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Book Excerpt A Sense of Urgency By John P. Kotter, Konosuke Matsushita Professor of Leadership, Emeritus, at Harvard Business School . The problem with using crises to reduce complacency and create urgency is that the tactic is a potential diamond sitting on a rock surrounded by quicksand and very nasty beasts. Any naiveté about the downside risks can cause disaster. Big Mistake Number 1: Assuming that crises inevitably will create the sense of urgency needed to perform better. At a major European retailer, margins were shrinking year after year because fashionable boutiques were taking its top-of-the-line business, and discounters were taking away its low-end business. Then the European edition of the Wall Street Journal published an explosive article spelling out many of the firm's problems. The CEO had two weeks' warning, but instead of alerting others or working to kill the story, he deliberately chose to do nothing. Not only did he not warn others, except o...

This article was written by Laura Villacrusis-Weaver, a leadership consultant with The Refinery Leadership Partners, an international consulting company, in co-operation with Refinery co-principal Rosie Steeves (rosie@refineryleadership.com). For more ideas about leadership development, visit www.refineryleadership.com. This article was previously published in Business in Vancouver in July 2008. A leader I used to work with amazed me once when he showed me his personal leadership journal. His journaling wasn’t what amazed me--many leaders try this simple, yet powerful development activity--but that the journal itself was so thick and well-worn. He’d been writing in it at least once a week, he told me, for six years. Many leaders start journaling with the best of intentions. They get into it for a while, at least until “real work” gets in the way and their journal is relegated to a desk drawer, mostly blank and completely forgotten. But my old co-worker would neve...

The way people buy has gone through a massive revolution in recent years: thanks to blogs, review sites and chat rooms, we no longer have to rely on what a company says about its products and services — we can read what our fellow consumers think about what they’ve bought, and make our own decisions bearing those views in minds. The result? Empowered customers who know exactly what they want and who can now explore many ways to get it. Many companies, however, just won’t accept that things have changed and haven’t adjusted their marketing efforts to match. In Crowd Surfing , David Brain and Martin Thomas explain what marketers, advertisers and brand specialists need to do to communicate with today’s savvier consumers. They include case studies of successes and failures from the business world and beyond, and interview leaders such as Michael Dell and Sebastian Coe to help illustrate their points. About the book - Crowd Surfing Surviving and thriving in the age of consumer empowerme...

Abraham Zaleznik wrote about "The Dynamics of Subordinacy" more than four decades ago. Fifteen years ago, Jack Gabarro and John Kotter published a piece called "Managing Your Boss," in which they advocated: (1) understanding your boss and his or her "goals and objectives, pressures, strengths, weaknesses, blind spots, and preferred work styles"; (2) understanding yourself and your needs, including "strengths and weaknesses, personal style, and predisposition toward dependence on authority figures"; and (3) developing and maintaining a relationship that is centered around such things as frequent communication, an understanding of mutual expectations, dependability and honesty, and selective use of "your boss's time and resources." Now Barbara Kellerman in her new book, Followership , asks where leaders would be without good followers. This question may be particularly significant in an age when followers find it easier to organize,...

Writing in the Spring 2008 issue of MIT - Sloan Management Review , George S. Day and Paul J. H. Schoemaker talk of vigilant leaders. Vigilant leaders are those who make a practice of being abundantly alert and deeply curious so that they can detect, and act on, the earliest signs of threat or opportunity. They seek to nurture equally vigilant employees by modeling such behavior and by providing incentives for managers to look for — and interpret — weak signals. While such icons as Andy Grove and Jack Welch exemplify vigilant CEOs, the trait remains in short supply. That is a conclusion the coauthors reached after surveying 119 global companies about their overall capacity for diligence. Among their findings: Just 23% of the businesses were run by CEOs who tried to pick up weak signals from the periphery. Most leaders, they theorize, rise to the top by demonstrating superior operational skills. To help leaders recognize and develop the habit of vigilance, the researchers examine in det...