Today, I interviewed John Kotter, the world’s most foremost authority of leadership and change. He is a Harvard professor and author of many international bestselling books. Johnis travelling extensively, touring the world, promoting his new book right now. We talked about this little thing called “urgency,” why it’s important in our lives and the impact it has on businesses.
Can businesses survive today without a sense of urgency? Can you give an example of a company that no longer exists because it was too slow to make change?
Sure, you can exist if you have a monopoly or oligopoly of some sort or another, but for the rest of us, urgency is becoming a much bigger problem or asset. I made a video last year and used a famous example of no-urgency on the part of the staff (not the CEO, he was a different story) and how the firm, for all practical purposes went from #1 to death: Polaroid.
When it comes to personal development, what lessons can be learned from your book on how we need to constantly evolve, in this ever changing global economy?
You have to keep your personal sense of urgency up and you need to learn how to get better and better in developing real urgency in the people around you.
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In your book you describe complacency and false urgency. How do you define both and why are they important in understanding your core message?
Real urgency is a thought process that really sees all the big opportunities and threats out there, but, more importantly, it’s a gut-level determination to exploit those opportunities and avoid those hazards now.Those feelings lead to a hyper alert behavior, looking for ways to exploit and avoid.
It leads to an unusual willingness to push the junk off of your calendar so there is time to deal with the important issues. It’s a willingness to get out of the bed each day determinate to make some progress, no matter how small, on the real issues. False urgency is driven by anxiety, fear and sometimes anger. It’s frenetic behavior: people running in circles, meetings and more meetings, preparing for yet another useless PowerPoint presentation. It’s activity, not productivity, and it can leave people stressed out and exhausted.
You have 4 SETS OF tactics for increasing a true sense of urgency. Which do you feel is the most important and why?
It depends upon the situation, but in general probably the first: bringing the outside in. It is astonishing organizations can become disconnected from those outside opportunities and hazards that inevitably create complacency. There are a dozen ways to help reconnect and in the process increase urgency.
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John Kotter is widely regarded as the world’s foremost authority on leadership and change. Kotter is thepremier voice on how the best organizations actually “do” change. He is the author of the new book A Sense of Urgency, which you can get in audio and hardcover formats.
Kotter, who is Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus at Harvard Business School, has devoted his remarkable career to studying organizations and those who run them, and his internationally bestselling books and essays have guided and inspired leaders at all levels. The John Kotter Leadership Insights Collection is a specially-priced, six-volume collection offering practical advice, management insights, and useful tools to help you successfully lead and implement change in your organization.
