Is it Urgent or Important?

While you are breaking away your roti to dip in a puddle of dal, a line manager walks up to you in a huff and a puff. They urgently need five resources, for revenue is at stake and that critical customer will go away. Urgent scenarios like these push their way to the front. Because they are loud, emotional and their consequences seem immediate. 

While on the other hand, eating a relaxed lunch and evaluating the problem at hand are important. If you fail to attend them, they push their way forward to become urgent situations. 

Former U.S President, Dwight Eisenhower narrates this beautifully. He says, what is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important. 

All things that are important take efforts. 

However, most human beings prefer to do activities that don’t take much efforts. Which essentially means they are used to responding to things that are urgent, but not important.  It feels like the day was “busy”.

Hiring through employee referrals is important. It improves retention. Improves the quality of hire and you hire great people with great culture fit. But it takes efforts. Hiring fast seems urgent. Hence, teams take the shortcut which is to hire by doing things that are urgent but not important. A vendor hire or a job board hire will likely not stay but that is a problem pushed for another day, another way.

As a leader, our role is two-fold.

1.  To balance the urgent with the important. It is about looking at strategic priorities, making sure your organisation focuses the important and not just the urgent. Because, there are enough people who are screaming with their heads out and making things urgent. And, since they realize that urgent items get more attention, they will make things more urgent than they are – cue the cancelled positions and wasted efforts for your teams.
2. To make important facets effortless. Can I make referrals effortless, so they naturally gravitate towards hiring more from that channel? 

    

But the important ones are prerogatives of the leader. Else, important never becomes urgent and important never gets done. And productivity suffers, organizations suffer.  

The next time when you are pushed to the edge of your seat, move back take a moment to ask yourself whether it is urgent or important.