Accelerated Urgency

Pleasures lull us.

Routines engulf us.

Crises consume us.

Sufferings suppress us.

Whether in comfort or in chaos, life of individuals and organizations run on an 'autopilot system' based of a series of HIDDEN assumptions (like characters in the movie - The Matrix).

Is there anything worse?

Well, yes! And, that is - Running on an 'autopilot system' based on a series of assumptions that you clearly KNOW to be false, BUT you do not have the time to TAKE NECESSARY ACTION.

You are so busy driving your car that you do not have time to stop for fuel. How long will that car run?

In the movie (The Matrix), the protagonist takes a RED PILL to know the truth (and abruptly wakes up in a pod, with his body connected by wires to a tower...).

You do not have that option.

So, how to break your zombie-like (self-)hypnotized state (in whichever aspect your life or work, you are stuck in undesirable patterns)?

The classic Time Management Grid tells us that we spend our time in four ways:

1. Firefighting (Crisis Management)
   
2. Creating Quality (Creation)
   
3. Getting Distracted (Interruptions)
   
4. Wasting (Trivia)
   

Most of the time is spent in Quadrants 1,3 & 4, which takes us away from our vision and mission.

Quadrant 2 times are rare. Where is the time for creating Quality of life?

How to break free from this bounded entity (which thrives in Quadrants 1,3 & 4 due to fear and short-sightedness)?

Heidegger says "any ontological interpretation which sets itself the goal of EXHIBITING the phenomena in their primordiality should CAPTURE the being of of this entity".

So, the BEING needs to be transformed.

How?

Heidegger continues "by doing violence [Gewaltsamkeit], whether to the claims of the everyday interpretation, or to its complacency and its tranquilized obviousness".

And, how do we continuously CAUSE this violence?

There are many ways, depending on what has lulled or suppressed or engulfed or consumed you.

One way is to bring in "Accelerated Urgency" every day.

John Kotter says:

The real solution to the complacency problem is a true sense of urgency. This set of thoughts, feelings, and actions is never associated with an endless list of exhausting activities. It has nothing to do with anxious running from meeting to meeting. It's not supported by an adrenalin rush that cannot be sustained over time.

True urgency focuses on critical issues, not agendas overstuffed with the important and the trivial. True urgency is driven by a deep determination to win, not anxiety about losing. With an attitude of true urgency, you try to accomplish something important each day, never leaving yourself with a heart-attack-producing task of running one thousand miles in the last week of the race.

He recommends:

• Use crises as potential opportunities
• Crises do not automatically reduce complacency
  
• To use a crisis to reduce complacency, make sure it is visible, unambiguous, related to real business problems... be exceptionally proactive in assessing how people will react, in developing specific plans for action, and in implementing the plans swiftly.
• Plans and actions should always focus on others' hearts as much or more than their minds. Behaving with passion, conviction, optimism, urgency, and a steely determination will trump an analytically brilliant memo every time.
• If urgency is low, never patiently wait for a crisis (which may never come) to solve your problems. Bring the outside in. Act with urgency every day.

This is very different from REACTING to urgent situations everyday. Take a simple quiz here to determine your "reactive" Urgency Index.

"Accelerated Urgency" expands your Quadrant 2 - Important but not urgent ACTIVITIES: Self-Development, Relationship building, Envisioning your future, Preparation/Planning/Organizing, Exercise/Recreation.

Ready to press the accelerator?

The Freedom to Perform

Artists love the word "performance", and so do sports champions!

However, whisper the word "performance" among a group of employees and you are sure to find yourself in a heated debate. Many employees are not comfortable with the word "performance". A questioner writes in pain, "I always thought the word 'service' should be used to exemplify the voluntary intentions of a worker to choose in helping get tasks accomplished. Performance always seems to knock a worker down a notch, and is used to control people in my opinion."

Etymology expert Carol Pozefsky answers with empathy:

The verb 'parfourmen' meaning to do, to carry out or to render, first appears in English in about 1300. It's seen again some seventy years later as 'performen', borrowed from the Old French 'parfornir'. The French meaning was much the same as the English, to do, or to carry out. The noun performance crops up in the early 1500's meaning ,simply, a thing performed. It's not until 1709 that we encounter the word performance in the sense of a public exhibition or entertainment. It appears in an article by Steele in the Tatler. As it is currently used, the word performance, as least to me, calls to mind a performing seal, or a 7 year old tap dancer.

Many resist being treated like a performing "machine", but at the other end, we have artists and sportspersons taking pride in being "Great Performers".

The questioner (mentioned above) seems confused, but he his on the right track when talks about "volunary intentions". The more FREE you are in your job, the more you "volunteer" towards accomplishments. No wonder, Peak Performers are associated with words like "proactive", "initiative", and "ownership".

Employers who know this have the "key" to enable more peak performers. Katzenbach, in his book "Peak Performance: Aligning the Hearts and Minds of Your Employees", starts off with his first meeting with Steve Messana, senior vice president of Human Resources at The Home Depot, who captures the power of frontline commitment by his statement:

We encourage all of our people to come up with their own ideas to capture the customer's attention, and to try them out—there's no need for approval here. Sure, we get some lousy ideas along the way that we would rather not have had; but that's the price we are willing to pay for the widespread individual initiative that makes this place unique.

Dr. André A. de Waal conducted a comprehensive study on "The Characteristics of High Performance Organization". The study says that the first neccessary characteristic for a High Performing organizational "culture" is:

Empower people and give them FREEDOM to decide and act.

Of course, this needs to be backed with a strategy to "define a strong vision that excites and challenges" (strategy characteristic #1 in the study) and "design a good and fair reward and incentive structure" (process characteristic #1).

So, how free are people in your organization?