The Importance of Urgency

I’ve always been one to feel that a sense of urgency equates to business success and that pushing yourself to exceed expectations is a prime key to achieving productive results.  But just how important should a sense of urgency be to help foster success in your business? 

This concept of urgency struck a chord with me as I read Katherine Bell’s recent Harvard Business Review online blog, “Frontline Leadership” about how John Meyer, CEO of Acxiom, has been affected by his earlier career.  You see, before Acxiom, Meyer was in the Air Force and worked in an underground bunker where he controlled the potential missile launching of 150 nuclear warheads.  Faced with such extreme pressure, especially in a time sensitive environment, Meyer developed a deep appreciation for the urgency of his business.

Now my business life has been a far cry from the responsibility of having the firing of nuclear missiles at my fingertips, but I can understand the sense of urgency in such a setting.  For me, the bulk of my professional career has been in the specialty retail industry, where accountability and urgency were engrained in me at an early stage.  It grew to become the core of my commitment to providing the best customer service at all times.

I recall one of my favorite stories of urgency in my retail life centering on something as benign as a feather.  One day, I received a phone call from a selling associate in one of our stores in Houston saying that an expensive special order gown just received for her customer was defective.  Bear in mind that the gown was not defective, but rather, an exotic feather artfully sewn into the material was damaged.  Our only option was to obtain a replacement gown from the designer, but this was not a simple task, for the gown had to be imported from France.

Being in logistics, my role was to successfully import the replacement gown in time for the customer’s social function on Saturday night.  But the challenge was that it was now Wednesday, with a mere three days and counting to achieve our goal to import an item that normally takes seven days from start to finish.  The communications with France were hastily executed and the gown was promptly shipped.  Upon arrival in the U.S., we coordinated with the proper government agencies to clear the gown for delivery to our facility in Dallas.  Once in our hands, we dispatched an associate to hand carry the gown on a plane to Houston Saturday morning for inspection by the selling associate who then drove the cherished item to the customer’s house in time for her evening event.

In an odd way, maybe I had my fingertips close to the “retail nuclear missile buttons” for that task, but it reinforced in me how displaying a true sense of urgency can create a success.  That incident propelled me forward to understand the importance of urgency and to keep it at the forefront of my business philosophy.