Loud Thinking April 08, 2014 at 01:39PM
Stop Believing that Everything Is Urgent
In an ever-accelerating business culture, where smaller 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. 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.
Adapted by HBR from “ Two Ways to Reduce “Hurry Up and Wait” Syndrome” by Ron Ashkenas.
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