I have a tip for you and I'll explain why I think it's so important the tip is whenever you're starting a major change and it doesn't matter what kind of a change it is if it's uh uh a merger if it's a reorganization if it's trying to change the culture somehow to make it less risk averse the first step is always getting a of urgency up among the people who will be affected getting complacency down and also any other negative feelings anxiety um anger nothing else that's first now let me tell you why it's important the vast majority of cases that I've studied over the years that is not where people start and I think it's Direct directly linked to the fact that we have found that in 90% of the cases of significant change people do not meet their aspirations that they had at the beginning of the change process and in 20 to 30% they will admit the whole thing was a complete failure and they had to abandon it or start over again if you look at that 10% the do meet their aspirations they get it done on time on budget without um huge amounts of pain always you find them starting with this sense of let's get some urgency up that there is a problem that there is a need for Change and complacency down what do people often do besides that they appoint a task force and they say this is your mission very common they take two or three smart people and they hire a consultant and they go off into a room and start working on the solution to the change problem um they do either one of those but with a veil of secrecy behind it always with the logic being we don't want to worry the troops uh the people have got to get their jobs done today we've got to meet the quarterly results worst case it gets out to the press and that creates a problem that could even affect of our our stock price the problem is if you don't get urgency up first it's it's almost like you don't create a solid basis on which you can build this new different changed organization and if you do anything else first it might work for a little while but eventually when you're trying to even even when you're trying to pull people into be a part of the change team or if you're trying to get information from other people to create that strategy or if you're trying to communicate that out the basis isn't there for people to hear it to want to hear it to understand it with complacency people go H what's this all about why are you bothering me what what this is a waste of time so you got a brilliant strategy and nobody wants to even hear about it because they don't get why you're worrying about the strategy or you're trying to pull Harry into this team that's going to make this thing work and Har has got 112 other things to do on his agenda and maybe he politely says okay I'll do it but he treats it on priority number 22 he comes to some meetings misses some meetings and is for all practical purposes useless because he didn't have the sense of urgency this is from the point of view of making big changes a huge issue people get it wrong all the time you don't have to if you understand that simple tip