January 12, 2009

According to Harvard Professor John Kotter, a sense of urgency is a desire to act on critical issues now – making real progress every day on issues that are central to an organization’s success. And when an economic crisis hits (or any crisis for that matter), a sense of urgency in a business becomes all that more important if you want to come out of that crisis ahead of where you started.
 
Unfortunately, Kotter says the recession has created very little true urgency. Why?
 
He said: “People don’t understand what true urgency is. The economic situation is creating a lot of false urgency, which is this anxiety-driven, anger-driven frenzy of activity where we all run in circles figuring out what to do. It is activity-focused not …

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: A manufacturer, a distributor and a logistics coordinator are making a deal. The manufacturer says to the distributor, How do you want that delivered? The distributor says, “Overnight it to me on Tuesday; I need it Wednesday.” Meanwhile, the logistics coordinator mutters under his breath about how much money could have been saved by sending it LTL Monday night.
 
Sound familiar? The first part might, but what about the second? Did you know there was another option that could meet your needs and save you money?
 
For a recent article, three different players – Dan Muller of The Timken Company (the manufacturer), Doug Savage of Bearing Service Inc. (the distributor), and Don Louis of CoLinx (the …