Have you ever considered how a project, task or assignment gets categorized as important, urgent versus important, non-urgent?
Both tasks are important yet one has a greater sense of urgency than the other.
In my experience, most of the urgent important tasks are tactical. These are the ones we focus most of our time and energy.
Most important, non-urgent are strategic. These are the ones we tend to avoid and put off. Perhaps you can relate. Most people have a difficult time getting strategic work done. You know the non-urgent stuff.
Ironically, we spend a bulk of our time dealing with tactical stuff, working harder NOT smarter, because we are not being strategic first.
Ex. A business owner says “We need more business. I better go out and sell more. See more people, generate more leads." So they go to work, working harder than before to get more business. Very tactical.
The alternative is to work strategically first. To ask the question, "How can we be more effective with our selling process? How can our sales people increase their closing percentage, How can we increase our revenue? These are some of the key strategic questions worth asking.
Instead, we rush into the fire, so to speak, and once we get there realize we forget the fire hose.
Knowing that strategic work is vital to effective growth and effectiveness and efficiency, why don’t we do it more consistently? Why do we get caught up in the urgent, important work?
It all comes down to the reasons why you deem work to be urgent. In other words, how do you determine or categorize if the work is urgent versus non-urgent.
In most cases, we are telling ourselves a story about the situation.
If I don’t call that client back right now, they are going to do business with someone else. That’s a story. If I don’t run to this meeting right now, I might lose the chance to meet with them again. That’s a story.
Perhaps you are telling yourself the story that doing strategic work is too complicated or difficult to do. Perhaps you are telling yourself a story that doing strategic work right now won’t pay the bills today.
We need to begin to tell ourselves new stories about the importance of doing strategic or important, non-urgent work that will motivate us to take action today.
Here is a story worth telling. By the way, this story is grounded in truth, not fiction. If you and your business do not dedicate adequate time and energy to doing strategic work today, your business and life will be the same tomorrow, next week, next month and next year. You will still be experiencing the same challenges and frustrations, lack of growth, predictability, consistency and perhaps life as you do now.
Do you want your business and life and all the challenges you face to be the same? If no, re-tell your story and re-categorize the strategic work as urgent, important today.
If you would like some ideas on WHAT work you could do today that WILL make a difference in your business and life tomorrow, next week, next month and next year simply e-mail me. Put in the subject line – Strategic Work Help.
I will get right back to you because it’s urgent AND important.