Power of urgency

More often than not, the difference between organizations that thrive and those that struggle is the sense of urgency they bring into their operations. Many organizations spend quality hours holding meetings to generate ideas but when it comes to execution, they develop cold feet and set up further meetings to discuss issues that had earlier been concluded. After the next series of meetings, they schedule another round of meetings to review the conclusions of the earlier meetings. The cycle of meetings in such organization is seemingly endless. But as observed by management legend, Peter Drucker, “meetings are a concession to a deficient organization. For one either meets or one works. One cannot do both at the same time.” While it is not a bad idea to meet and take decisions, if the meetings do not result in actions, they are a waste of time because the proof of a meeting’s effectiveness is the action it generates.

Urgency in leadership is the activation of action and acceleration of process timeously. Urgency is factoring time into actions and operations of organizations; it is being conscious of time in delivering on targets. No organization has a monopoly of ideas. Great ideas occur to a number of organizations in different parts of the world at the same time. The ones that profit from such ideas are the ones that activate same and do not spend more time than necessary discussing them. It is action taken on the ideas generated that brings about positive changes in the life of an organization. Those who keep discussing ideas stay on the same spot but those who waste no time in acting on their discussions go ahead to achieve their goals.

Corruption is imminent where a sense of urgency is lacking. When urgency is not applied to issues, resources are mishandled, misapplied and eventually misappropriated. That is the bane of the Nigerian civil service. Although the Nigerian civil service is peopled by highly qualified personnel, most of them lack a sense of urgency; they go about their duties as if they have all the time in the world. A service that could be rendered in five minutes is allowed to linger for five days or more. In the process, time is wasted and resources are squandered. That is why water supply to homes is poor in Nigeria despite the humongous funds allocated on a yearly basis. This is the attitude that killed the rail service, destroyed nearly all roads in the country, brought the Nigeria Airways to its knees, stymied petroleum products supply and generally brought untold hardship to hardworking Nigerians.

 

Factors breeding lack of urgency

Three factors militate against a sense of urgency in a nation or an organisation.

Complacency arising from a sense of success

A number of organizations lose their sense of urgency when they attain a level of success. Many organizations that had been quite agile and quick to appropriate opportunities or respond to issues lose that verve after recording a measure of success. They no longer see the need to do all those things that took them to the height they currently occupy. They try to consolidate on their gains without having to subject themselves to the rigours of the past. As they do that, they begin to witness a slip in their operations as well as their profitability.

 

Frustration arising from a sense of failure

Some organizations lose their sense of urgency as a consequence of the disappointments recorded in the past. Probably as a result of getting their fingers burnt for being quick to act, they decided to let go of their sense of urgency. Instead of taking initiative, they opt to follow trends blazed by others. But that comes at a price because it means such organizations will always do catch up.

 

Apathy arising from absence of direction

Some organizations are not suffering from the effect of success or aftermath of failure but a lack of purpose. They have lost touch with the essence of their existence. They have no clearly defined goals. They have no sense of purpose; they just live everyday as it comes. With that comes a sense of indifference which smothers the urgency urge. This is the problem with the Nigerian civil service.

 

The Sony slide

In the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, Sony was the king of electronics. It was the Apple of that era. Sony was a great company churning out great electronic products. Its products were clearly the preference of the market because of its innovativeness and resolve to satisfy the teeming consumers of its products. All a product needed to enjoy market acceptance was for it to be branded with the Sony logo.

Sony gave the world the Walkman, which changed the way people interacted with music. Walkman made it possible for anyone anywhere in the world to have music of his choice at anytime. It was the indispensable music device of that time. Despite an attempt by other companies to dent Sony’s hold on the market through a release of their own products, the Walkman still stood head and shoulders above others in terms of market acceptance.

To consolidate its hold on the market and give its consumers something new, Sony, in conjunction with Phillips, introduced the compact disc in the late 1980s. The CD was a great improvement on the cassette tape given the quality and the quantity of music it could store. Added to these was the convenience of being able to quickly change from one tract to another. With this new addition to its products, the world was literally eating out of the hands of Sony. The CD was a massive success.

The trend set by Sony was to make life easier for the consumer by making music devices more compact, more effective and more affordable. But after reaching the height the CD launched it to, Sony did not follow the path it founded with as much zeal and vigour as it used to. However, having been shown that it was possible for small devices to produce great music outputs, the world after a while started yearning for something better than the CD. The world was looking for a new musical device. While Sony dithered, Apple seized the opportunity and produced the MP3. Since the launch of MP3 in 2001, the fortune of Sony, arguably the greatest music company of the last century, has been on the decline. Sony moved from being a champion to becoming a former champion. A champion does not win once or twice; a champion wins and keeps winning. The day a champion stops winning, he becomes an ex-champion. To keep winning in business and life, having a sense of urgency is sine qua non.

The world will not wait for any company to get its acts together. The market is impatiently hungry and will divert its attention and resources in the direction of organizations that keep pace and faith with its appetite. To maintain relevance in the market place, an organization has to go about its business with a sense of urgency.

 

Urgency starts with the leader

People take a cue from their leader. If the leader goes about his business with a sense of urgency, it percolates down into the system and everyone in the system becomes business-like. But if the leader has a laissez-faire attitude, his people will adopt the “it can wait till tomorrow” style.

Writing on why the sense of urgency is lost by some organizations, Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton in The Knowing-Doing Gap: How Smart Companies Turn Knowledge Into Action, identified five pseudo-action deceptions that lure leaders into losing their sense of urgency. According to the authors, these are; Thinking that knowing is sufficient for success, Thinking that talking (meetings, committees, reports, etc.) is action, Thinking that measuring things is action or contributes to performance, Thinking that making a decision is the same as taking action and Thinking that planning is the same as action.

In other words, it is so easy to lose one’s sense of urgency without realizing it because of certain activities that organizations get involved in. Therefore, having a sense of urgency must be intentional and it must start with the leader because as John Maxwell says, everything rises and falls on leadership.

 

How organizations develop sense of urgency

As earlier noted, developing a sense of urgency is not natural; it does not happen automatically, it is a product of deliberate effort on the part of the leader to inculcate this in his people. This can be achieved by doing the following:

 

Paint picture of opportunities

John Kotter, author of Leading Change, observes that “When people do not see external opportunities or hazards, complacency grows…. With an insufficient sense of urgency, people don’t tend to look hard enough or can’t seem to find the time to look hard enough. Or they look and do not believe their eyes, or do not wish to believe their eyes. Even if seen correctly, and in time, external change demands internal change.”

A fundamental way of stimulating a sense of urgency is to paint a picture of opportunities to the people. Seeing what is possible will whet the appetite of the people and energise them into taking actions that will bring about positive changes. Until the proper picture is painted, wrong things will be seen by the people and inactivity becomes inevitable.

 

Link result to personal benefit of team members

Most people will do anything to protect their interest. So, as a way of generating interest in developing a sense of urgency in your team members, show them how the result derivable from the exercise will positively impact on their lives. Let them realize that by going that route, not only will the organization get better, but they also will personally benefit from it.

 

Set enforceable deadlines

Parkinson’s Law states that work expands to fill the time available for its completion. This means that an assignment that could be completed in five hours could actually last five weeks if that is permitted by those saddled with that responsibility. In the same vein, the same assignment could be completed in four hours or less if those handling it would make up their mind to do it within that time frame. Therefore, a leader must always set the time within which a task must be accomplished and ensure strict compliance. Not only does this result in efficiency, it also leads to instant appropriation of opportunities.

 

Reward compliance

The leader will also need to reward compliance with set deadlines as a way of building a culture of urgency in the organization. Everyone who consistently demonstrates compliance with meeting deadlines on delivery of targets should be openly rewarded. Even without saying anything about those who fail to comply, the culture of compliance will grow because success becomes easily replicable when it is rewarded. As many people as possible will stretch themselves to comply with set deadlines when compliance attracts a reward.

 

Last line

According to John Maxwell, the greatest gap in the world is that between what we know and what we do. Knowledge that does not produce action is worthless. When you activate your knowledge, you give your life a lift.