Urgency pushed onto another is almost always an attempt to rescue our own flawed strategy.

Urgency pushed onto another is almost always an attempt to rescue our own flawed strategy.

We also all recognise that our own worst performance is revealed when someone places their urgency on us.

We may have been moving slowly but now there is someone behind us pushing and our instinct is to push backwards, it’s how we are wired.

Even dogs resist when pushed or pulled.

We all recognise this to be true. We see it daily with our partners and our children as well as those we work with.

The single worst strategy for creating speed is urgency.

A strong component of ADHD is a lack of clarity of outcome and it plagues us all in many areas but most in those were we are being rushed.

We don’t have a clear idea of what we are trying to create so we become distracted, we get pulled towards areas where we do have clarity.

The more urgency that is placed on us externally the more fuzzy we become in what needs to be done.

The best strategy is for speed is clarity of outcome and clarity of action steps and these things cannot be pushed in, they must be drawn out.

Speed is the result of listening and asking questions.

Apply to Work with Me

Want the next one before it’s public?

CXO Secrets is where I send the thinking that doesn’t make it onto the blog — short, direct, no fluff.

Subscribe to CXO Secrets

Want more of this, in book form?

Be Where You Are: Conversations with a CEO turns these ideas into real stories from actual CEO conversations — no filler.

Get the Book
Previous
Previous

you wake up in the morning and you feel however you normally feel.

Next
Next

This week I turned 43.