally search for effective ways to get the information to the right individual — right away — not when they are next scheduled to meet with him or her next month. With a true sense of urgency, people want to come to work each day ready to cooperate energetically and responsively with intelligent initiatives from others. And they do. People want to find ways to launch smart initiatives. And they do.A real sense of urgency is a highly positive and highly focused force. Because it naturally directs you to be truly alert to what’s really happening, it rarely leads to a race to deal with the trivial, to pursue pet projects of minor significance to the larger organization, or to tackle important issues in uninformed, potentially dangerous ways.• A "want-to" attitude• A gut-level determination to move, and win, now• People are alert and proactive, constantly looking for information relevant to success and survival• When faced with a problem, people search for effective ways to get the information to the right individual, now• People come to work each day ready to cooperate energeticallyTrue urgency is not the product of historical successes or current failures but the result of people who provide the leadership needed to create it. A real sense of urgency is rare, much rarer than most people seem to think, yet it is invaluable in a world that will not stand still. HOW TO RECOGNIZE COMPLACENCYComplacency almost always comes from success, and lives long after that success has disappeared. While a sluggishness or arrogance may be clearly apparent to an outsider, complacent insiders don’t have that perspective. While they may admit there are challenges, they'll tell you the problems are over there in that other person’s department. Complacency is a feeling of self-satisfaction. Content with the status quo, organizations and individuals that are complacent do not look for new opportunities or hazards on the horizon, instead they are almost always internally focused. They rarely initiate or lead, working at a constant speed even when circumstances call for fast action. We have all seen it, yet we underestimate its prevalence and its power. Highly destructive complacency is, in fact, all around us.• Are discussions inward focused and not about markets, emerging technology, competitors, etc.?• Is candor lacking in confronting bureaucracy and politics that are slowing things down?• Do people regularly blame others for problems instead of taking responsibility?• Are failures of the past discussed not to learn, but to stall new initiatives?• Are assignments around critical issues regularly not completed on time or with sufficient quality?• Do cynical jokes undermine important discussions?• Are highly selective facts used to shoot down data that suggests there is a big hazard or opportunity?• Do meetings on key issues end with no decisions about what must happen immediately (except the scheduling of the next meeting)?• Are critical issues delegated without the involvement of key people?• Does passive aggression exist around big issues?• Do people say, “we must act now”, but then don’t act?HOW TO RECOGNIZE FALSE URGENCYFar too often, managers are satisfied when they see lots of energetic activity: people running from meeting to meeting, preparing endless presentations, meetings with agendas containing long lists of activities. More often than not, this flurry of behavior is driven by pressures that create anxiety. The resulting frantic activity is more distracting than useful. This is a false sense of urgency. It can be even more destructive than complacency because it drains precious energy spent in circular activity — energy that should be directed toward productivity.Since people often mistake this running-around for a real sense of urgency, many times they actually try to create it. The frustrated boss screams, “Execute!” His employees scramble: sprinting, meeting, task-forcing, e-mailing — all of which creates a howling wind of activity. But that’s all it is, a howling wind or, worse yet, a tornado that destroys much and builds nothing.• Do people have trouble scheduling meetings on important initiatives• Because they are too busy?• Are critical issues delegated without the involvement of key people?• Do people spend long hours developing power points on almost anything?• Do people regularly blame others for problems instead of taking responsibility?• Are failures of the past discussed not to learn, but to stall new initiatives?• Are assignments around critical issues regularly not completed on time or with sufficient quality?• Are highly selective facts used to shoot down data that suggests there is a big hazard or opportunity?• Do meetings on key issues end with no decisions about what must happen immediately (except the scheduling of the next meeting)?• Does passive aggression exist around big issues?• Do people say, “we must act now,” but then don’t act?• Do cynical jokes undermine important discussions?• Do people run from meeting to meeting exhausting themselves and rarely focusing on the most critical hazards or opportunities?
review 2: Apparently I needed to create a sense of urgency to read Sense of Urgency! This sat on my shelf for over a year! Given we're due to teach Kotter this spring and given one of my students just read it for independent study, I thought I should get started.The book makes helpful distinctions between complacency, false urgency and true urgency within our organizations, discussing the signs and effects of each. The author defines urgency as "the determination to win and move, now". Four tactics for creating urgency are discussed: bring the outside in, behaving with urgency every day, finding opportunities in crises and dealing with No Nos. A chapter is devoted to each. Overall, the book shines a needed spotlight on the issue of urgency and is a logical extension to Kotter's earlier works (Leading Change, The Heart of Change and Our Iceberg is Melting). Personally, working within education, I was frustrated with the continual use of corporate business examples, as if other types of organizations don't exist. At times it was difficult to relate to the situations, indicators of complacency or urgency and strategies because of the continual dialogue on industry analysts, quarterly earnings, suppliers, customers, etc. For those not living in the corporate world, you must continually ask yourself "What would this type of situation look like in my organization (e.g. signs, symptoms, timeframes)?" and "What would this suggested strategy/tactic need to look like in my organization?" Of course, this amounts to a lot of work "translating".That said, I did especially appreciate the discussion of the successful and unsuccessful ways for dealing with those that are committed to derailing progress, as well as the author's thoughts around "finding opportunity in crises". These will definitely be easily useful in my environment.I would recommend this book to those that are fans of Kotter, have studied his earlier work and desire a more indepth examination of methods for affecting urgency. But, if you're new to his work and/or to organization change, start elsewhere. less

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