“There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all.” – Peter Drucker
Many business leaders put in long hours and are always “busy” at work. However, this frenetic level of activity does not necessarily mean they are working on the right things.
How can this be?
In a turbulent and disrupted business environment like we find ourselves in today, it is very easy for time-starved executives to fall into “firefighting” mode – spending their days jumping from one urgent issue to the next. While it may be psychically rewarding to always feel needed, to cross off many to-do’s each day, and come home exhausted after a hard day at work…it is also a dangerous trap for leaders.
I call it the efficiency trap.
Why is it a trap? Because if you are not careful about how you spend your time, it becomes very easy to spend all your time efficiently working on the wrong things. By their very nature, urgent items tend to beat out important ones, and consume all our valuable time in the process.
The key takeaway: Being efficient at addressing urgent but less important issues does not necessarily make you more effective in the long-term.
Use the Eisenhower Matrix to Direct Your Focus
In the world of time management and productivity improvement training there is an old framework credited to General Dwight D. Eisenhower. The aptly named Eisenhower Matrix is a helpful management tool to help prioritize activities by considering their urgency and importance. It looks like this:
The logic behind it can be interpreted from various public speeches, where Eisenhower explained how he prioritized issues: “Especially whenever our affairs seem to be in crisis, we are almost compelled to give our first attention to the urgent present rather than to the important future.” He went on to clarify, “I have two kinds of problems, the urgent and the important. The urgent are not important, and the important are never urgent.”
Following this logic, many leaders incorrectly interpret the framework as prioritizing Urgent/Important. In effect prioritizing quadrant I (the green box in the graphic below) over all the others:
Unfortunately, this is exactly how most leaders spend their days. In crisis mode. Putting out fires. While they may be very efficient in solving immediate problems for their organizations, they may not be very effective in addressing long-term strategic challenges with what little time they have left.
As Stephen Covey went on to explain in his famous Seven Habits of Highly Effective People book, we spend most of our time in quadrant I and III because they are “urgent” and thus steal our attention. We also tend to spend more time than we should in quadrant IV, because these are easy distractions and allow us to procrastinate hard things while appearing busy.
All of this activity effectively leaves no time for the most valuable and important quadrant of all, quadrant II. Quadrant II is where we plan, reflect, strategize, are creative, nurture important relationships, and prepare for the future.
Effective leaders should spend most of their time in quadrant II:
Ironically, when leaders spent more of their time in quadrant II (the strategic planning frame) they can also anticipate and prevent many of the distracting quadrant I crises from occurring in the first place.
We Are Attracted to the Urgent
As humans, we are naturally attracted to bright shiny objects. These can take many forms. Sometimes they look like a neon billboard, a provocative advertisement, or an urgent crisis. In either case, it is interesting to note that science backs this up.
The Journal of Consumer Research recently conducted a study to examine how individuals decide what to work on when faced with tasks of mixed urgency and importance. The researchers discovered an interesting pattern: the test subjects paid more attention to time-sensitive tasks over tasks that were less urgent, even when the less urgent tasks offered greater rewards.
This quirk of human psychology – called the “Mere-Urgency Effect” – helps to explain why many leaders struggle with prioritizing their tasks. We have a natural inclination to prioritize tasks with an urgent deadline over tasks without any urgency regardless of the long-term payoffs or negative impact.
The Connection to VUCA Strategic Planning
We know that a strategic plan is useless unless leaders and their teams focus on execution. This bias to action is critical. By developing a robust VUCA Strategic Plan and following an effective Management Cycle cadence, leaders can stack the odds in their favor and help drive successful outcomes.
Sadly, many strategic plans fail. There are many reasons for this, but one of the most common is leadership distraction. By focusing on immediate urgent issues, they shift attention away from long-term strategic execution.
Does this mean the effort to produce the strategic plan was a waste of time? Not necessarily.
Since a well-thought-out strategic plan has articulated what is most important for the future of the organization and how to get there, it provides a great filter for leaders to evaluate how they should spend their time each day
The strategic plan ensures a focus on doing the right things. Being effective instead of just efficient.
Strategic Questions to Ask
So, how do we know if we are spending our time on the right things?
The place to begin is by examining the work you are doing, and the work of each of your team members across the organization. For each activity, ask questions around the value delivered, and if it has any impact on moving the organization forward. A few suggestions:
- Why are we doing this activity?
- Is it going to move us towards one (or more) of our strategic objectives?
- Is this in line with our Mission, purpose, values?
- Does this activity fit within our stated strategy and plan?
- Are we neglecting quadrant II activities at the expense of more urgent, or less important activities?
- Bonus questions: If it truly is a necessary activity? Could we do it more efficiently? Could it be outsourced?
Focus on Effectiveness
The next time you tell yourself “I was so productive today…” be sure to consider if you spent your time on the right things.
When it comes to strategy execution, effectiveness beats efficiency every time. It is much better to be 1% effective at doing the right thing than 100% efficient at doing the wrong thing! Over time, you can work on improving the speed of execution.
Effectiveness in doing the right activities will bring us closer to achieving our strategic objectives, and bring the organization closer to achieving its vision of success.
-Onward