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When Urgency and Importance Clash,

Urgency Wins Every Time

As an Outpost Commander have you ever thought about all the plans, goals, and strategies your Outpost has tried to take on, but wonder why it’s so difficult do even accomplish just one?  Try to think of some: fundraisers, some high adventures, better website, better communication, training, commanders retreat, recruitment strategy, record keeping, COA’s, advancement matrix, et…

Good luck trying to bring this up on a Wednesday night.  You’ll probably have the same experience I have, while you’re talking, the person you are talking to is nodding and reassuring you, but trying to get back to a waiting parent, prepping their classroom, making copies, simply getting back to the real work.  And, it’s true.  Wednesday nights are a flurry of great work from a dedicated fellowship of believers.

I have heard it said that if you ignore the urgent, it can kill you today.  If you ignore the important, it can kill you tomorrow.   In the book The Four Disciplines of Execution, they call this the whirlwind.  It’s life.  It’s all the stuff that needs to get done but if your team only operates from within the whirlwind you’ll never grow.

I love how one executive puts it, “we don’t have dragons swooping down and picking us off, we have gnats getting in our eyes and once we can see clearly six months has gone by and we haven’t accomplished any of our goals.”

The whirlwind isn’t bad, but it is a powerful distraction that is centered on, “the way things are always done.”

So, what are some key disciplines that can help you win the urgent/important clashes?

Focus

We have all taking a magnifier outside and focused the sun’s rays to catch a leave on fire.  The same is true for your team.  Their collective energy focused on any one goal can accomplish anything.  One being the operative word here.  Your team will have to start focusing on less to accomplish more.  In the book 4DX, the Covey team calls this your wildly important goal and defines it this way, “failure to achieve it will make every other accomplishment seem secondary, or possibly even inconsequential”.

McChesney, Chris; Covey, Sean; Huling, Jim. The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals (p. 10). Free Press. Kindle Edition.

How do you find your wildly important goal? 

1. Mind Map It

Gather your team and try a mind map.  A mind map is a diagram used to visually organize ideas. It’s a nonlinear hierarchical and shows relationships among pieces of the whole.  It’s created around a single concept, drawn as an image in the center of a blank page.  Then you associate ideas and words around that central theme.  Major ideas are connected directly to the central concept, and other ideas branch out from those major ideas.  (Pizza Example) (See our Facebook page for ideas) Remember there are no wrong ideas here.  Just go with it until you have exhausted the stream if ideas and their subordinate details.  This will help you get a picture of the whirlwind and surface the most important goal.  Remember you will have to distill these down to one or two goals.  Experts say that those organizations with four of more don’t accomplish any of their goals.

2. Trial and Error

Tim Harford, author of The Undercover Economist, said, “You show me a successful complex system, and I will show you a system that has evolved through trial and error.” McChesney, Chris; Covey, Sean; Huling, Jim. The 4 Disciplines of Execution: Achieving Your Wildly Important Goals (p. 9). Free Press. Kindle Edition.

We often see others success and think it was a plug and play application that catapulted them to great results, but that’s just not how it works.  Remember your history: Wright Brothers, Saturn Rocket, Light Bulbs, even the Reese Cup.  Don’t be afraid of some trial and error and then go with plan A.

Our Stories:  Meetings time, tracking, registrations, fundraisers, etc…

You’re not going to find the perfect fundraiser out of the gate or execute it perfectly but it that’s one of your wildly important goals and your concentrate your team’s energy behind it you will succeed and learn so many valuable things that will move you forward.

Finding a wildly important goal and focusing the team’s energy behind is simple but not easy.  With a little practice, you can begin doing less to accomplish more.