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Positioning Systems Blog

Urgency

TUESDAY, JULY 22ND, 2008
What is the sense of urgency in your business?   Having worked with and visited businesses throughout my life I can tell you that there is a profound difference that is evident in the urgency with which businesses conduct their business. Indeed even the calmness and flow of the work being conducted can tell you a great deal about a business.
 
Have you recently taken a tour of your business observing how you and your staff is responding and working? Is there a sense of urgency to your people? Do they have a purposeful movement to their activities and do they seem both happy and energetic about the work they are conducting?   What can you tell by observing your staff and seeing how they are working and moving through their daily tasks? If you haven’t done this lately, see if you can mentally get a picture of your business in your mind and see what your staff is doing?
 
What’s your picture?   It’s probably a good reflection on where your business is right now. In this economy if it is any less than purposeful and urgent there is probably cause for concern. In fact in any economy, if your people don’t appear directed, confident and poised about their work, you are probably not on a growth path.
 
A good place to gauge the urgency in your business is your meetings. In your meetings are people relaxed or are they sitting on the front of their chairs as if waiting for the opportunity to pounce on an unsuspecting victim? Meetings in your business are a good reflection of the urgency your company is experiencing simply because they provide a good insight into how well the leaders are prepared. Do you have an agenda? Do you stick to the agenda? Do you require accountability and assign follow up tasks, and then are those accountabilities followed up at the next meeting. Does your staff communicate, learn and get input and direction on what they should be accomplishing and how and where your company is moving? Do ideas and corrective actions emanate for these activities that stimulate your people and provide momentum?
 
In Patrick Lencioni’s book Death By Meeting, he describes the nightmare that most companies meetings project. He recommends several ideas on how to improve meetings and suggest one idea that he got from his friend Verne Harnish on developing a quick daily meeting which in Gazelles Coaching is termed the “Daily Huddle.” 
 
Daily Huddles are intended to be short less than 15 minute stand up meetings that quickly communicate priorities, key performance numbers, and roadblocks a team or department is having. This communication tool provides a sense of urgency to the group and offers impetus for the day. It indicates things are happening and that everyone is about making progress.
 
You can see a quick example of a daily huddle by visiting YouTube and 1800GOTJUNK’s Daily Huddle. It’s not the best example of how you might conduct this in your business but it is reflective of how much can be accomplished and how positive it can be. Alan Rudy’s video  on implementing the Rockefeller Habits Checklist and specifically the daily huddles [He mentions the importance of this about 1 minute into his two minute video] speaks directly to how he reduced his time being tactically involved 60 hours or more each week in his business to just ten hours and how the remainder of this time he could spend on strategic, long term focus for the company, the work he loves and really the work every business owner must be about to move the needle forward.
 
What’s the sense of urgency in your business? If you feel there’s a struggle, a resistance to getting things done, isn’t it time to do something about it?

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