According to Nadler and Tushman (1989) effective change seems to be backed by created energy.
This means that the people who are leading the change focus on developing a sense of
excitement in others, encouraging them to embrace change. Urgency helps to get people excited
about embarking on change as it often shows them that change is essential. Generating urgency
involves recognizing the need for change, establishing a common view of its necessity,
overcoming resistance to change, and fostering readiness.
Generating urgency begins with recognizing the need for change. As we discussed earlier, there
are many different ways that the need for change can be recognized (See section 3.2 and 3.4).
After it is recognized, the creation of urgency helps to instill energy and initial momentum for a
change effort (Jansen, 2004). Research shows that managers play a very important part in
generating urgency. This urgency is often first recognized and communicated as a manager
weighs the importance of various projects and assigns priorities and timelines to different
initiatives (Dutton and Duncan, 1987; Ginsberg and Venkatraman, 1995). Although change is
often undertaken on many fronts, SMEs might not be able to tackle more than one change
initiative at a time because of their lack of resources. In this case, it is important that managers
choose carefully which project or projects to undertake. Even then, it is possible that some
projects may need to be taken on sequentially rather than simultaneously. Urgency, then, is often
communicated to employees indirectly based on which project is getting the manager’s attention
and commitment of resources.
Once senior management has created the initial urgency, it is important to establish a common
view that the change is needed, which often includes rallying support among members of the top
management team (TMT). In this guide the TMT is defined as the team formally charged with
managing and leading the firm, such as the president, vice-president, etc. Support from the TMT
is critical because its endorsement is needed not only for the initiative to continue, but also for its
credibility. There must be substantial compelling evidence for change in order to gather TMT
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backing for the initiative. It is necessary to show both financial and non-financial evidence for
change including current pain or pain that will occur if the change is not made. Kotter (1995b)
suggests that at least 75% of the TMT must be in support of the change before moving on to
generate urgency among the rest of the employees.