A sense of urgency vital for success in business

Having a sense of urgency is critical to running a successful business or leading a team. What matters in today's fast paced evolution is results at the 'right time' not results at any time.

If you and your team already have a sense of urgency and you have created that speed culture that is fine. If it's missing or needs to be fortified, then you need to relentlessly drive for rapid execution to achieve the right results at the right time.

If you can get your staff really excited about the urgency and the time bars for all key activities, overall performance will leap ahead.

Getting people on board, whether it is employees who work for you or colleagues and service providers who work with you, is critical to meet your goals and objectives. You just can't do it all by yourself. As a business leader, you need to count on your team for timely results and the team members you count on need to have a built-in sense of urgency.

Meaning, a sense of urgency should be an inherent attribute rather than the leader having to impose this on people. Imposing is 'bolt-on' which does not work in the long run.

Action plan

What if everyone doesn't have a sense of urgency, or at least your sense of urgency? Do you find new people? Change your goals? Reduce your expectations? Maybe - but if that's not acceptable to you, try creating a sense of urgency with your team if you find them procrastinating.

It can definitely be done, and here are a few simple steps to do so:

Business value of speed: Set up the business case and convince your employees of the benefits for the business and what is in it for them.

Set expectations and communicate effectively: Your goals and objectives make perfect sense to you. You've probably thought long and hard about them, and you understand the rewards that will go along with achieving them. If they're significant, they will no doubt have some level of complexity to them.

However, if you're going to get others to work with you on your goals, you must simplify them, breaking them down into bite-sized chunks that are easily understood and digested. People need to understand what and why they are doing something if they are going to do it well.

If you are going to have others work with you on a goal, be sure to have an informative, written, step-by-step action plan associated with it with time bars for clarity.

Results

When setting deadlines don't ask, "When can you get this to me?" Rather, state, "You need to get this to me by 'X'." After all, if you're going to complete your goals, you need to have all the pieces coming together at the appropriate times.

Make no assumptions about what others might be thinking regarding timelines.

If you haven't set a specific deadline, there is no deadline.

Let people know, tell them, that being on time with a less-than-perfect deliverable is far more important to you than being late with a perfect one.

Priority

Consequences: Every business leader must make it crystal clear that if agreed upon objectives and deadlines are not met, there will be consequences.

That doesn't mean getting out the guillotine to address every missed deadline or marginally performed task. However, there should be a direct link between performance and reward.

An excellent way to do that is to tell your team members what specific results will meet your expectations, which won't, and which will exceed them.

Appropriate rewards should then be given for exceeding them, acknowledgement for meeting them, and a definitive, corrective, time-limited course of action taken if they are not met.

Follow up: If someone else's actions are critical to an important goal don't wait for a status report, ask for one. Feedback is crucial to any type of ongoing goal or process and asking questions, particularly open-ended questions, is a good way to get that feedback.

For example, what can you tell me about this project? What's going well? What's not going so well? What have you learned since you started this project? What should I be telling my colleagues about this project? Let people know you are as interested in the journey as you are at the destination, and they'll make your priority their priority.