Part of our Series on Leading & Adopting Change
Many significant transformation efforts fail in part or entirely, and the Government modernization initiative is no exception. While Agencies who set out to modernize usually manage to upgrade legacy software and/or move from on-premise servers to the cloud, true transformation often falls short.
Updates in technology (the area where most Agencies are succeeding) is only the most obvious part of modernization. True modernization encompasses more than much-needed technology updates, including objectives like:
True modernization requires change in the entire culture of an Agency to succeed.
A significant, consistent factor in why transformation efforts fail is that a sense of urgency is not generated and sustained to the end. Without urgency, an organization will instead be full of complacency:
The default position for people in any organization is to remain where they feel safe, comfortable, and competent. Big transformational changes will shake up all three of these feelings, especially for those who actively support the initiative. For this reason, employees in an Agency who don’t buy into a transformation effort will find ways to withhold cooperation, or even to actively resist the effort altogether.
Another word for this attitude or position is complacency—a key obstacle in every transformation effort. Therefore, leaders who want to begin a long-lasting transformation effort must first discover the sources of complacency in their organization.
Common Sources of Complacency
Before a leader can begin to establish or raise a sense of urgency in their organization, they need to remove these sources of complacency.
Here are some ways Kotter recommends doing so from Chapter 3 of Leading Change:
Ideas to Remove Sources of Complacency
Often, removing sources of complacency will by itself raise the level of urgency in an organization. A leader who suddenly sells off the company jet or ends an important but failing project will wake people out of their complacency.
For leaders to effectively establish a sense of urgency and kick start the transformation effort, they must first be the kind of leader who is trusted across the organization. Removing complacency and establishing urgency usually requires the leader to take bold and risky actions, actions that the leader knows will lead to the long-term success of the organization, even if those actions are painful in the meantime. Here are more strategies (by Kotter) that leaders can use to establish urgency:
Establish and Raise Urgency
Effective leaders use more carrots than sticks – the sense of urgency they create is communicated this way, “today we have a window of opportunity, but that opportunity may close tomorrow, so we need to act now.” Leaders appeal to both logic and emotions and clarify where each member of the organization’s energy should be directed.
Once a sense of urgency is established, the natural outflow of it is for people to begin getting together to talk about what must be done. A subtle shift takes place, where members of the company have a “focused readiness” to act, and instead of one leader trying to guide the entire transformation effort, a coalition of people across every department join in the effort.
Are you a leader desiring transformation?
If reading this article inspires you to begin establishing urgency in your Agency, here are some important questions to ask yourself to help you plan the process of transformation: