Urgency Doesn't Transfer
Two weeks ago, my house flooded. An unfortunate combination of a severe rainstorm and a pipe that had become increasingly clogged caused a nasty sewage backup in our basement. Initially, we tried to corral the water, but at some point we had to accept our fate and let events unfold. The flooding would stop on its own terms.
After I told my team about it, one of them said to me, “You seem to be very relaxed about the whole situation.” I hadn’t really thought about it that way, but I realized what was happening. I told her that I try to avoid getting worked up by events that I cannot control. Once the flooding happened, the only thing to do was to find service providers to clean, mitigate the damage, and restore the basement. Being stressed about it wouldn’t help any of that happen any more quickly or effectively.
The situation led me to think about urgency and how we experience it across relationships. For example, what’s been most frustrating is that, while I’ve been very eager to fix the house—“Just take my money and start working!”—the vendors are fitting me into their existing commitments. For them, starting tomorrow rather than today is no big deal. For me, it’s everything. That makes me want to push and push and push harder for more rapid action, even though it’s unlikely to yield a different outcome. And in that urgency disconnect, there’s a greater risk of relationship damage—I feel like I can’t trust them, and they’re peeved that I’m badgering them when they’re already moving as quickly as possible.
A similar dynamic happens at work. Some new issue or project gets declared “urgent” or a “priority,” but it arises in a context where people already have things on their plates. Unfortunately, those terms aren’t always clearly defined. Does priority mean “Drop everything else until this new thing is done”? Or does it mean something more like, “Spend a little extra time on it, and get it done whenever you can”?
What further complicates those moments is that many leaders don’t believe they even need to articulate the definition of priority. A boss makes a request of a subordinate and assumes they take it as a command, rather than a suggestion. Or, because the boss is the type of person who willingly stays late or works on the weekend to handle the extra work—it’s part of why they’ve succeeded—they assume others should make the same choice, if they’re “committed” or “results-oriented” or [insert your favorite judgment-filled adjective]. As with my house-repair vendors, the disconnect creates an opportunity for relationship damage.
In those situations, there’s a straightforward management solution: making all the existing work obvious. Then the conversation about priorities can be a logic-based negotiation in which the person with greater urgency can state the price they’re willing to pay for faster action. I can say to my vendors, “I’m willing to pay extra if you can start work earlier.” At work, we can say, “I’m willing to let the following projects get delayed for the sake of prioritizing this new one.”
But the broader solution is to recognize the emotional context of differences in urgency. As the one desiring faster action, I can recognize that someone else might have legitimate reasons not to act on the timeline I want. For example, they might know that, when accounting for all of the financial and human resources involved, disrupting other projects is more costly than I realize.
As the one on the receiving end of urgent requests, I can make it clear to the requestor that I recognize their concern — I hear you. I get why that’s important to you. I value that outcome as well. — even if that recognition is followed by a proposal for action that’s different from their request.
For their part, my house-repair vendors have been perfectly professional. They’ve started working, and everything will get done. In a few months, I probably won’t remember or care whether the job got done this week or next. Ultimately, that shows that the urgency was always more mine than the situation’s.