Sometimes, no matter how you prioritise things, something will come along that is labelled URGENT.
Usually, the term URGENT is used to represent a failure.
When everything is URGENT, that’s a sign of poor senior management.
Also, when everything is URGENT, nothing is URGENT, as everything is the same priority.
When everything is URGENT, it’s time to get your management together to discuss priorities once again.
There are usually three reasons for something being urgent, but I’ll add a 4th to give you some wiggle room 😉
1. Poor Planning
Poor planning means that whoever did the planning didn’t go down to the necessary level of detail, which may be task level, or they didn’t consult with the experts to find out how long something would take but made an assumption.
Now they’ve discovered that there are more steps to perform, or something they thought would be easy will take longer than they assumed.
It’s now become URGENT, and you have to fix it!
When planning, get ALL the RIGHT people in the room with the correct level of understanding to get realistic timescales to carry out the work in your plans.
2. Poor Communication
If something is important, but that importance was not communicated from the start, it becomes more urgent as time progresses.
Leaders and Management should ensure they communicate that something is important, and that’s best conveyed by stating why it is important so that it gets prioritised and dealt with before it becomes urgent.
3. Lack of Foresight
Things are always possible to overlook, especially if no help with planning is sought prior to implementation.
If Leaders or Management overlook something that is needed until much later, that missing item will be both important and urgent.
Always include the people who do the work, in planning the work to avoid this becoming a reality.
4. Bad Luck (Occasionally, but Seldom)
Sometimes, it’s just bad luck, but again, if Leaders and Management have done their due diligence and looked at what can go wrong, you should also have mitigations for bad luck.
As they say, “Failure to plan on your side does not constitute an emergency on the other side”, the buck stops with the Leader/Management.
