Urgent Patience: Breaking Complacency, Sparking Change

By George Hall

“Complacency is like the water a fish swims in—it’s everywhere, but we don’t see it.” — John Kotter

Change management is having its moment again—but perhaps for the wrong reasons. In an era now defined by generative AI, hybrid work, and relentless transformation, learning and development (L&D) teams are being asked not only to help others adapt, but to reinvent themselves at the same time.

For more than 25 years, I’ve conducted in-depth interviews with leading thinkers on leadership and organizational change—Harvard Professor John Kotter among them. Over time, I’ve distilled the essence of their ideas into insights for learning professionals who are increasingly being called to serve as catalysts for enterprise change. Across all these conversations, one message is consistent:

Technology doesn’t drive transformation—people do. It’s fueled by their urgency to move, their readiness to challenge what’s outdated, and their courage to create what’s next.

In this, the first of a two-part series based on an interview with Kotter, I draw two enduring lessons that stand out for L&D leaders seeking to lead meaningful change in their companies: confront complacency and ignite urgency.

1. Confront complacency: Recognize the invisible enemy

Kotter once said that complacency is “like a fish not seeing the water it swims in.” In 2025, that metaphor feels painfully accurate for L&D. Many organizations appear in motion—launching learning campaigns, publishing micro-courses, tracking dashboards—but few are moving forward. Kotter called this ‘false urgency’: frantic activity driven by anxiety, not insight.

In learning organizations, false urgency often looks like:

• Chasing course completions instead of capability growth
• Mistaking content production for culture change
• Confusing ‘being busy’ with ‘being useful’

The deeper danger is that busyness masks complacency. As Kotter observed, “It’s almost impossible to find a person who sees themselves as complacent.” The same applies to departments. An L&D function can look productive—publishing hundreds of modules—while avoiding the tougher work of confronting outdated strategies, systems, or habits that no longer serve the organization’s goals.

What to do

Build reflective mechanisms into your practice. Instead of measuring learning activity, focus on how quickly people perform better—Kotter’s go-to benchmark for true learning. Use after-action reviews, performance analytics, or learner narratives to see whether knowledge is actually turning into change.

L&D insight

Build a culture that values reflection as an antidote to Kotter’s ‘false urgency.’

2. Ignite urgency: Keep the spark alive

Kotter argued that “a true sense of urgency is rare, much rarer than most people think.” It’s a focused energy built on opportunity, not fear. For L&D leaders, urgency is the spark that transforms learning from an HR service into a strategic driver of growth.

But maintaining that spark requires deliberate attention. In my interview, Kotter linked the problem to how people learn and evolve over time. “We level off in our forties,” he said, “and when that happens, we don’t see what’s newly important.” His point wasn’t about age—it was about habit. As careers advance, learning often narrows. We become experts in what worked yesterday, not explorers of what might work tomorrow.

This is especially true for senior managers who still equate training with compliance rather than curiosity. They see learning as something employees have to do, not something leaders get to do. The result is an undercurrent of complacency at the very level where urgency should live.

L&D professionals must therefore ignite urgency through connection, not crisis—by linking learning to real performance, customer impact, and organizational purpose. Kotter pointed to leaders like Andy Grove at Intel and Jack Welch at GE, who often created short-term tension (“If there isn’t a crisis, make one”) but then redirected it toward opportunity.

What to do

Frame learning as an enterprise-level advantage, not a departmental expense. Launch visible engaging ‘learning experiments’ tied to strategic outcomes. Communicate wins quickly and vividly—Kotter emphasized short, emotionally charged videos that show success stories rather than explain them.

L&D insight

Urgency is emotional before it is operational. Make people feel the need to grow.

Applying Kotter’s ideas in practice: The Amtrak experience

Years ago, while serving as part of a national Six Sigma initiative at Amtrak, I had the opportunity to put Kotter’s principles into action. I was dedicated to developing a 35-member cross-functional team led by a Six Sigma Black Belt. We used Our Iceberg Is Melting as the foundation for our change management training, translating its fable-based lessons into real-world practice.

The workshop was so engaging that the team adopted a stuffed penguin—just like the one in Kotter’s story—as its mascot. It appeared in team photos, newsletters, and project milestones for years after the seminar, becoming a playful yet powerful reminder of shared purpose.

Over a five-year period, I built a series of developmental challenges for the team that grew to include not only change management, but also communication, persuasion, and collaborative problem-solving. The penguin became a symbol of progress, showing that transformation wasn’t abstract—it was lived.

That experience confirmed what Kotter had long asserted: Lasting transformation depends not on process or technology, but on the human stories we use to make meaning of change.

In Part 2, we’ll turn to the tougher side of Kotter’s message—how to disarm resistance, sustain ‘urgent patience,’ and help teams move from false urgency to real momentum.

References

• Kotter, J. P. (1996). Leading Change. Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
• Kotter, J. P. (2008). A Sense of Urgency. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Press.
• Kotter, J. P. (2014). Accelerate: Building Strategic Agility for a Faster-Moving World. Boston, MA: Harvard Business Review Press.
• Kotter, J. P., & Rathgeber, H. (2006). Our Iceberg Is Melting: Changing and Succeeding Under Any Conditions. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press.
• Weick, K. E. (1984). Small wins: Redefining the scale of social problems. American Psychologist, 39(1), 40–49.

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