URGENT EATS IMPORTANT for breakfast and lunch and dinner

by | Sep 5, 2016

Aad JCM van Vliet; Founding partner of Avvartes Partners, a carefully selected truly global team of senior Human Capital Experts, who deliver international projects to generate a competitive edge for success and measurable revenue growth for our clients. We are both experienced at working across the globe and deeply rooted in the regions in which we live.

Do you recognize that feeling at the end of the day –after dinner- when you are reflecting on how much you did and how little you achieved? And although I am very aware and 60 and independent, this happens to me still and all too often.

Some of you may recognize this and you may have applied and still apply strategies like I have; Start the day with doing the important things first, make sure you don’t get distracted by email by opening it only twice a day, read and apply Covey’s ‘7 habits’, work with to-do lists, don’t work with to-do lists etc. etc. And yet there are too many days that dealing with the urgent took my attention away from working on my important goals.

And actually this is not something that just happens on the level of individuals. It can be far worse. The focus on delivering the urgent and forgetting about the important is omnipresent in teams and even in organizations. I have seen more than once that this became the culture.

Just an example is this commercial organization employing over 1’000 people. The Executive Leadership Team was exceptionally clear on strategy, short and mid term business goals and on what had to be done to achieve these goals. All the senior leaders were on board and the strategy and program were well communicated. Delivery of the program was even integrated with the talent development strategy and programs. All seemed to be very well in place. Yet there was very little progress. It seemed to be impossible to get the teams and the people working on delivering the strategy. Even after 18 months of pushing hard, lots of meetings and communication there was only a fraction of the targeted progress.

From conversations with many employees I learned that they truly understood the importance of focusing on delivering the strategy, but that there were so many urgencies to deal with and there was so much focus by the ‘system’ on these urgencies, that there was literally no time spare to work on delivering the strategy. The important simply was ‘eaten’ by the urgent.

As a leader it is not enough to ensure that you are focused on what is important although it is challenging enough. How about your team or your organization? How is your culture? Do you have rules in place to avoid that ‘waste’ is created through busy work? How many people in your organization regard handling their e-mail as their job? Is this what you want? How do you make clear that just working on the urgent is not enough? Do you ensure focus on the important?

The company I talk about above decided to make the important urgent. Not an easy change to make, but very worthwhile.

By Aad van Vliet