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The Tyranny of the Urgent Can Cause Priority
Overload
"He that is everywhere is nowhere." —
Thomas Fuller, 17th century historian, scholar, and author
A frantic manager burst into a travel agency and
exclaimed, "I need an airplane ticket immediately!" "Where would you
like to go?", the travel agent asked. "I don't care, just get me on a
plane. I've got business everywhere," was the desperate reply. Time
management author and consultant, R. Alec Mackenzie once observed, "Urgency
engulfs the manager; yet the most urgent task is not always the most
important. The tyranny of the urgent lies in its distortion of
priorities. One of the measures of a manager is the ability to
distinguish the important from the urgent, to refuse to be tyrannized by
the urgent, to refuse to manage by crisis."
Unsuccessful
organizations are often beehives of activity and hard work.
Reflecting on the performance of his struggling company, a departmental
manager observed, "We have lots of projects, goals, and priorities.
We're constantly making lists and setting action plans. But we seldom
see anything through to completion before some urgent new priority is
pushed at us. Our division manager's thinking seems to be 'random brain
impulse.' He's like a nervous water bug that flits from one half-baked
strategy to another."
In the midst of tumultuous change, many managers are
confusing "busy work" activity with results. Missing what's really
important to long-term growth and development, they allow themselves to
be tyrannized by short-term urgencies. But we just can't do it all. The
list of dreams we could pursue to realize is a lengthy one. The number
of improvements we could make to our performance gaps are countless.
Searching and exploring to create tomorrow's markets and customers can
uncover endless innovation possibilities.
So we've got to choose. From all our long-range
options, alternatives, and possibilities, we've got to establish
short-term goals and priorities. There are as many things we've got to
stop doing, as there are actions we've got to start taking. Some actions
will drive us forward, many will hold us back, and some won't matter
much either way. But without clear targets and a strong sense of what's
most important, I — and everyone on my team or in my organization —
won't be able to tell the difference.
Effectively establishing goals and priorities has
both strategic and tactical components. The strategic decisions are what
goals and priorities we choose to pursue. Tactics are how we get
organized and manage our time to reach those goals.
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