Does your team have a sense of urgency?

Does your staff drive action items or do they let them happen? Do you have to check on action items you have assigned or does your staff update you on a regular basis? Do projects slip because your staff waited to follow up on action items?

I get astounded all the time by people who do not follow up on critical action items in a timely fashion. Some people do not have a sense of priority. Some people do not have a sense of how much time they will lose if they just let events play out. Some people just to not have the drive to follow through quickly.

You and your teams can easily slip products days or weeks or months without a sense of urgency.

Recently I was involved in a project that was coming to the end of an integration cycle. I was getting status on a Friday morning. I was told that one bug may have an unbounded solution. The manager went on to say that he thought he would get people together that afternoon to discuss it. I said no that we would meet in 10 minutes. If we had not met, then we would have lost at least one half week. By meeting immediately, developers had time to research solutions before the weekend and begin the work. These kind of issues occur everyday.

Here are things I know to do to help this issue:

• Hire people with a sense of urgency
• Set expectations about action items
• Spend time communicating to your group about urgency
• Hold people accountable for being late
• Developing a team with a sense of urgency will, many times, make the difference between success and failure.

More later ...