"you need to tell people the bad stuff... However, we cannot stop there. We need to also tell them the positive stuff"

This is my avatar on social media. A tribute to the importance of the sense of urgency, the "burning platform".

"change is hard. It is so hard that even fear of death is not enough to convince people to change for good. Second, scare tactics can be used to create urgency for change, but such tactics will only create change that is short-lived. [Moi ici: There is something of value in these words, something new for me] Unless we continuously engage in “scaring” people, they will slowly overcome their initial fear and revert to old habits. These insights have immediate applicability in business: Yes, we need a sense of urgency to encourage change in our organization, but how we create urgency matters. There is a right way to create urgency for change and a wrong way. Choosing the “right” way is essential if we are to succeed with our transformation program.

What is the “right” way? ... Specifically, scaring people into change is not the right way. ... scare tactics produced a short-term reaction from people, but that was not sustainable. At least in this case, the change generated—albeit short-term—was in the right direction, in that people stopped smoking and started exercising. But this cannot be taken for granted. Consider, for example, the popular analogy of the burning platform. There is no question that the burning platform creates urgency that leads to action, but what is the nature of that action? It is people jumping into the sea in a panicky and uncoordinated way—surely this is not the kind of urgency that we want in our organization? 

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To create a sense of urgency, you have to make your people appreciate the imminent threat of disruption and the mortal danger the company is facing.” This suggests that many of us believe that using scare tactics can be an effective way to create urgency—hence the popularity of the “burning platform” analogy. Yet, as we argue above, nothing can be further from the truth. 

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To create the “right” kind of urgency and get people to change for good, you need to make the need for change positive, personal, and emotional. There are three requirements here and it is important to appreciate what each implies.

The first requirement is to make the need for change positive. This does not mean that we can ignore the bad stuff and focus only on the positive.

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you need to tell people the bad stuff—that is, the dire consequences of not responding to the disruption. However, we cannot stop there. We need to also tell them the positive stuff—that is, the wonderful things that will happen if we do respond to the disruption. [Moi ici: I must confess I never though much about the importance of presenting the positive side] This is not an either/or choice. Just like it is not enough to use only scare tactics, it is also not enough to just make the need for change positive—we need to do both.

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The third and most difficult requirement is to make the need for change emotional. This is not the same thing as making the need for change personal. Yes, employees are more likely to connect at an emotional level with a personal rather than an impersonal reason for change, but this is not guaranteed. Work still needs to be done to make even a personal reason for change emotional."

Trechos retirados de “Organizing for the New Normal” de Constantinos Markides.