Stop Believing that Everything Is Urgent

In an ever-accelerating instant information  business culture, where smaller, geographically diverse teams are taking on increasing workloads, it’s impossible to get everything done as fast as we’d like. Of course, some tasks and projects require more urgency than others – but if we consider everything to be urgent, we jam up the queue and confuse trifles with true priorities. The challenge in this do-it-now culture is to tell the difference between the two. Challenge the assumption that everything needs to be done right away, and work with your team to eliminate unnecessary or low-value work.

As a manager you should always be asking yourself the following questions:

• Are people tied up with repetitive activities that don’t make a difference? Could those be done less often or with less effort?
• Can your weekly status reports become monthly?
• Could a wordy memo become a short list of key points?

Tweaks like these can create the bandwidth you need to tackle truly urgent projects and  help your organization run more effectively.

 

Joe Buck, NCE