Team Alpha 375

7 Ways to Spot a True Sense of Urgency

1) A Winning Team: With a strong sense of urgency, people quickly identify critical issues and form strong teams that are committed to ambitious change even when those members are already working hard.

2) Vision and Strategies: Strong and committed teams organize the effort to find smart strategies and envision long-term outcomes when dealing with essential issues, even when the best strategies are hard to pin down.

3) Communication: High urgency teams inherently feel a need to persistently communicate the vision and strategies to the appropriate people to get them on board and generate still more urgency.

4) Empowerment: Those with a strong sense of urgency empower others who are dedicated to making a vision a reality by removing obstruction in their path.

5) Short-Term Wins: High urgency teams celebrate short-term victories and make them visible to the entire organization.

6) Never Give Up: After minor and/or great success, teams with a true sense of urgency never let their team slip back to complacent inertia. Instead they expand the effort and strive for improvement.

7) Making It Stick: Teams with a true sense of urgency feel duty-bound to find ways to make sure any change sticks by incorporating that change into the structure, the systems, and – most importantly – the culture.

Here is the truly amazing thing: Working with a sense of urgency actually requires less energy than complacency. And the rewards are ten-fold.