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Hello, I'm John Kotter, and I'm here to talk to you about winning
in a faster and faster moving world. A world where
more threats are coming at us from all kinds of different,
unpredictable directions,
but also, in which there are more windows of opportunity
opening and closing faster than ever.
I am convinced that we've crossed a line
in which the old methods that we've used to deal with this
no longer work. And I want to talk to you
briefly about what seems to work
in this faster and faster moving world.
To understand this, I found you need to understand how organizations
naturally evolve over time,
and how that is gotten us to where we are now.
All organizations start with a structure that kind of looks like a
dynamic solar system, or a molecule.
Their advantage is that they can be very, very fast,
very agile, they can run around existing competition.
They start with a set of entrepreneurs -
it doesn't matter if they trying to make a new type microchip
or a new type of chocolate chip cookie.
They attract people who work on various initiatives that could be anything -
playing around with crazy ideas, talking to customers,
doing things with alloys.
And they can drop those initiatives and start new ones.
If they're successful, though, they have to be able to
make and ship a product,
or deliver a service. And as soon as that happens, you start to see growing
something that we would recognize.
It looks more like a hierarchy, it has jobs, it has processes,
and if they continue to be successful, of course, it's that part that has to grow.
And it grows, and for a brief time you've got both -
both systems that tend to be hooked together well,
because of the entrepreneurs who play a part in both,
and sometimes the old-timers that have jobs over on
one side and they're still in that entrepreneurial system.
But as successful as they are, you know what part grows,
and it grows, and at a certain point it doesn't like the old entrepreneurial,
unpredictable, whipping-around system, and so it systematically
eliminates it, and you end up with
what we all know - a typical modern organization.
Now in a slow enough moving world,
that can work fine, and it does,
but as the world's starts to speed up, it doesn't.
And so what smart people do, is they augment it -
they add strategic planning committees, they hire strategic consultants,
they put together interdepartmental task forces or
project management organizations
to first create, and then to execute strategies.
And if this is done well,
it works - up to a point. But as the world speeds up more and more -
it doesn't. So they continue
along this same path - it happens naturally - you add another committee,
you add work streams, you add more strategy pieces,
and after a while, all of this
addition, addition, addition, actually slows you down,
and the whole thing starts to
sink into the muck, which obviously does not win today.
It raises the question of
"What could win today?", and actually
you just saw it a minute ago. Now,
let's rewind the tape. If you start there, and go back,
go back some more... Now stop.
There it is - something that can be
reliable and efficient now
and can be fast and agile in helping you
maneuver through this faster moving environment.
It creates more wealth,
better products and services, a terrific place to work,
and perhaps most importantly, profitable growth.
That raises the logical question of
"Can you create that and get those results?"
yes. We've proven it. A set of
processes, and procedures, and methods,
can take you from wherever you're at, and you start growing that
entrepreneurial piece - from the center on out,
in an organic way. You keep the two pieces connected
in a very solid way, and you end up with
this mechanism that can be both
reliable, efficient, fast, and agile, and win today.
Here's the bad news:
how many organizations have succeeded in doing that?
About point .001 percent. Really! Seriously!
Here's the good news:
it doesn't have to be that way - it doesn't!
You can change. You can create what's needed.
And when is the time to do that? No question -
it's now.
So, if you want to learn more, go here - AccelerateStrategy.com
- and let's get on with it, right now!