Sense of Urgency

1. A Sense of Urgency
“A strong sense of urgency is
moving from an essential element
g
in big change to an essential
asset in general”
Ayub Jake Salik
BE, MBA
03/16/11

2. Road Map
 About the author and why did he wrote this book?
 What is urgency and why is it important?
 What is “Complacency” and is “false sense of urgency”?
 Increasing sense of urgency
 Tactics for increasing sense of urgency
g g y
 How to sustain urgency?
2

3. Kotter & Why Did he Wrote This
.
Book?
3

4. Changing Business Environment?
g g
 Change is shifting from episodic to continuous.
 Globalization
 Technology
 International political turbulence
 Mergers and acquisitions
“With episodic change, the challenge of creating a
sufficient sense of urgency comes in occasional spurts.
ff f
With continuous change, creating and sustaining a
sufficient sense of urgency are always a necessity.”
g y y y
“70 percent of change efforts fail”
4

5. What is Urgency?
g
 Urgency means “of pressing importance”.
 People have a true sense or urgency when they
think that action on critical issues is needed now
and not eventually, when it fits easily into
schedule.
 Now means making real progress every single day.
 Critically important means challenges that are central to
success or survival, winning or losing.
“A reason true sense of urgency is rare is that it is not a
natural state of affairs It has to be created and recreated”
affairs.
5

6. Some Facts About True Urgency?
g
 Driven with a deep determination to win, not
anxiety about losing.
 Not just frenetic activity.
 Not the product of historical successes or
cu e t a u es,
current failures, but the result o peop e who
t e esu t of people o
create and recreate a sense of urgency
6

7. Some Facts About True Urgency?
 50 % of change effort fails in the first step of
change – creating sense of urgency
 Highly positive and highly focused force.
“It is believed people cannot maintain a high sense of
urgency over a prolonged period of time without burnout.”
time, burnout ”
7

8. Complacency
p
 Complacency is “ a feeling of
contentment or self satisfaction
satisfaction,
especially when coupled with an
“Complacency
unawareness of danger or trouble”. is almost
always the
product of
 Feeling : Complacency is less a matter of success and
conscious,
conscious rational analysis than unconscious perceived
emotion. success.”
 Self: is
S lf It i possible t see problems and b
ibl to bl d be
complacent because you do not feel that the
problems require changes in your actions.
8

9. How To Indentify Complacency?
p
 They never think they are complacent.
 Content ith th t t
C t t with the status quo; irrationally afraid of th
i ti ll f id f the
personal consequences of change.
 Do not alertly look for new opportunities or hazards
facing their organization.
 They do what has worked for them in the past.
 Who can be complacent?
p
 You, me, any one!
9

10. Sources Of Complacency?
p
 The absence of a major and visible crisis.
 Too many visible resources without clarity of the validity
and continuation of such resources.
 Low overall performance standards.
 Organizational structures that focus employees on
narrow functional goals, with little involvement and clarity
on the larger, more strategic picture.
 Internal measurement systems that focus on the wrong
performance indexes- no external f
f i d l focus.
10

11. Sources Of Complacency?
p
 A lack of sufficient performance feedback from external
sources .
 A kill the messenger of bad news low candor low
kill-the-messenger-of-bad-news, candor,
confrontation culture.
 Human nature, with its capacity for denial, especially if
people are already busy or stressed.
 Too much “happy talk” from senior management.
11

12. False Sense Of Urgency
g
 Result of failures or some form of intense pressure that is put on a
group.
group
 Do not think that all is well; they think the situation they are in is a
mess.
ess
 Tend to be very anxious, angry, frustrated and tired.
 Behave in ways that can easily be mistaken for people with a real
sense of urgency because they are very active.
 But the action is much more activity than productivity.
 Who can have a false sense of urgency?
 You, me,
You me anyone!
12

13. Sources Of False Urgency?
g
 Frenetic activity.
 Meetings after meeting.
 Projects tend to geometrically grow without clarity.
 Overwhelm and/or apathy is a common response to new
organizational goals.
 High stress levels - bursts of frustration or anger
anger.
 Internal focus on work to be done.
13

14. Does This Sound Familiar ?
 Consultants dealing with all the critical issues
 No time for important initiatives
 No one want to confront the bureaucracy y
 Non decisive and excessive meetings
 No one taking responsibility – blame game
g p y g
 Failures discussed not to learn but to stall new
initiatives.
These are Signs of “No Urgency”
g g y
14

15. Increasing True Urgency
g g
“Great leaders win over the hearts and minds of
others”
Aim for the heart & mind
“The winning strategy combines an analytically
sound, ambitious,
sound ambitious but logical goals with methods
that help people experience those goals as
exciting, meaningful and uplifting.”
g g p g
15

16. Increasing True Urgency
g g
Tactics that aim for the heart, and successfully increase
urgency, have 5 characteristics:
g y,
1. Thoughtfully created human experiences.
2. Not only told, but shown.
3. Designed to make change-weary, cynical people believe that a
crisis might be a blessing in disguise
disguise.
4. Don’t need to be explicit.
5. Almost inevitably raise our sights to emotionally embrace goals
beyond status quo and coping with a difficult situation.
16

17. Tactic One: Bring Outside In
g
 Recognize the pervasive problem of internal
focus.
 Past successes.
 Listen to customer-interfacing employees.
 Faith in them.
 Treat them with respect.
 Asking q estions and listening closel to ans ers and
questions closely answers
never giving up.
17

18. Tactic One: Bring Outside In
g
 Use video as an urgency-increasing mechanism.
 Angry customer video
 Don’t always shield people from troubling data
 Redecorate
 Send people out.
 Bring people in
18

19. Tactic One: Bring Outside In
g
 Bring “data” in, but in the right way.
 “Clipping service” sending relevant information in
decent volumes in the most interesting manner to as
many people as possible
possible.
 Watch out that you don’t create a false sense of
don t
urgency.
19

20. Tactic Two: Behave With Urgency
g
Every Day
 Purge and delegate
 Stop overcrowded appointments, which make impossible to
behave with urgency
 Purge low priority items
 Cancel distraction projects
 Delegate, delegate’ delegate
 Move with speed
 Use freed time to respond to high priority issues
 Never end meetings without proper clarity
20

21. Tactic Two: Behave With Urgency
g
Every Day “Urgency
 Speak with passion begets
g
urgency.”
 Relentlessly talk about need to behave urgently
 Talk with feeling and passion
 Make the feelings infective.
 Match words and deeds
 Don’t just talk about external world, look it constantly
 Don’t just talk about exploiting opportunities , do it always
 Be visibly urgent
 Do everything as visibly as possible. Let them see the sense of
urgency
g y
21

22. Tactic Three: Find The Opportunity
pp
In Crises.
 Avoid the following mistakes:
 Assume that the crises will inevitably create a sense of urgency to
perform better.
 Going over the line with a strategy that creates an angry backlash
because people feel manipulated.
 Passively sitting and waiting for a crisis which may never come; act
with urgency every day.
 Underestimating what the people who would avoid crises at all costs
correctly appreciate: that crises can bring disaster.
22

23. Tactic Four: Deal With Nonos
“ NoNos are highly skilled urgency killers. If they can’t do
that, they create anxiety or anger and the flurry of
, y y g y
useless activity associated with a false sense of
urgency”
What can be done with NoNos:
 Distract the NoNos.
 Immobilize them with social pressures.
p
 Get rid of them.
23

24. How To Sustain Urgency?
g
 Keep urgency up after short term success
 “Make s re s ccess does not undermine urgency and allow the
sure success ndermine rgenc allo
powerful wind of tradition to pull new behavior back to
historical norms.”
 Be aware of tools available to stop urgency drop and use
the right tool for the right situation.
 Drive urgency into the culture
 “With a culture of urgency, people deeply value the capacity to
grab new opportunities, avoid new hazards. And continually
b t iti id h d A d ti ll
find ways to win.”
“If urgency drops sufficiently and momentum is lost ,
pushing complacency away the second time can be much
more difficult than first time.”
24

25. System View - Success & SOU

26. Wrap-up – Lets listen to Kotter
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5802FBaMSI
26

27. Rating
27

28. How Will You Create
A Sense Of Urgency?
28