Built-in sense of urgency not 'bolt- on', strategy for success

You would agree that having a sense of urgency is critical in running a successful business or leading a team. What matters in today's fast pace 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, you need to relentlessly drive 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 can absolutely leap ahead. Getting people on board, whether they are employees who work for you or colleagues and service providers who work with you, is critical to meet your goals. You just can't do it all by yourself.

As a business leader, you need to count on your team for timely results and, typically, those team members you can count on have 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 definitely can be done, and here are a few simple steps to do so:

Business value of speed. Establish 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. However, if you are to get others to work with you on your goals, you must break them into bite-sized chunks that are easily understood. People need to understand what and why they are doing something if they are to do it well. If you want others to work with you on a goal, have an informative, written, step-by-step action plan associated with it with time bars for clarity.

Less than perfect

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 are to complete your goals, you need to have all the pieces together at the appropriate times. So make no assumptions 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

Establish 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 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 in the destination, and they'll make your priority their priority.