The Sense and FEELING of Urgency

When in an airport last week, I saw a book entitled A Sense of Urgency. It is John Kotter's newest publication. I knew of Kotter's change process, which he wrote about in the 1990's targeted more for the business world. Educational leaders have been reading and talking about much that is written about leadership and change from the business sector and trying to apply it to the educational realm. Since urgency is such an issue in the public schools that I deal with day in and day out, I wanted to know more about it. I certainly know what it feels like. I believe (especially after reading the book) that I feel this sense of urgency. It feels focused and relentless - always seeking to focus on what needs to be changed given the school I am in. What I really liked about the book is that it describes three states of being related to this idea of change and describes what each one feels like.

The three states of urgency (as defined by Kotter) are:

• COMPLACENCY - a feeling of satisfaction; things are "good enough"


• FALSE STATE OF URGENCY - a feeling of anxiety, anger, & frustration; frenetic activity; knowing that things aren't good, but not having a plan of attack on how to get better


• REAL SENSE OF URGENCY - a good feeling of knowing the target and working each day to move closer to it; purposeful action; "making every minute count"

Thinking about these categories gives me another lens when I go into a school. I would say that I work in schools at all levels of urgency. Certainly there is gray space between the categories - there are ranges between each. My hypothesis would be that leadership has a lot to do with how the school as a whole "feels" when it comes to this factor. In schools that are complacent, I've generally found a complacent principal. As a matter of fact, I was in a school recently where the principal said, "Everything here is just fine." This is a school that has seen its algebra scores decline for three years in a row. Granted, when looking at other schools, their algebra proficiency is higher than most. However, there seems to be a choice to look the other way in complacent schools. In some ways, they are in denial, and denial can certainly be destructive. This is another parallel with Good to Great by Jim Collins. In the great companies identified by Collins and his colleagues, the executives looked at the cold, hard facts. It seems that a characteristic of a complacent school is that they are not willing to look at the cold, hard facts.

Kotter talks about how important it is to turn a false state of urgency into a real sense of urgency. As I reflect and ponder about this, the question that comes to mind is - which is worse? which is harder to change? COMPLACENCY or FALSE SENSE OF URGENCY.

Kotter says that complacency is often a by-product of long standing success. As I think about schools, this seems to be a true statement. Very few failing schools are complacent that I've worked with. They seem to have urgency - either real or false. Kotter goes on to say, however, that since change is now the norm in our world, that the complacent will have a hard time surviving. Even in schools that are "good," the bar is being raised. Students are being required to attain higher and higher levels of achievement. I don't know of any public school that has 100% proficient students across the board. Jim Collins, in the book Good to Great, says "good is the enemy of great." Is this one of the reasons? Do "good" schools become complacent in their "goodness," and therefore don't strive to be great? Is 90% proficiency good enough? Can a school ever be legitimately complacent? I have my view on this...what is yours?