Driving Results: Cultivating a Sense of Urgency in Your Business

Business brain episode 454 for Friday, June 2, 2023. Greetings, folks, and welcome to Business Brain, the show where we take all kinds of things in our lives. Could be our business, could be our personal lives, could be a hobby, whatever. And we put them through the filter of our business brains to get a better perspective, to get a different perspective, and to unlock those keys for us to live that charmed Life. Sponsors include found.combrain, which is business banking that tracks your expenses, helps you find write offs and all kinds of things. And checker.com businessbrain, that's checker with just the R at the end. C H E C K R, where you can save 40 bucks off your first background check. We'll talk more about each of those in a little bit. For now here in Durham, New Hampshire on Casual Friday, I'm Dave Hamilton and.

In Lafayette, California, Happy Friday, Dave. It's Shannon Jean.

Yeah, man, I, yeah, it's Happy Friday. It's good. You know, I, I, I was noticing because I named it this way that our theme music is from 2017. That's six years old now.

Wow.

Yeah, right. Like the new theme music is the old stuff goes back, you know, five years before that or something, or four years before that. We intentionally didn't change it when we changed the name of the show last summer because we wanted there to be consistency other than the name and the focus. But, but I don't know, maybe it's, maybe it's time to find some more music.

I think so. I think it's great. Something always due for an upgrade.

Right?

You know, it's, it, not that there's a sense of urgency to it, but it would be good. I know we've talked about it a little bit before.

Yeah, man, it would be great. Last week we, or not last week, two days ago, we talked about how we're hustlers and we put in the effort and how to instill that in our teams and how important that is. And as you just mentioned, there's also a level of importance to maintaining a sense of urgency, to responding to people, to staying on top of all of those things that we need to do as business owners.

Yeah, that, that is, it's the other side to this conversation and effort is can you instill or how do you instill a sense of urgency in your organization? Not, not to the, to a point where people are making mistakes because they're, they're so pressured to run so fast.

Sure.

But.

Well, that's part of it. Like being allowed to make the occasional mistake is important.

That's good.

Yeah, yeah.

And not being like I used to tell people, look, do it. Always make the decision. Don't wait if you're unsure. I still want you to make the decision. However, you need to be open to constructive criticism because we want to analyze the decisions to say, okay, that was great, you made it and you, you solved that problem. This is some other ways that you know, I would have done it.

Absolutely. So I, I think there's the. How to instill the sense of urgency in others is certainly a good thing to talk about, but before we talk about that is maintaining and even instilling that sense of urgency in ourselves. And when I break this down, it's come for me. The best example I can give is the email that I read. And it distracts me because there's something in it, right? And let's say it's end of the day or even after hours, if I have bothered to check my email. My brain is on this thing. I am, it is now, you know, it has my attention. I can do one of two things. I can choose to try and ignore it and punt it off until the next day, let's say, or I can just deal with it in that moment. And if I've seen the email, I almost always will just dive into it because why not? My head's here.

Yeah, I would argue you're not going to ignore it even if you do ignore.

Right.

I'm going to be thinking about, going.

To delay my response is what I'm going to do, but I'm going to be thinking about it now. Sometimes thinking about it is a good thing. Knowing that, like trying to objectively look at what would my knee jerk response to this be? And then is that good or is there a little bit of emotion in that that maybe there shouldn't be? And if, if the answer is the latter, then I will often punt it off and let myself cogitate. But I know that I'm going to cogitate. Like, this is not an me choosing to ignore it, it's me choosing to think more about it, knowing that it's going to occupy my thoughts. But otherwise, if it's something that I can answer quickly, I will answer it quickly for someone. And I can tell you, as I'm sure you can tell me, that this has been chiefly responsible for a lot of my success over the years and my business's success, because people love responsive people. Like if they sent me something, if my head's already in it, I Just answer if I don't see it and I don't, and I don't answer until, you know, whatever, 8 o', clock, 9 o', clock, the next morning, that's fine. Like it's okay not to see something after hours, but if I see something and I'm like, and I know what I'm, how I'm going to answer and I can do it in two minutes or less. That's my, that's my metric on this. It can take me two minutes or less and then it's out of sight, out of mind filed. I don't have to think about it again tomorrow. I'm in.

Yeah, I love it. I think that's a great idea. I think it's, it's very important. And you can even, like you said, leading by example, we talked about, there's some physical ways you can do it as well as some sentence stems that you can become used to using all the time that help instill that sense of urgency. And I'd love to talk more about that.

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Okay, so I mentioned a couple of different sense of urgency methods and how to get that across. One is physical and another one's verbal. Let's talk about the physical one first. And that's just movement. You know, they have that management by walking around that phrase. But when you walk around to your organization, I would suggest that you move at a brisk pace. You can't run maybe. Well, maybe you can, depending how big it is. But when your people see you moving quickly with the sense of urgency that you need to get up to the front, you need to get to the warehouse to talk to these guys about X. You need to do whatever. You'll find that people start mimicking what you're doing and that physical manifestation, get out from your desk. I mean, you gotta get out, walk around and you know, we've talked about that before. Like I used to love walking around the block with an employee at one of our buildings. And you know, you need to move quick and they'll match your pace. You know, it, it really, it really works.

Yeah. I think perhaps I would state it as moving with a sense of purpose, not. Not necessarily with a Sense of urgency. And sure, just because you don't want to seem harried, you don't want to seem stressed. You want. It's control, focus. Yes. Right. Yes. So you're right.

You're not pulling your hair out. You're not setting fires around everybody. No, no, no.

I mean, that happens sometimes, you know, if you're not calm, but you want to show that you're calm and focused. So that sense of purpose when you're working virtually with people, I can't communicate strongly enough how much attending Zoom meetings from a standing position versus a sitting position changes that dynamic. Because you, they will see you moving physically. And when you are standing, you are kind of going to move around a little, because that's just how our human bodies work. And it's going to show that you are moving around, even just in your little space around your desk, with purpose. You are alert, you're focused, you are, like, attentive. You are standing at attention with them. You're not slouching in your chair. I. It is not uncommon for me to raise my desk up before a zoom meeting, even if I'm choosing to sit for the rest of the day and I just move my chair out of the way and I.

Way more dynamic, you know, Way more.

Yeah, it shows energy. Yeah.

Yeah, I love it. I think that's great. And, and for me, the verbal part of getting this sense of urgency is I, I, when I can. Sometimes you have to tell people, look, I need it by X.

Sure.

But I found a better way and often a more persuasive way to do it and is to ask them, how much time do you need to get this done?

Oh, let them set the deadline.

Yeah, it's way better. Because now some people slack, oh, I need two weeks or whatever, and you can call them back on that. Like, really? You know, that's how I would answer.

Yeah.

You know, if somebody told me an excessive amount of time, I would just say, really? Wow. You know, that's surprising to me. But people learn over time. When you ask them, how much time do you need to get this done? You want it done in a timely manner. And often they will set a faster turnaround time than you would have done.

Yeah. Because you're going to try and be reasonable to them. You don't want them to feel stressed. If you set the same deadline, like if, let's say, you know, how long, how much time do you need? If it was going to, if you were going to say Friday and they were going to say Friday, if They say Friday, they will feel less stressed about that than if you said the exact same day or even if you said two days later. Because they set the deadline, they're in control. Yeah. Yeah.

I think they might feel more stressed though, Dave, because I think they're going.

To get it done, but I don't think they're going to be stressed about it.

Maybe not stress. Maybe a different sense of accountability.

Yes, it's the accountability. Yes.

Not stress. That they. Because they said it, they verbalize it. Maybe you have. Yeah, you have to prompt them a little bit, perhaps. Especially if somebody's new to your organization and you're like, hey, you know, okay, how much time do you need to get this done? We've developed, we had this conversation. These things are going to happen. Tell me how much time you need. And I just think that you trying that method, you might be surprised at how often deadlines that you would normally have set are. You get much quicker turnaround time from people that set them themselves.

I agree. You know, in the last episode, you said something when we were talking about putting in the effort, you said, always be following through, getting things done. I think when we're talking here about maintaining that sense of urgency and responsiveness, I would say always be following up. Make sure that. And you can do this with your employees and you can instruct them and train them to do this with everyone. When I send out a proposal, I. I make a note to follow up in whatever, two days, three days or something like that. Whenever I'm dealing with, with people, I always make a note to follow up if they haven't gotten back to me. Now, the system I use for that is a people called. Is a people, is a. A service called SaneBox. And it's, it's amazing. I just, All I have to do is BCC an address like 2D for two days. Or I could BCC two days@sanebox.com and then if someone doesn't respond to me within two days, it puts it back in my inbox and that's how I know to reply. It's it like that is life changing. Yeah. So, you know, always be following up. I think it's really important to. And train your staff both by following up with them and then by literally training them, you know, like I just did here. Use sanebox. Use some sort of system so that you don't have to try and remember because our memories are terrible. We think they're good. They're not. If you think your memory is good, that's your biggest risk right now in your business if you think you'll remember everything, that's the problem you need to solve. And I know you didn't want to hear this on a Friday, but you know better today than tomorrow so go fix it.

Yeah, but if you, but you know, if you have tricks or methods that, that you've used to have the sense of urgency, please share them with us. We'd love to hear feedback at BusinessBrain Show. We want to share them with other listeners. Share these best practices and you get a chance to win a MacBook Air. We're going to give away this year.

Like he said, feedbackusinessbrain show and you can be entered to win that MacBook Air. We love all the emails that are coming in from all of you folks. We love hearing from you. It's fantastic. Please check out our sponsors sponsors found.com brain and checker.com businessbrain. Keep living that charmed life folks and we'll see you next week.