What Is a Burning Platform?

When thinking about a burning platform, bring to mind a wooden platform. You are standing on this platform while performing your daily work, focusing on today’s issues. However, the platform is on fire, burning at the edges, and simply focusing on today’s work will ensure that the fire will continue to consume the platform and, eventually, you. This flame causes a need for change, that is, a need to move forward and get off the existing platform. Identifying and articulating a burning platform is a necessary ingredient for change to occur. The vision may be attractive, but energy is required to move forward. A motivation to get up off the couch is essential. Without such motivation, we can stand in appreciation of the vision, engrossed in its appeal, but effort will not be forthcoming.

When we work with organizations, we find that it is easy for managers and employees inside an organization to understand the value of having an inspiring and creative vision. What we find most often is that individuals have a difficult time understanding the role of the burning platform in creating successful transformation. To help individuals understand how having a burning platform motivates you to act, we often use the concept of meeting a friend for dinner. Imagine you are having a conversation with a long-lost friend. Having not seen her in a while, she invites you and your family out to dinner at your favorite restaurant next Sunday, her treat. As soon as she says the name of the restaurant, you can imagine it: the fine linen tablecloths, music that is not so soft you can’t hear but not so loud to drown out conversation, and the tray of desserts that comes around. While it is only Tuesday, you are already debating which dessert you will have at this Sunday dinner. What we have just done is describe the vision of the restaurant. Now let’s see how a burning platform changes your motivation for achieving your vision (i.e., going to the restaurant). In one scenario, your friend does not meet you on Tuesday to discuss going to dinner the following Sunday but instead sees you and your family walking down the street after having eaten at your favorite restaurant earlier on the Sunday that she wants to invite you for dinner. She didn’t know you had just eaten (although she was wondering about the food stains on your shirt) and invites you to go across the street for dinner. In a second scenario, you spent the entire day trying to fix a plumbing problem at home, which you thought was going to take 5 minutes but instead took 5 hours. During this time, you also spilled your coffee in your lap, the dog made a mess in the house, and you forgot to pick up your family when you said you would. As you rush to take a shower to pick up your family (and start the apologies), your friends sees you and decides to take you and your family out to eat. In which scenario do you say yes? We would argue that in the second scenario, you are saying yes as fast as you can. What about the first scenario? Having just eaten, would you eat again? If not, what has changed? The vision is still the same: a great restaurant with a long-lost friend. What changed is the burning platform. In the first scenario there is no burning platform, but in the second the platform is definitely on fire.

History gives us many examples of how having a burning platform fueled people to achieve great things. Martin Luther King Jr. provides one of the most compelling burning platforms in his last public address, where he was quoted saying, “Men, for years now, have been talking about war and peace. But now, no longer can they just talk about it. It is no longer a choice between violence and nonviolence in this world; it’s nonviolence or nonexistence.”² With no options left and no turning back, Martin Luther King Jr. used nonexistence as the flame to create the vision of peace.

Having a vision that says your organization wants to become better, more efficient, more customer focused, or more transparent is also not enough. To get you off the couch and do the hard work of becoming better, more efficient, more customer focused, or more transparent, you must identify and articulate why you cannot stay the way you are. Without identifying the burning platform, the vision becomes a dream: something we want, but are not willing to overcome obstacles to get.