Engaging Your Team: Part 3

Immediacy and Importance

Priorities drive what gets done. A challenge for many leaders is that priorities can shift on an almost daily basis in this time of economic uncertainty. It can be hard to establish a set of priorities and have them stick around for an extended period of time. Stability and predictability have become impossible to achieve. Market shifts, competitor’s positioning, and resource shortages can force leaders to change tactics and strategies quickly and repeatedly. Individuals and teams can end up feeling jerked around or may abandon planning activities because they feel that nothing sticks.

Compounding the issue for leaders is organizations and individuals vary significantly in their ability to adapt to change and shifting priorities. Some organizations and individuals are quite agile and are adept at dealing with change. Others resist change and desire stability. So, while the leader can make adjustments to priorities on the fly, their organizations may need additional help, support, and coaching to keep pace with change.

One thing a leader can do to improve their effectiveness and engagement with their organization is to communicate both why something is important and why it needs to be done now. When priorities shift rapidly, people want to know why and want to be assured that the new course of action is connected to a larger picture or strategy and not just a knee jerk reaction.

Thinking through the relative importance level and immediacy of a new action is a good discipline for leaders because it forces us to think about tradeoffs and challenges us to connect action to strategy. If the organization’s plate is already full, something has to come off of it if you are going to put something new on. If the action can’t be connected to strategy, then maybe you shouldn’t do it.

Why something is important is not always obvious to others. Effective leaders understand this principle, limit their communication assumptions, and make sure to connect the dots for others. By establishing and communicating a connection to something that is core to the business, leaders help people to understand its importance and meaning. They keep communicating the connection over time so people don’t lose sight of it in the face of information overload.

Because people are generally so busy, the first question they invariably ask in response to a call to action is, do I need to deal with it now, or can I put it off until later. The level of immediacy they attach to an action is influenced by:

• The language someone uses in communicating the call to action
• Who is making the request and their history (i.e., are they someone who labels everything important and urgent?)
• The amount of work they are currently dealing with and how stressed they are
• Whether or not there is a clearly defined prioritization framework for people to use in making judgment calls
• Whether or not this tactic has been used repeatedly.

In my coaching work, I recommend that leaders use the immediacy/urgency gambit sparingly because it sets off a mad scramble. When you pull the immediacy trigger you instantly put your organization into action. It means that this particular action needs to be done quickly and is of higher value than other things that are currently underway. People have to rethink their priorities and pick up the pace of their actions. Resources get reallocated and other things get shelved. If you do this repeatedly, a kind of fatigue sets in and the performance of the organization starts to drop. People increasingly think that it’s one more fire drill.

But, connecting immediacy to a task is a powerful technique for a leader. We have a strong tendency to act on those things that we perceive to be immediate and tangible while we delay or put off things that are more long term or intangible, particularly in a fast-paced environment. Cause and effect are easier to observe with issues that are immediate or short term because there is little or no delay between the cause and effect. We also experience a sense of satisfaction by completing tangible activities. We can see our impact and results in a direct way. The larger the gap between the cause and effect, or action and consequence, the less immediacy we experience or attach to the issue. To build immediacy I suggest that leaders try the following things:

• Break up the action into smaller, incremental steps that people can easily execute
• Create a sense of urgency around the action by showing how it is connected to other important activities including the organization’s strategy
• Ask the individual or team to put the action into their scheduling framework so that you can track activity jointly and in real-time.

If the leader consistently communicates the level of immediacy and importance attached to a proposed action, and places it into a prioritization framework, the organization will be able to respond more effectively. People will be able to set their priorities, plan their work, and be in alignment with the larger organization. This framework provides consistency across organizations and reinforces alignment.

The faster leader is effective because they always make sure they have answered the four fundamental engagement questions that drive performance: why should I care, what will it cost me versus what will I get in return, is it important, and why should I do it now.