Urgency with purpose
One of the things on my mind this quarter is urgency. It's a word that can have really great connotations or really bad ones. On the great side it means a proclivity to get stuff done, a bias for action, and an emphasis on speed. On the negative side it can indicate people acting without purpose, bring to mind a chicken running with its head cut off, and a focus on the wrong things. When I talk about urgency I mean urgency with purpose. We live in a world where things change daily and speed matters; your competition isn’t waiting, your customers don’t want to wait, and your partners are relying on you. Getting stuff done quickly at good quality is important.
I have been a part of companies where urgency matters a ton. This was particularly true at Google in the early days where the founders pushed us for speed knowing we could launch and iterate. Getting things out to market to be tested by customers provided valuable feedback, allowing us to iterate. This pushed us to be better, ship better solutions, and collaborate faster - because if you were in a silo at Google you couldn’t get things out quickly. As a result we did great work, because we collaborated, iterated, and challenged ourselves to continue raising the bar. Joining a smaller company, I have loved the continued urgency and found many compatriots who share that sense of urgency and love of making things happen. Besides getting updates out that benefit our customers I also love the effect urgency has the team.
As a leader I take a ton of pride in watching my team develop and have impact. Pushing urgency with purpose is a great method for seeing talented individuals rise to the challenge. As I stated in Building a Bench, that striving or rising to the challenge can have great impact on individual development as it forces creativity and learning to meet the challenges. I also love seeing the pride the team has when they ship something and either learn from the failure or celebrate the success. Urgency allows an opportunity to create more learning and more successes. At PandaDoc, many on the Revenue team are stepping up because they know with our urgency we can get a better customer experience out the door. It helps us get an amazing solution in the hands of more prospects, get service improvement in front of current customers, and get data back to our PMs to continue making the product even better.
Urgency with purpose also shows care for outcomes and gives confidence. As I have mentioned before, I’m a big believer that the best talent finds a way to overcome obstacles; urgency creates more chances to get a successful outcome. I mentioned I have been thinking about how to create this urgency and I’m taking the following steps with my team:
State that it’s a priority - if you don’t communicate that you care about this some people won’t know and may default to inertia
Demonstrate it - as a leader don’t be the bottleneck, set the tone; just be careful you still have the purpose behind that urgency and don’t make everything a priority
Remove roadblocks - if you’re going to stress fast action make sure you help get things unstuck
Set priorities - not everything can be urgent so make sure you have set priorities adequately to drive focus
For individuals urgency should be empowering. It gives you a chance to show off your skills and have impact for customers, the company, teammates. Just remember urgency doesn’t mean you have to launch a perfect solution, get that MVP out the door and continue to launch and iterate. As long as the stakes aren’t too high or you can course correct your initiative getting things out the door to get feedback and serve your customers better will provide positive learnings.