Sense of urgency

Why it is noticeable and usually used as measure of someone's performance?

This is not the highest attitude/skill but not having this may be critical. During performance feedback, this is the first attitude/skill noted by supervisors/managers among their staff. You can spot at first encounter who among the staff can deliver work timely and accurately. Not all people know how to show this to their supervisors/managers. It occurred to me that we are not all the same and some may be knowing what sense of urgency is and how to show this for the first time and so here we go.

Sense of urgency is having that understanding that you need to act promptly, decisively and without delay and actually doing it.

Of course, we cannot always do that, right? Sense of urgency is not an absolute act-immediately stuff. It also comprise of other skill sets such as good judgement, delegation, communication, etc. When you have sense of urgency, you process an instruction/event/work/email first and then act according to your judgement in the most prompt way.

Example:

John receives an email from his client requesting for a minimal revision in the report. He already started to revise the report when another supervisor requested him for another urgent work. Since the work is urgent, he worked on that first and spent the whole day completing it. The next days, emails continue to pile up. Since the first work is only minimal, he forgot about it. It is already 3 days after and the first client followed up with some dismay. But prior to that, his supervisor also followed up him to reply to the overdue request of the client.

What went wrong here? Not acting promptly to a minimal work. Work that will take you 5-10 minutes to complete is to be prioritized rather than urgent work that will take a whole day to finalize. The 5-10 minutes may not hurt too much the urgent work. And no one likes to receive negative feedback from a client regarding small matters. Remember, you build your brand in how you handle small things.

Another example:

Mandy is assigned to a large project. She does her best to study and understand the process. She had been experiencing some difficulties lately due to multiple demands that fall on the same due dates. Her emails and chats pile up for requests/follow ups, telephone continue to ring, client now demand the reports, etc. Since she is a newbie, she believes that she should be able to conquer difficulties and not seek help as long as she can manage it. Now, everyone in the team was affected. Her supervisor needs to get the work from her since the manager is asking for it already. Client is annoyed when he received the reports a day late.

What went wrong here? Difficulties not communicated properly. You may think that, "Where is sense of urgency there?" As mentioned, sense of urgency is a set of various skills. If you are not able to communicate difficulties and seek help, you are not able to act promptly to instructions, deadlines, requests, because the level of work in your hands is already beyond your ability to cope up.

We should not also misunderstood this. Delivering promptly does not mean you just provide so that you can send reports to your boss and go home. This is also delivering with the best results possible.

Yes, this is a skill. Some people have this naturally but some acquired this through observation, research, mentoring/feedback and practice.