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    A Sense of Urgency
    A Sense of Urgency
    A Sense of Urgency
    Audiobook4 hours

    A Sense of Urgency

    Written by John P. Kotter

    Narrated by Bill Weideman

    4/5

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    About this audiobook

    True urgency is a gut-level determination to move and win, now.

    It’s practitioners are unusually alert. They come to work each day determined to achieve something important, and they shed irrelevant activities to move faster and smarter. Those with a sense of urgency are the opposite of complacent—but they are not stressed-out and anxious, generating great activity without much productivity. Instead, they move boldly toward the future—sharply on the lookout for the hazards and the opportunities that change brings.

    Bestselling author and business guru John Kotter knows about urgency. “Raising urgency” is the first step in his enormously successful eight-step framework, first articulated in Leading Change. But as Kotter illustrates, increasing urgency is the toughest of the eight steps, and the one without which even the most brilliant, high-powered initiatives will sputter and die. More importantly, as we transition to a world where change is continuous—not just episodic—he shows how urgency must become a core, sustained capability.

    With vivid and powerful stories, Kotter reveals a distinctive view of the kind of urgency needed in every organization. He also highlights the insidious nature of its nemesis, complacency, in all its guises. He explains the crucial difference between constructive true urgency, and the frantic wheel spinning that is so often mistaken for urgency. He provides key tactics for increasing urgency, as well as exposing and rooting out complacency, with chapters on:

    •Bringing the outside in
    •Behaving with urgency every day
    •Finding opportunity in crises
    •Dealing with “NoNos” or naysayers

    A Sense of Urgency is a powerful tool for anyone wanting to win in a turbulent world that will only continue to move faster.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    Release dateSep 1, 2008
    ISBN9781423369394
    A Sense of Urgency
    Author

    John P. Kotter

    John P. Kotter is the Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus, at Harvard Business School, and is widely regarded as the world’s foremost authority on leadership and change. His has been the premier voice on how the best organizations actually do change.

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    • 3/5
      John Kotter is widely regarded as the world's foremost authority on leadership and change. Author of such bestsellers as "Leading Change" and "Our Iceberg Is Melting" this volume came into being after he reflected on the question "What is the single biggest error people make when they try to change?" Deciding the answer to be "...that they did not create a high enough sense of urgency among people to set the stage for making a challenging leap into some new direction" he investigated further by systematically asking managers a set of questions that led him to formulate the strategy outlined in this book. Utilising case studies and interviews, the strategy is based around winning hearts and minds and involves four tactics that, if developed correctly, will increase needed urgency. Once the urgency is in place he then explains how to keep it going and then plan for the future. This is a fairly interesting but extremely well written book. The inclusion of the case studies turn what could have been a dry management theory into a relevant and easily applicable plan of action. Showing how organisations have suffered through complacency and illustrating what could have been done to avoid the suffering is a useful tool that may be plotted against your own organisation. My only criticism would be that it feels a little padded out in places, as if the ideas didn't really need expressing on their own but in one of the books that are quoted throughout.