Culture of Urgency?

“I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.”

Dwight D. Eisenhower - Five-star World War II general and 34th president of the United States

That quote is from 1954 – 70 years ago. It was true then and it is true now. It would be foolish to dismiss it and easy to just miss it.

It isn’t to say that the two never intersect but rather the intersection should not be frequent and it better not be persistent. If things are important we study them, plan for them, give them the necessary time. The outcome is preparedness, readiness, a machine built for the purpose. Your people, process, data will be aligned to give you the desired outcome. The important will ideally prevent urgency. This is not a perpetual brute force attack of “work harder”.

If there is persistent urgency something is broken: Process, People, Measurement.

The Goal: The process is bulletproof and supported by software that won’t allow others to break it. The expectations and timeliness are set with all parties (clients, trades, employees). You are staffed well because you pay well and charge customers a healthy multiple to be able to do that. You pick clients that value the output of that systematic approach and are willing to cut the check to get it. Your teams are well trained and meet regularly. You can measure the important variables to know if the machine is out of whack and then give it a tune-up.

Issues: What needs to change so this is rhythmic? Now conceive a better way. Now execute the change needed. Take the steps every week until it is changed. That is now THE WAY (Mandalorian style!).

And when things break (as they do), don’t just “fix it”. Don’t simply remedy the urgent. GASP - I know?! Sit down for a moment and really think through WHY it happened, WHERE it happened, HOW it happened. Capture the elements and put them on the issue list for the right team(s) to work on them. If it has ever happened before and/or has some chance of happening again, it is important to put it high on the list and resolve it within a week.

If you are under-staffed, under-meeting, under-planned, under-processed, and under-measured, urgency will reign. If we are not given the time to document, meet, and actually resolve those things, then deploy people to execute the change, it’s not surprising we are “always urgent”.

Here is a good article with context, use case, the Eisenhower Matrix, etc.

If the idea of People, Process, Data, Issues, and Meetings has been interesting but illusive, you are in luck. Read (and then re-read) Traction by Gino Wickman. Then do what is in that book. As much as you can. As fast as you can. Learn more here!