During this year we did a couple of Scrum implementations and although we had been very successful I believe the organizations could have done better. In our work with teams we always see again and again that not everybody really feels the need to change. Not everybody want to go for Scrum. Why? Is Scrum not appealing enough? Did we do a bad job in communicating the ideas behind Scrum? Maybe – but by reading again John P Kotters book: Leading Change I learned that a lot of companies and teams do not have the right level of urgency in their teams.

Kotter gives us some high level advice how to increase the level of urgency:

• Create a crisis – let people feel that there are problems we need to face.
• Eliminate the feeling that we are successful. We do great!
• Set the goals, the standards, the visions so high that you have to change to be able to reach it.
• Let people feel the reality by getting feedback from the outside of the company: Customers
• Let people talk to unhappy customers and people who can talk about the bad experience with the product in the field.
• Bombard people with information about future opportunities.

I do have customers who do exactly the opposite although they now they need to change.