Are you a planner?
Do you prefer the last minute?
What makes you respond with urgency?
I was recently out on my morning walk when I stopped for a chat with one of the locals who likes to sit on a bench near my house. He’s an interesting character so when he started to tell me about some people “sleeping rough” in the fields nearby I didn’t think too much of it. Sitting there on the bench he theatrically described where they were and how he’d gone over to them earlier that morning, woken them and told them to “Get off my #*&%ing land!” He looks quite scary but they’d simply rolled over and ignored him.
I was planning on going that way so would take a look as I passed; out of curiosity.
Sure enough, as I crossed one field into another, there on the top of a small hill were a set of sleeping bags and other detritus. “That’s interesting” I thought and left them to it, it was early and they were asleep. Also, there were more of them and I’m not as scary as my friend from the bench.
They didn’t look like people who were homeless or in distress. Where they were camping was out in the open on an exposed hillock, not where you’d sleep if you were sleeping rough. They didn’t have tents or bags of belongings. It looked more like local kids making the most of the last few days of the summer holidays.
A few days later I was back out doing my walk and wondered to myself whether they were still “sleeping rough.” I was also hoping that they had left the field in good order. Sadly, there was rubbish spread across the area where they had been. Annoyed and saddened I looked around pondering what to do when I noticed a plastic carrier bag with the branding of the nearby convenience store.
That simple plastic carrier bag sparked an urgency in me. It was time to get this mess tidied up, an urgency that eventually resulted in me filling the carrier bag and creating another bag out of a fleece blanket that had been left behind. The spoils in hand I headed back home depositing the rubbish in a public dustbin on the way.
Why did I act? What was it that made this situation urgent? Why couldn’t I leave this mess for someone else to tidy up? Why did I feel an urgency to sorting it out?
All of the definitions that I could find for urgency include words like: swift, immediate, pressing, important, speedy, action.
Plenty of emotion in those words.
The litter made me feel an urgency.
And yet, in business we have a habit of forgetting the emotional aspects of urgency.
We create statistics that tell people that we are 5% behind the progress that we should be making.
We send people emails from senior people imploring them to fill in the latest survey with logical reasons why they should.
We use cascade techniques expecting each individual further along the line to care about the message that they are delivering.
We expend huge amounts of effort communicating facts that leave us cold and unmoved.
Is there any wonder that they don’t move us let alone move us with urgency?
I didn’t reason myself to urgency on that hillock, I felt annoyed, and the annoyance gave me an urgency. No statistical analysis changed my attitude.
If we want people to change, to act, we need to work out how me make them feel the urgency.
Some of the biggest challenges of our day, climate, war, are urgent. It’s time for us to work out how we feel that urgency.
People who bring transformative change have courage, know how to re-frame the problem and have a sense of urgency.
Malcolm Gladwell
Cover Image: From a morning walk a few months ago. This is the field where the “rough sleepers” were.
Graham Chastney 