For most of us, there always seems to be an urgent project that demands our attention. Emergencies seem to pop up out of nowhere and force their way to the top of our priority lists. Despite that reality, this article by Kimber Lockhart in Medium discusses a different way to approach the issue that may achieve more lasting results.
Here is how she opens her piece:
I lead software teams. Part of the territory is people (CEOs, stakeholders, customers) wishing we could go faster. I’m often asked — “do you think the team has a strong enough sense of urgency?” or the direct “can you make the team feel a stronger sense of urgency?” More often, the request is more subtle, but just the same — “I’d really like to get this one project done, but it’s not a top priority. Can you hustle to make it happen?”
So, to all those out there wondering, no. I am not going to try to create a stronger sense of urgency on the team. And you shouldn’t either. A sense of urgency isn’t the goal. Trying to create urgency reflects the age-old confusion of hurrying with speed — the misguided notion that if you’re not always hurrying, you’re already behind.
If you’re not working on the product every day (and frankly, even if you are), it’s easy to believe progress should be faster. After all, we all want fast. There’s always more to do than we could ever accomplish, and moving faster would get us there. If the team just hurried a little more, we wouldn’t have to make tough choices.
As anyone who has ever forgotten their keys in an effort to get out of the house on time knows, hurry often backfires. The panicked, frantic pace values action over results and has consequences.
She goes on to point out the many flaws in rushing--shortcuts, sloppiness, lack of creativity. Most of all, she notes that this type of effort is not sustainable in the long run.
Let’s retire sense of urgency and instead look for sense of purpose. A sense of purpose is a deep understanding of the reasons behind our efforts and a desire to pour in time and energy because that purpose resonates with the impact we’d like to make on the world.
A sense of purpose is immersion in our cause, and allowing that exposure to motivate action. A sense of purpose is about going faster and smarter toward a mission we all see clearly. It’s about using good judgment because we all understand the short and long term implications of our actions on what we’re creating together.
A strong sense of purpose manifests when a software engineer watches a potential customer struggle with a workflow and stays late to make the changes that make it easier. It shows itself when a designer spends their weekend on a few extra iterations because they felt engaged with the problem at hand and want to produce a better solution.
Turns out when you stop looking to create urgency, the passion and purpose latent in your team might just cause the right things to get done at just the right pace.
This one paragraph seems to encapsulate her philosophy:
Your primary job as a leader is to hire the right team, and then to spend time inspiring this sense of purpose. Help people understand the impact of their work, and speed will follow.
Here is the link to the full article: https://medium.com/@kimber_lockhart/don-t-create-a-sense-of-urgency-foster-a-sense-of-purpose-724e309ecdb0#.9do5qcftc
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