A Sense of Urgency

Continuing as the master of changemanagement book, Kotter in a very timely message focuses on the sense of urgency pulling in new examples and references to his earlier good reads to aid in understanding how to get many of these efforts off the ground and continuing in a positive trajectory. It does a good job of separating the challenges of complacency and my word not his sabatoge of progress.

Well worth the read.

John had some great points in how to create urgency and how not to create urgency. The things I took away was firstly that I need to have a true sense of urgency. Not a false sense of urgency where I am doing many different things. A true sense of urgency is focused on IMPORTANT tasks. The other great thing I took away was to spend 1 hour a day being seen by your team doing things with them and talking to them.
Great book for an organization who needs to create more urgency or who just had some great success. If you had great success be careful not to become complacent. Overall it was a great book on having urgency daily.

John P Kotter took the theory of "change management" one step further, by suggesting that the successful organization will never grow complacent; having a perpetual sense of urgency is the most sensible way to run any enterprise.

This philosophy is one that will prove to be the most effective way for long-term survival, especially during these challenging economic times. The author astutely suggests that we should take a more aggressive approach with our thought processes; instead of dreading crisis, we should embrace it.

Kotter's point makes a great deal of sense. Whenever difficult times arise, those who are equipped to handle the situation will thrive in the 21st century world of business; organizations that are clever enough to look adversity in the eye and search for the opportunities hidden within, will prosper. Those that don't will fall by the wayside.

It's a logical scenario, and we're seeing it played out every day on Wall Street. Survival of the fittest requires the courage and foresight to take advantage of even the most distressing crisis; there are plenty to go around, as we head into the second half of 2009.

Corporate America had better prepare themselves for a great deal of turmoil. The challenges are getting even more difficult.

Well, this is typical John Kotter. He seems to have everything right -- no criticism there -- but it seems to be a collection of run-on platitudes.

The best Kotter book to read in my opinion is "Our Iceberg is Melting." Save "A Sense of Urgency" for only after you've read "Our Iceberg is Melting."

The metaphorical environment of "Iceberg" encouraged Kotter to take some risk in generalizing and integrating his knowledge. Here in "Urgency" Kotter plays it safe and takes no risks.

While Kotter is one of the top academic authors in Change Management, he rarely takes the risk of connecting the dots of his research to tell the reader what is probable. Instead, Kotter plays it safe and says only what may be thoroughly backed up by his field research. While this approach has its merits for scholarly publications, it comes out more than a little boring in popular works for the layperson, and the result is somewhat less than one would hope for from such a prominent leader in his field.

This is one of the worst books I have read in my life. It lacks substance and provides useless information in so many pages. The book also shows that even famous professors may write rotten books. Even if he wrote the same stuff in 10 pages I still believe it would still not be worth reading. Here's my summary of the book: Sense of urgency is important for companies and they should have it. That's it.