Accelerate

Does John Kotter have something new to say about change after his famous eight stages and his fable about the melting of the polar ice cap? Yes! He revisits a key concept from his previous publications, namely the first of his eight stages: “Create a sense of urgency.” Indeed, when change becomes a constant, the sense of urgency is no longer as relevant and reliable a driver as it used to be.

If the sense of urgency is overdone, companies risk trivializing it and generating unending turbulence or a sterile atmosphere of anxiety. Without giving up completely on this approach, the author now prefers to complement it with what he terms “opportunities,” that is, occasions to be seized rapidly because one never knows when they will reappear. This would be the case, for example, for a company whose performance is stagnating, but which notices in time that its presence in emerging countries is insufficient. The company turns this weakness into an opportunity to rekindle growth by broadly engaging the organization on a project to enter these new markets.

Opportunities also have the merit of being effective drivers to get the organization engaged, well beyond the dedicated project team—a second important action driver underlined by the author.

Without completely revamping the basic principles of change management, this book makes some interesting additions to take better account of the context of continuous change that many organizations are experiencing today.