Urgent! summary

Urgency is like ice cream: it’s easy to eat, addictive, and might ruin your appetite for dinner – in other words, the important things. And, like ice cream, urgency has lots of flavors. In addition to the destructive, unproductive kinds of urgency, there’s also reasonable, productive urgency – issues that couldn’t be planned for and require swift action. 

Maybe you’ve just heard about a dream opportunity, and the application deadline is tomorrow. Or maybe your company’s undergoing a regulatory investigation, and you’ve received a request from higher-ups for a report. Productive urgency can be an amazing way to create traction and momentum – and it’s the only kind of urgency you should accept.

Consider your current productivity system. Is it forcing you to work reactively instead of proactively? Say you receive an email alert; it’s not urgent, but it’s insistent, so you compulsively react. This is first-minute reactivity.

Then there’s last-minute reactivity, like when you tell yourself you’ll deal with an email later – only to forget about it and then have to scramble with what’s now become urgent. In the process, you derail your priorities and subject others to unnecessary pressure. Sound familiar?

Here’s some irony for you: The author was writing a book on urgency, and time had become a matter of, well, urgency. His due date had seemed reasonable back when he’d set it, but then he’d bought a house. Suddenly, he was dealing with a move and finding it difficult to write.

Instead of panicking, he emailed his publishing editor to check if there was any leeway. And there was! By simply asking the question, he negotiated urgency. This is an example of how a constraint – in this case, time – can be adjusted to lessen pressure and get things done. In addition to the time “dial,” quality, scope, budget, resources, and risk can also be used to moderate urgency. 

Now you know how to be more personally proactive – but how do you deal with urgency running rampant in your team? Well, that’s one of the hallmarks of high-caliber leadership: knowing how to moderate urgency and leverage it to get the right stuff done at the right time. The goal is to keep your colleagues in an active, productive zone. 

The Urgency Playbook’s sixth principle outlines an easy step you can take to start moderating urgency in the workplace: use appropriate tools for urgent requests. Email is used for everything, and, as such, is not an appropriate tool to convey urgency. Make sure you have an effective communication method for when something truly urgent comes up.

The slope’s incline was very steep, and the author was struggling. If he lost his footing, he knew the drop was several hundred meters to the bottom.

He’d decided to climb Carrauntoohil, the highest mountain in Ireland, with his son. Only trouble was, the author had a deadly fear of heights. Their guide knew this. He’d kept a watchful eye on the author as they ascended, offering gentle encouragement.

Paramedics never run or hurry. They’re taught to move purposefully and calmly, even in the most dire emergencies. This ensures two things: it gives the paramedics time to assess the situation, and it communicates leadership in what’s likely a charged environment.

Managers need to make sure they act in the same purposeful, calm way. You should strive to foster and drive a culture of proactivity instead of allowing others to get caught up in urgency loops – states of frantic activity in which everything seems more acute and critical than it is.