Urgency

Patience and Urgency - Part 2

Last week's blog post was formed from a question I received from one of our readers. If you missed the post, you can read Part 1 here. The main question was:

How Can We Have Patience and Urgency at the Same Time?

Growing up as an 8-year-old boy in Central Illinois, I loved baseball. But maybe even more than the game itself, I loved the Chicago Cubs. 

Ernie Banks at first base, Glen Beckert at second base, Ron Santo on third base, Don Kessinger at short stop, Jim Hickman in right field, Don Young in center field, Billie Williams in left field, and my favorite, Randy Hundley behind the plate. 

If it was a really great day, Fergeson Jenkins was on the mound as the pitcher. And Old Jack Brickhouse was quoting Ernie Banks, begging the teams to “play two games”.

I just love the Chicago Cubs! In those days the Cubs were on WGN TV and the games started at 1:05 pm. I could watch an entire game on TV and then go out and grab the guys and have enough daylight to play our own game. If we were lucky, we could get two in that day as well. I loved the Chicago Cubs so much, I dreamed of being one. Playing all kinds of organized baseball, the game as an 8-year-old came pretty easy to me and I loved it!

Then, as I got a little older, something began to change. The pitchers could throw the ball at different speeds. As a batter, as long as the ball came to me straight and fast, I could hit it a mile. But then, as the pitchers got older they learned not only how to throw the ball at different speeds, they could make it curve as well. If the speed was slightly different, it threw off my timing and the ball became very hard to hit.

I know I am not alone out there. I can only imagine how many of you had similar dreams. My dreams of playing for the Chicago Cubs ended when I just couldn’t hit the dreaded curveball.

The curveball in Baseball is known as an off-speed pitch. It has two primary features: it is thrown at a slower speed and it moves off a straight line. This means that the hitter has to be patient in order to be able to make contact with the ball. As a batter, if you can be patient and wait for the ball to get to the plate, and you can see it move, then that ball becomes easy to hit. The problem is that it really isn't so easy!

Patience

As I grew older, the pitchers gained more skill and the baseball kept moving at different speeds and on different lines, so I started to strike out more and more.  The more I would strike out, the harder I would swing at the ball and the more impatient I became. I was so frustrated, I would swing the bat at where I thought the ball would be only to whiff and hear the umpire call “strike three!” 

I just didn’t have the skill as a young player to be patient and wait for the slower speed pitch. In my brain, the ball should have been coming at a faster speed and I found it really hard to just wait for it.  If I could have been more patient at the plate, maybe, just maybe I could have worn those blue pinstripes of my beloved Chicago Cubs. 

Patience, according to Merriam Webster “is an ability to wait without becoming annoyed or upset”. For me, it is being able to suspend your personal need for satisfaction and action. For leaders, patience is all about being able to slow down those fast-paced exchanges with others in order to facilitate higher-quality interactions and better decision-making. 

It seems like the faster things go, or the more urgently we feel the pressure, the more we want to execute NOW! Just like trying to hit a curveball, trying hard or succumbing to the feeling of urgency doesn't help us hit it. What leaders need is an ability to slow their world down. 

As the pressure in the organization builds, as the requests from senior management become stronger and more frequent, most people will feel this urgency and just want to do something. If we are doing something, we feel good. It doesn’t matter if it is the right thing, at least we are trying.  It is a bit like me trying to hit the curveball. At least I went down swinging. didn’t hit the ball. But at least I did something. I wasn’t successful, but I tried.

I think the key is to be aware of what the pressure or speed of the change is doing to you and not become annoyed or upset. Once frustration starts to set in, now we are putting additional pressure on ourselves, and our ability to perform is drastically reduced.

3 Coaching Strategies for Being Patient

Patience is not racing ahead in one’s thought processes while missing the nuanced, but important information that others are trying to share. Sure you want organizational change. Yes, you need it now! But putting so much pressure on yourself could cause you to miss critical things that others need to provide input on. Here are 3 things I work on with my coaching clients when patience is a desired virtue:

  1. Write a plan. It is amazing to me how many leaders do not want to sit down and write out a simple plan. A plan that includes people, times, dates, and objectives.  Just writing out a simple timeline can help calm our minds down so that we can see the speed at which we need to move. Then, if we need to move faster, we all are working from the same plan.

  2. Use STOP.  This is a model I use to help clients slow down and think. It needs to be implemented before you feel the pressure building. However, if you find your mind racing, it can be used then too. The strategies are simple, but the implementation isn’t always so easy. Like learning to hit a curveball though, with practice, this can be a valuable tool.

3. Gates. I use the analogy of being on a walk. Going from one place to another when all of a sudden something changes or you start to feel pressure. When you do,  think of the following 3 questions as “gates” you can walk through just to slow yourself down and give yourself some time:

  • Gate 1: Ask yourself “Is It True?” What evidence is there that what you are experiencing is real? So many times, we put so much added pressure on ourselves that is unnecessary. If it is not true, then there is likely no reason to continue this mental exercise. Just stop at the first gate. If it is true, then proceed to Gate 2. 

  • Gate 2: Ask yourself “Is It Necessary?” Many times, being a leader myself, something might be true, but I just don’t need it. For example, I might feel like I am being attacked, but is it really necessary for me to defend myself? Just because I feel it, doesn’t mean I need to act on it. If it is not necessary for you to act, then you can stop. You have talked yourself off the ledge and there is no reason to move on. If it is both true and necessary, proceed to Gate 3. 

  • Gate 3: Ask yourself “Is it kind?”. Sure it might feel better for me to unload on someone, or make another department my scapegoat, but is it kind? Would I want someone to say the same thing about me? It might be true, it might be necessary, but if what I am about to say is hurtful or lacks compassion, then should I really walk through that gate? 

What all three of these strategies do is help you develop some patience in the face of urgency, tension, and complexity.  They are meant to help you slow down and think.  

Who knows, someday someone in your organization might throw you a curveball and you might just hit it out of the park!

Patience and Urgency - Part 1

I received an interesting email from a leader last week asking me if I take requests for blog topics. I wrote back to her and let her know, YES I love it when folks engage and are looking for tips or tricks to enhance their leadership life. The question was so well-formed that I asked her for permission to quote it. 

I love leaders who care about their organizations! I really get the sense that this leader both wants to personally be brought into what senior leadership is seeing and cares enough to wrestle with such difficult questions.  

As a leader, if someone in your organization wants to go to lunch or grab a virtual coffee and ask a question like this, I think you should find a way to give them a raise. I have worked alongside too many folks who would just throw their hands up in the air and cast blame on the organization for the lack of productivity. What I love about this question is that there is no blame here, just a leader seeking to contribute. 

The Question

Her question was:

“If you're taking requests, how about something on patience with organizational readiness during times of change?

Lately, we have received several calls to action from senior leadership that incremental changes are not enough...we must make big changes (and in a relatively short time frame).

Oh, and all of this is supposed to occur in a matrix organization devoid of hierarchy.   I find that I struggle to find patience when we identify high-impact opportunities (to do things better, faster, more cost-effectively) that, in reality, will still take 6-18 months to persuade all the affected stakeholders to even START.  No tears or anger, just a lack of productivity.”

I am going to dissect the question as a series, a multi-week post. I am particularly intrigued by this question because at its core, the organization seems to be asking for two different things. Not only are there multiple requests, but they also seem like they are polar opposites.

Patience…………………………….and…………………………………….Urgency

How can we have patience and urgency at the same time? 

On the surface, these attributes seem to be time responses to the same trigger. And in some sense they are. 

When faced with dilemmas like this, I like to separate out the attributes and see if they really are on the same linear plane. Are they really polar opposites?  If we separate the attributes and put each on its own line, can we find any new or interesting ways to look at the problem?

My good friend and organizational change expert Dr. Drew Boyd, writer of Inside the Box Thinking would probably call this “division”. You see, Drew maintains that innovation does not come from what we do not know, but from what we do. So if we give our problem a new definition, we might learn from it. So I did the following:

Patience…………….

And 

Urgency……………

As soon as I wrote the problem on two different lines, the thought came to me that we are likely talking about two different things entirely.  I went back and read the email that my leader friend wrote to me and saw the problem anew. Here is what I am now seeing:

Individual Patience

And

Organizational Urgency

If we put each of these on some sort of linear graphic it could look something like this:

Individual Patience……….and…….Individual Impulsiveness

Organizational Urgency…and……Organizational Stagnation

What this graphic representation does for me is it helps me see how I need strategies for both myself and the organization. The problem with leaving the attributes on the same line is that my brain sees them as the same thing and if I have emotion about them, one will spill over into the other.

By separating out the issues, I can gain clarity and formulate a plan. So now that the question is clearer I can search for better answers to both of these problems.

How can I be more patient?

How can I help the organization gain a sense of urgency?

Next week, in part two, I am going to answer both of these questions and give some tips and strategies that leaders can use in their everyday practice. 

Until next week, I have an assignment for you:

Sit for 15 minutes each day with your journal and reflect on how you can be more patient. 

I really want you to try this. Don’t do anything else while you do this exercise (well maybe have a cup of coffee or hot tea). Just sit quietly with no radio or distractions on and write what it feels like for you to be patient.

If you do this exercise for a day or two, I would love it if you would write a comment below and let me know what the experience was like for you.