Dear stakeholder, It’s been a while since I’m willing to make this -possibly obvious- suggestion: stop labeling your requests as “Urgent”. I know, this is a well known rule that you understand, and don’t need my speech about. But, still…
You probably heard of the fable “The Boy Who Cried Wolf”, it’s a good way to explain kids about the posible consequences of lying. It tells a story about a young shepherd who decided to play a bad joke to his neighbors by asking them for help to defend his sheep from a supposed wolf, after laughing at them a couple of times, people stop taking the shepherd’s alarms seriously. As you can imagine (or recall), when an actual wolf showed up all sheep was eaten, while the The Boy Who Cried Wolf was uselessly asking for help.
We could think about miscommunication as involuntary lies, so improper use of the “Urgent” word could be easily transpolated to the fable. But it goes beyond that.
Even when the “U” word is properly used, it generates different -usually negative- side effects:
- Stress. Yah, that. I never saw an example of “urgent good news”. I can’t even imagine that situation unless there is a joke involved or a necessary urgent -and stressing- reaction.
- Context switching. You know this is expensive in time and energy. When people that trust you see an Urgent incoming request from you, it’s likely they stop whatever they’re doing to peek into the “U” thread. Once they did that, even after decide they can’t/won’t help, their focus is already drained away.
- Frustration. In most cases, Urgent means Unexpected. Why something Expected would escalate to Urgent if not because of bad planning/execution/communication?. So, besides the stress, having to switch to unexpected tasks -instead of working on a designed plan- happen to be very frustrating because of the unavoidable feeling that plans are ignored and planning was a waste of time. Also, the lack of ability to see if the short-term goals will be met can be annoying for all players.
There are more side effects when “Urgent-ing” becomes a habit:
- Deprioritization. Urgent implies just two levels of prioritization: Urgent and Not Urgent, so when people get more than one Urgent problem to care about, how can they know which one is the most critical one?, they are required to establish priority as U-issues arise, which is a great way to drop productivity. Besides the energy cost of on-the-fly prioritization, it turns impossible to project the current picture (on-going plan), so you don’t get to ask how well are we doing. Moreover, is easy to confuse Urgent with Important, but those aren’t necessary the same thing, too many Urgent issues will silently push the important stuff back.
- White noise. As the The Boy Who Cried Wolf illustrates, the more “U” word you use, the less impact it has. This is obvious and probably the most universal -non subjective- effect. People will start hesitating about your sense of Urgency, therefore they will end treating all of your requests with the same priority or, even worse, ignoring them.
- Hurt reputation. An effect that could come with the point above. After firsts sings of doubtful criterion (signs are subjective, btw), teammates and collaborators could get concerned about your skills and professionalism overall. All kind of paranoid ideas could grow about your intentions and assumptions, and even your qualification for your position could be questioned (not because your abuse of the “U” word, but for your apparent of lack of control and anticipation).
How can I avoid being an “Urgent-holic”?
Let the issues escalate by themselves. This is, before tagging a thread as Urgent, ask yourself the following questions:
- Does this request worth suffering all side-effects mentioned above?
- How this request will fall into the current picture?
- Can it wait until next goals iteration? (if any)
What if people don’t notice my emails?
There are a few thinks you can try…
- Add due date to your requests. When you need to introduce an unexpected task, instead of just making alarming noise, you can calmly communicate that it needs to be taken care of before a given date (or some other task).
- Involve relevant people to the thread (being careful you don’t spam anyone). Maybe the target person your are trying to reach isn’t available, so having fallback actors can be very useful. Try not just cc’ing managers because it’s yet another bad habit, it creates friction and stress. It’s usually unfair; You shouldn’t forget that if the issue is Urgent, it’s probably a team mistake. So, again, relevant people.
- Explain why it hurts. Don’t ever underestimate people’s empathy, make sure you tell them why you need what you’re requesting and, of course, don’t forget to be gentle.
- Engage discussion. A good way to get people interested is trying to get answers or opinions. Instead of just demand something to get done, you can try asking if your request would solve your problem. This makes people feel included, give them the opportunity to get contextualized and can even open your options to different solutions.
I’m sure the people you work with will appreciate you deal with the pain of those so-called Urgent issues as much as you can. If you do so, you and everybody will understand the intrinsic weight of the “U” word.
