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Sense of urgency - why is this difficult
Dieter Weisshaar • February 18, 2022
Photo by Kaylah Matthews on Unsplash
Sense of urgency is about feeling responsible and being supported
Especially if you worked in corporates you have experienced situations where customer are complaining that it takes far too long and nothing happens, but why? Get an offer approved to submit to a large B2B customer or get a delivery issue fixed, customer gets upset. But why does this take so much time
in some cases? Why is nobody taking immediate action to make things happen?
In large corporates it is quite simple: People who are taking brave action expose
themselves. They are taking the lead under uncertain circumstances. They take action to improve the situation for the company and serve a customer well to keep him on board. But what happens if things go wrong or you push peers who are not willing to move fast to achieve a good result - that depends highly on your company culture.
Is this kind of solution oriented action taking rewarded
or are you exposed as the person who is pushing the limits and being difficult.
Showing the sense of urgency
and taking leadership on topics or actions to achieve results which are time critical is exposing yourself and you are taking risks.
Risks are about failing or pushing other people or teams to deliver something on high priority while they are already very busy. In large corporates are far more people that have no interest to put their own career on the line when trying to push the boundaries to achieve great results for the company. It is far easier not to expose yourself but being the one calling for a meeting and raise concerns, ask to stick to the process knowing it will fail to make deadline. If things have been tried but have not achieved to make the tight time line happen, these people show up and say, I raised this concern but you decided on a different path hence you are responsible. Let's call them doubters.
It is always good to have multiple views and exchange opinions but in critical and time bound actions, leadership is even more important because it may cause a 0/1 situation when you miss the time line. But calling in many people to meetings and escalate to many executives, you can say I raised my hand but if there is nobody taking brave actions and get things moving, that has not created value. Doubters and Politicians do not help
you to get time critical topics resolved.
Tip:
You need to distinguish between doubters and people trying to help by raising concerns in a constructive manner. Asking a few question normally helps. What have you done so far to solve the problem? What are your plans to solve it? Doubters have normally little to no answer to this as their intend is not to lead to a solution.
Taking leadership if sense of urgency is required, is not about breaking the fundamental rules, it is about demanding different priorities and using best efforts to get things moving faster or differently or going the extra mile.
People need to feel responsible for a problem and being supported and rewarded if they take the action required. If the organization make you feel good about taking leadership, you are willing to do so. If company culture is not supporting you, you will not step up next time and let it fail.
In small organizations there are far less people to slow down issues and socialize problems
without adding value as smaller organization can hardly afford as many people doing so. In SME's people are used to take concise actions to solve problems because there is rarely another business unit to delegate to without adding value that becomes pretty obvious soon.
Looking for people which are able to take concise action in situations where sense of urgency
is required you need to get a few things right:
- a culture
which supports trying to fix problems for the good of the company, knowing it will not always work out but trying is better than doing nothing or postponing,
- support and delegate authority
to people who take leadership with an agility hack (empower the leader on the job and delegate the ability to pull resources from the company to make critical things happen) that will last til the escalation or problematic situation is over. Other line managers need to support and stop discussing for the timing being,
- communicate about successes & failures and create a culture of learning, why have we been in a time critical escalation mode and what is our change to avoid being in such a situation.
Most important is that you understand being in a critical situation which is highly time bound where people need to step out of daily procedures, your organization most likely failed. So think about, why we have been in this situation and change things for better.
If people get the feeling that taking leadership
beyond their daily job is rewarded
and not damaging their career, you can unleash potential within your talent pool. If the organization understands that the sense of urgency is supported when required and that you will be supported, it becomes a part of your company culture. It is just one piece part
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