With year end and the new financial year ticking round, and along with it the cycle of workplan and objective setting that accompanies that for many organisations and team members, this Philosopher-in-Residence has been reflecting On Urgent and Important of late.

Those of you who have had the unparalleled joy of attending management training courses in the past or are avid devourers of management and leadership literature will be aware that it’s an oft-recommended approach to managing your workload to demarcate what is urgent and/or important and use said demarcation as a tool for what gets done today/first.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting that anyone should ignore things that are clearly important and/or urgent. But as the analytical eye that asks questions of anything purported to be an oracle or holy grail in then business or organisational world, there seems to be a fatal flaw in this system: what happens when everything on your list is important and/or urgent? When the amount of time to undertake all the things that are critical exceeds a working day to an unfeasible level?

If this sounds like something you have faced, or may face, here are MMAP’s Top Five Tips for managing the urgent/important dilemma:

1. Go back to governance. If you can’t do everything, you must make sure you are complying with company policy and documenting when something will be done, if it’s not going to get done today, or if a deadline is potentially going to be missed, and that was unavoidable.
2. Go back to management. Is everyone in the business deployed to capacity? Could someone or some people help with some elements of the urgent/important tasks? If not – you need a longer-term strategy to ensure the company is not so hedged on you and your time. If yes – this is an investment and you must unwed yourself from any lingering “it’s quicker to do it myself” philosophy.
3. Go back to the floor. Even just half an hour of a basic admin task or chatting with team members, will reconnect you with other aspects of the business and help you realise not everything circles around your urgent/important to do list.
4. Go back to others. Talk with your directors or management, or a trusted friend or mentor and discuss the situation. Accept their help and counsel on what things a fresh pair of eyes would suggest doing first.
5. Go back to your values. What is important to you personally in the workplace? What do you want to achieve for your organisation and is the pressing to do list in alignment with that? If not (and fear not, you won’t be the only one), do make time (time is a choice, don’t forget) to set out, even if just as an outline sketch, how these two tracks can be brought more into parallel over the medium-term so you’re not facing this again at every major milestone in the yearly calendar.

Next fortnight, I’ll be musing On Goldilocks. You’ll have to set yourself a reminder to look in if you want to find out how this links to urgent and important business planning and development!

Please get in touch with any particular aspects of this subject you’d like me to write about.

In the meantime,

Happy Planning

PS If you want some other free tips for your business life, check out the Working Well blog – out fortnightly on Wednesdays, courtesy of Make Me A Plan’s Productivity Expert, Penny Le Kelly. Browse the latest edition here:

https://www.makemeaplan.com/news/stress-awareness-month-april-2023/