In his book, A Sense of Urgency, the well-known organizational change guru, John Kotter, draws a distinction between a true sense of urgency and a false one, and asserts that a true sense of urgency is the first and most important step toward positive organizational change. When the people in an organization have a true sense of urgency, they deal with issues proactively and constantly strive to achieve the organization's goals as effectively as possible; they routinely do what we software folks call "fixing broken windows." They don't just sit around complaining about problems and waiting for someone to tell them what to do. Kotter has observed that many organizations exhibit a false sense of urgency Ñ that is, people run around acting as if everything is on fire and they're all terribly, terribly busy, and yet they don't address any real issues effectively.