Important Work Beats Urgent Work

Leaders,

Stephen Covey who wrote the famous book 7 Habits of Highly Effective People shared a really important concept, a Time Matrix.

If you take a look at the box below you’ll probably spot at times we spend too much time in Quadrant 1. The urgent stuff, the stuff that is highly demanding and causes us stress, and quite frankly is not sustainable over the long run.

Where we really want to be is in Quadrant 2. This is focusing on the Important work, the preventative work, the work which will stop a lot of crises from occurring. It allows us to maintain balance and calm within our environment.

Important work can be difficult because you don’t always get an instant win or pat on the back, unlike a crisis or escalation which you tend to bring to a quicker resolution and feel good about checking it off your list. Urgent work does tend to be short-term focused and easier, that’s why we find ourselves comfortable doing it rather than the more challenging Important work.

Where Leaders become really effective is by doing the Important work more often. It’s the pre-season work that is going to set you and your team up for success when the real season starts.

So what are just some of the Important areas all Effective Leaders tackle?

1) Relationships - building big and meaningful relationships with people. Whether that’s people in their team, in other teams, customers, or even competitors. Relationships help us work together more productively and get things done quicker. Without trusting relationships the team or the business will not thrive. You have to know the network of people you’re working with.

2) Challenges - iron out challenges quickly. What friction or noise is in your team’s space and slowing them down? Being courageous and creating noise at times if you don’t feel like it’s getting the attention it needs. Another important item is connecting with your people regularly. Sometimes you might need to plant seeds if you are hearing everything is fine as people may not always be comfortable sharing (or they don’t want to appear as though they are complaining). Try this seed: “Hey I heard there was this challenge with slow performance, can you tell me more about the impact this is having on your and the team?”

3) Vision - ensuring the team and the people know what the future state looks like, what the company is aiming to achieve, and where is it going.

4) Coaching - developing a team of critical thinkers will drive up engagement and productivity 10 fold. Asking more questions and listening will help you develop a team of creative thinkers who can be successful whether you’re there or not.

5) Purpose - the team needs to understand the work they’re doing matters, it has meaning, it’s important. Find out what their purpose is and help them attach their own personal meaning to the work they’re doing. When people have a purpose they’re energised, excited, optimistic, and have passion for what they do.

6) Feedback - reviewing different channels and perspectives and seeing what’s working and what’s not. Evaluating the work the team and the business is doing, are we doing a good job? Could we be doing better? Are we learning from our mistakes?

7) Road Map - mapping out your 6-12 month plan month over month, and reviewing it bi-weekly. What’s to come? What haven’t we thought about? What do we need to get ready for?

8) Thinking - Thinking moves into Brainstorming. Brainstorming moves into Planning. Planning moves into Executing. You cannot think when your mind is busy, you need to think about removing yourself and getting to a calm state where you can get clarity. Exercise, holidays, meditation, isolation are all ways people gain clarity and can think clearly without being disturbed by other thoughts. Spend more time just thinking about the bigger picture and the macro pieces.

9) Environment - developing a trusting environment where people feel comfortable challenging one another and speaking up when things are not working. A great book to assess your team’s current state is the 5 Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni. Once you understand where you’re at with each of the 5 areas you can implement changes and improvements to address each one.

As Leaders, of course, we need to lean in and tackle stuff when there is a crisis or something is on fire, we do have to take care of the Urgent work. It’s part of our role. Where we can be more effective is by spending more of our time on planning and preemptive work, if we can identify risks or challenges by taking proactive steps weeks or months in advance we’re going to mitigate a lot of the risk and potential for things to escalate. Hope this helps.

All the best

David

Resources Of The Week

• Book - Talk like TED. Some of the secrets to the success of the TED Talks revealed. Ted Talks have redefined the elements of a successful presentation and become the gold standard for public speaking around the world.

• YouTube - John C. Maxwell - Leadership Starts with Relationships. John talks about why everything we do is about relationships and we have to care for the people under our wing.

• Book - Patrick Lencioni - The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team - Lencioni reveals the five dysfunctions which go to the very heart of why teams even the best ones-often struggle. He outlines a powerful model and actionable steps that can be used to overcome these common hurdles and build a cohesive, effective team.

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