13 Ways to Increase Urgency for Change Efforts

David Gleicher’s change formula states that if people do not feel enough dissatisfaction with the status quo, they won’t change. And Jon Kotter, in his book, Leading Change, said the first step in leading change efforts is to increase urgency. In this post, I give you some of Kotter’s (p.44) ideas on how to increase urgency. 

1.     Stop minimizing issues and “happy talk” so that people feel better. It increases denial.

2.     Discuss the risk of the status quo.

3.     Make errors more visible. 

4.     Remind managers of the competitive weaknesses of the organization.

5.     Hire consultants who can more easily point out weaknesses.

6.     Discuss industry giants who lost everything overnight.

7.     Educate employees on how their personal performance is tied to the organization’s performance and “stop measuring sub-unit performance based on narrow functional goals.”

8.     Tie compensation to product performance (as opposed to functional performance)

9.     Make sure employee goals are related to business goals.

10. “Develop performance feedback that comes from customer satisfaction.”

11.  Minimize feedback delays and insist that feedback is regularly received from customers, suppliers, shareholders and other potentially disgruntled stakeholders.

12. “Allow” a crisis by not bailing people out. 

13. “Put more honest discussion of the firm’s problems in the company newsletter.”