Welcome to this summer miniseries on Kotter’s eight steps for leading change in public education.
This series is designed for educational leaders at every level, and it is meant to be heard in order. Each episode builds on the one before it, because change work in schools is rarely one move, one meeting, or one memo. It is a sequence. It is a pattern. And when that pattern is weak in one place, the whole effort starts to unravel.
In this first episode, the focus is urgency.
Not panic. Not pressure for the sake of pressure. Not one more dramatic appeal for everyone to work harder.
Urgency, in Kotter’s framework, is about helping people see why action matters now and why the future can be meaningfully different from the present. Kotter describes this step as inspiring people to act with passion and purpose around a compelling and clear future.
That distinction matters in schools.
Because public education already has plenty of urgency language. Every district has deadlines. Every school has dashboards. Every principal has a list of concerns that could fill an hour before students even arrive. And in this current moment, those concerns often converge: heightened student needs, outcomes pressure, staff strain, and broad fatigue with initiatives that promise coherence but often add complexity.
But real change does not begin simply because people feel overloaded. In many cases, overload is exactly what keeps change from taking root.
So in this episode, the central question is this:
How does a leader create real urgency in a school system where many adults already feel maxed out?
And more specifically, how do we create urgency from a staff sustainability and burnout perspective while still keeping our eyes on heightened student needs and outcomes pressure?
That is the heart of this episode.
Because the current moment in public education is not defined by one challenge. It is defined by convergence. Student academic needs are complex. Student behavior and regulation needs are complex. Families are asking hard questions. Systems are expected to show results quickly. And many of the adults asked to carry this load are doing so while tired, stretched, and unsure whether the next initiative will actually change anything.
That is why urgency has to be built carefully.
If leaders confuse urgency with alarm, they raise anxiety but do not build movement. If they confuse urgency with compliance, they may get short-term task completion, but they do not create commitment. And if they ignore urgency altogether, improvement efforts drift into delay.
So let me start with the core idea.
Kotter’s model begins with urgency because people rarely commit meaningful effort to change unless they understand why staying the same is no longer acceptable. In Kotter’s description of the process, urgency builds momentum and helps people pursue a compelling vision together.
In public education, that means a leader has to help staff answer four questions.
Why this?
Why now?
Why together?
And why is this worth my energy when my energy already feels limited?
That last question is the one many leaders miss.
Too often, urgency is framed only around student outcomes. Scores are down. Attendance is inconsistent. Referral patterns are concerning. Intervention systems are fragmented. Those are all real concerns. But when urgency is framed only as another set of deficits to solve, staff members often hear one message underneath the message: you are not doing enough.
And for burned-out teams, that interpretation can shut the door before the work even begins.
A stronger approach is to frame urgency around the cost of continuing to ask adults to operate inside systems that are not working well enough for students or for staff.
That is a different kind of message.
It says this is not about squeezing more effort out of already committed people. It is about redesigning conditions so good people are not forced to carry ineffective systems on their backs.
That is where urgency becomes humane.
And when urgency is humane, it becomes more believable.
Consider a district that says it wants to strengthen MTSS. On paper, that can sound like just another initiative. Staff may hear the acronym and immediately think of more meetings, more documentation, more spreadsheets, and more demands on teams that already feel buried.
Now imagine the same district frames the issue differently.
The leader says:
Right now, too many teachers are trying to solve intensive student needs alone. Teams are spending time on referrals that come too late, interventions that are not coordinated, and meetings that do not lead to clear next steps. Students are not getting timely support, and staff are burning out trying to compensate for a system that is too fragmented. We cannot keep asking people to work this way.
That lands differently.
The problem is no longer just implementation weakness. The problem is a pattern that drains adults and underserves students at the same time.
That kind of urgency can mobilize action because it honors reality without humiliating people.
And that matters deeply in schools.
Education professionals are often deeply mission-driven. Many will absorb unreasonable strain for a long time because they care about students and communities. But systems that depend on personal sacrifice as their main operating strategy do not become stronger over time. They become brittle.
So if episode one is about urgency, the message is not that schools need more pressure.
The message is that schools need a more honest case for change.
Here is one way to define urgency for this moment:
Urgency is a shared understanding that the current way of working is producing too much strain, too much inconsistency, or too little impact to be acceptable going forward, and that there is a credible path toward something better.
Notice two parts of that description.
First, something about the present state is not acceptable.
Second, there is a credible path forward.
Both parts matter.
If leaders emphasize only what is broken, staff hear despair. If leaders emphasize only a hopeful future without naming the present strain, staff hear fantasy. Real urgency lives in the tension between those two truths.
This is why the opening step in Kotter’s model sets the tone for the rest of the sequence. When urgency is grounded and clear, it becomes easier to build a guiding coalition in episode 2, because people understand what they are being invited to help lead. It becomes easier to form a strategic vision in episode 3, because the vision solves a problem people can already name. And it becomes easier later to generate short-term wins and sustain acceleration, because the work has a purpose people actually feel.
So how does a leader create urgency well in public education?
There are a few practical moves that matter.
The first is to name the strain without dramatizing it.
Leaders do not need theatrical language. They need accurate language.
For example:
Our staff are working hard, but our support system for students with intensive needs is too reactive.
Or:
Our current process asks classroom teachers, intervention staff, and administrators to navigate too many disconnected steps before support reaches students.
Or:
We are relying on individual heroics when we need reliable systems.
That kind of language does two things. It validates effort and identifies design flaws. It keeps the focus on the work, not on blaming people.
The second move is to connect staff strain to student outcomes.
This is essential.
A burnout-centered urgency message should never suggest that adult comfort matters more than student growth. The point is that staff efficacy and student outcomes are linked.
When teams are overloaded, intervention quality becomes inconsistent. When meetings are unclear, response time slows. When support systems are fragmented, classroom conditions erode. When support staff spend energy navigating broken processes, less energy remains for instruction, coaching, problem-solving, or direct student support.
In other words, staff sustainability is not separate from student outcomes. It is part of the conditions that make outcomes possible.
The third move is to show that the issue is structural, not simply individual.
This is where many change efforts lose credibility.
If the urgency message sounds like this—everyone needs to be more committed, more resilient, and more responsive—people often hear a disguised accusation. But if the message sounds like this—we need clearer Tier 2 pathways, faster problem-solving routines, better decision rules, and more usable data processes—the work becomes actionable.
That distinction is vital.
Burnout is not solved by slogans. It is reduced when structures improve.
The fourth move is to present a plausible improvement path.
Kotter does not position urgency as fear by itself. The point is to create movement toward a clear and bold opportunity.
So a school leader should not stop at, “we cannot keep doing this.”
The leader also needs to say something like:
“Over the next year, we are going to tighten our MTSS routines, simplify referral pathways, strengthen Tier 2 and Tier 3 coordination, and make sure teams leave meetings with clear action steps instead of more ambiguity.”
Now the urgency has direction.
The fifth move is to repeat the message across settings.
Urgency is not built in one kickoff. It is reinforced in faculty meetings, cabinet conversations, principal coaching, grade-level discussions, and board updates. People need to hear a coherent through-line often enough that they begin to say it themselves.
That matters because episode one is not just about introducing a concern. It is about establishing a shared interpretation of reality.
And shared interpretation is the beginning of coordinated action.
Imagine a mid-sized district entering the summer before a new school year. Over the previous year, office discipline referrals rose in several buildings. Teachers reported feeling unsupported with high-need students. Building leaders noticed that teams were spending significant time discussing student concerns without a clear process for matching needs to interventions. FBAs and BIPs, when completed, varied in quality and timeliness. Some students received layered supports. Others moved through inconsistent reactions depending on the building, the administrator, or the crisis of the day.
In response, district leadership decides to strengthen MTSS and redesign Tier 2 and Tier 3 supports.
Here is the weak urgency message:
We need to improve our data and intervention systems because our outcomes are not where they need to be.
True, maybe. But forgettable.
Here is the stronger urgency message:
Our current support structure is asking too many people to improvise under pressure. Teachers are carrying needs that should be team-supported. Building leaders are spending time in repeated crisis response. Students with more intensive needs are getting uneven access to timely supports. We have strong people in the system, but we do not yet have a strong enough system around them. This year, we need to change that.
That message is stronger because it explains the cost of the current state in human and organizational terms. It also signals respect.
Notice what it does not say.
It does not say staff are failing.
It does not say students are the problem.
It does not say one department is to blame.
It names reality, and then it invites collective action.
That is the kind of urgency that can open the door to real change.
There is another nuance here that matters in schools.
Educational leaders often inherit communities that are fatigued by churn. New literacy framework. New data platform. New attendance push. New discipline form. New meeting protocol. New consultant. New acronym.
In those environments, staff may not resist change because they are closed-minded. They may resist because the organization has trained them to expect that every new initiative will add work without removing anything.
That means urgency must also include subtraction.
If you want people to believe change is serious, they need signs that the organization is willing to stop doing some things, streamline some things, and protect time for the work that matters most.
This becomes especially important when your change effort involves MTSS or behavior support redesign. These efforts often struggle not because the ideas are poor, but because the implementation sits on top of every other demand. Meetings get added. Forms get added. Data requests get added. The formal structure expands, but the actual capacity does not.
So part of creating urgency is telling the truth about overload and making a case that the change itself is meant to reduce friction over time.
That is different from saying, please endure more now and maybe things will get better later.
Now let us talk about what leaders commonly get wrong in this step.
One common mistake is mistaking urgency for fear.
Fear can create immediate attention, but it rarely produces durable trust. In schools, fear-based urgency may look like constant references to public rankings, dramatic comparisons, or messaging that implies catastrophe unless everyone speeds up immediately.
That kind of atmosphere can create compliance. It can also create silence, self-protection, and shallow implementation.
Another mistake is treating urgency as an opening speech instead of an ongoing discipline.
A leader may launch the year with a strong message, then fail to revisit it when teams get pulled back into routine habits. Urgency fades unless it is sustained through consistent communication, decision-making, and visible follow-through.
A third mistake is failing to distinguish urgency from impatience.
Impatience says, why is this not fixed yet?
Urgency says, this matters too much to delay, so we are going to move in a focused and disciplined way.
Those are not the same thing.
In fact, impatient leaders often create more chaos, because they push for visible motion before the organization has built enough clarity.
Another mistake is using data without meaning.
Data can support urgency, but numbers alone rarely move people. A referral trend, staffing pattern, or intervention backlog becomes useful when leaders explain what it means for daily work and for students’ access to timely support.
And a final mistake is ignoring hope.
People do not step into hard change because the present is painful alone. They move when they can picture a more workable future.
This is especially important when staff have been carrying a lot. Burned-out teams do not need empty optimism, but they do need evidence that change could reduce friction, improve coherence, and make their effort count for more.
So what does this mean for a leader preparing for the school year right now?
It means urgency work should begin before the formal rollout of any initiative.
Before you ask people to join design teams.
Before you release a new MTSS flowchart.
Before you retrain everyone on FBAs, BIPs, intervention pathways, or meeting norms.
You first need a clear, repeatable case for why this work matters now.
Here are a few questions a leader can use to test whether that case is strong enough.
Can staff explain the problem in similar language across roles?
Can they describe why the current pattern is unsustainable for both adults and students?
Can they see how the proposed work might improve the daily experience of teaching, supporting, and leading?
Can they tell the difference between this change and the last few initiatives that faded?
And do they hear the message as an invitation to build something better, rather than another critique of their effort?
Those are useful diagnostic questions.
If the answer is no to most of them, urgency is probably not strong enough yet.
There is one more idea here that will matter across the whole series.
In schools, urgency is often strongest when leaders make the invisible visible.
They show how many support conversations happen with no follow-up path.
They show how many staff hours are spent managing preventable confusion.
They show how often the same students circulate through reactive responses instead of coordinated support.
They show how much expertise exists in the system but how inconsistently it is organized.
When leaders do that well, the need for change becomes easier to feel and easier to discuss.
That creates the conditions for the next step in Kotter’s process: building a guiding coalition. Kotter describes that second step as creating a coalition of committed people from the network’s own ranks to guide, coordinate, and communicate the work.
And that sequence matters.
You do not build the right coalition by starting with names on an org chart alone.
You build it by first making the need for change legible enough that the right people want to help carry it.
That is where urgency leads.
Before we close, here are three practical actions leaders can take this week.
Action one: write a one-paragraph urgency statement.
Keep it plain. Name the current strain, connect it to student support and staff efficacy, and point toward a better operating model.
Action two: test the message with a few trusted people across roles.
Ask them where it feels true, where it feels vague, and whether it sounds like one more initiative or a genuine effort to improve how the work gets done.
Action three: identify one visible sign that this change effort will remove friction, not just add expectations.
That could be a simpler referral step, a reduced meeting burden, a cleaner decision rule, or a commitment to retire an outdated process.
Those small signs matter because people judge change not only by what leaders say, but by what leaders stop, simplify, and protect.
So here is the core takeaway from episode one.
Urgency in public education should not be built through panic or blame. It should be built through honest recognition that the current way of working is putting too much strain on adults, producing too much inconsistency for students, and limiting the impact schools are trying to achieve. Kotter’s first step asks leaders to create momentum around a clear and compelling future, and in schools, that future has to feel both ambitious and workable.
In the next episode, the focus will be the guiding coalition.
Once people understand why the work matters, the next question becomes: who needs to help lead it so the effort has credibility, reach, and staying power?
