ESTABHLISHING A
SENSE OF URGENCY
Learning Objectives
1. Examining the market and competitive realities
2. Identifying and discussing crisis, potential
crisis or major opportunities
3. Describing sources of complacency
4. Describing the role of manager
5. Discussing enough information of urgency
Complacency
If complacency filled organization, change
initiatives are dead on arrival.
Sources of Complacency
Too much happy talk from
senior management
Human nature, with its
capacity for denial,
especially if people are
already busy or stressed
The Absence of
A major and
visible crisis
COMPLACENCY
A-kill-the-messenger-ofbad-news, low-candor, lowconfrontation culture
A lack of sufficient
performance feedback from
external sources
Too many visible
resources
Low overall performance
standards
Organizational structures
that focus employees on
narrow functional goals
Internal measurement system
that focus on the wrong
performance indexes
Urgency level
Pushing Up the Urgency Level
1. Create a crisis by allowing a financial loss
2. Eliminate obvious examples of excess
3. Set revenue, income, productivity, customer
satisfaction and cycle time targets so high
4. Stop measuring subunit performance based
only narrow functional goals
5. Send more data about customer satisfaction and
financial performance to more employees
6. Insist that people talk regularly to unsatisfied
customers, unhappy suppliers and disgruntled
shareholders
7. Use consultants and other means to force more
relevant data
8. Stop senior management “happy talk”
9. Bombard people with information on future
opportunities
The Role of Crises
Economic crises are so visible, major change is often
said to be impossible until organizations problem
become severe enough to generate significant losses
The Role of Middle and Lower Level Managers
• The key players of change is middle or lover level
managers
• They will need to reduce complacency an increase
urgency
•
They will need to create :
a. change coalition
b. develop a guiding vision
c. sell vision to others
• Give them enough autonomy
How Much Urgency is Enough ?
Organizations can find out how much urgency is
enough is from :
1. Well informed customers
2. Well informed suppliers
3. Stockholders
Summary
1.
2.
3.
4.
Establishing a sense of urgency is crucial to gaining
needed cooperation
With complacency high, transformations usually go
nowhere
Key role of change is middle and lower level
managers
Gathering more relevant information about urgency
are from customer, supplier & stakeholders