Here’s the thing with urgency

It goes both ways.

If it’s urgent to you, it’s urgent to me.

Let’s say you and I are working together on a project. You express a sense of urgency to get it completed. I understand the urgent nature of your request, and furthermore, I embrace it. I get to work right away.

When urgent things come up, you drop what you’re doing to give them attention. Just like I put other projects on hold to work on your urgent one.

So, remember how I said it goes both ways?

My point is this

If you approach someone with an urgent matter, and they respond or deliver very quickly to meet your request, you should respond back just as quickly, with the same sense of urgency. It’s hypocritical – not to mention, rude – to expect someone to drop what they are doing to take care of something for you, and then you take your time getting back to them.

Here’s an example

If you assign a project to me at 6pm, and it needs to launch at 12noon the next day, and I finish it & email it to you at 10pm later that night… I should hear back from you first thing in the morning. I shouldn’t have to call you at 9:45am to see what’s going on.

When I speak with you in the morning, and you tell me you have looked at the work, and sent it to multiple people to review, a simple email confirming you received it is all that is needed.

In conclusion

If you tell someone else it’s urgent, it better be urgent to you—and it should stay like that all the way through to completion.

1 thought on “Here’s the thing with urgency”

  1. In the world I work in, everyone’s everything is URGENT…I know what you are saying. It’s just common respect. Unfortunately I find it works one-way more often than both ways…sad.

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