The "Urgency" Lie

Managers (and sometimes even your parents) love to tell you how "urgent" everything is. But, like, is it really?

You hear about a ‘sense of urgency’ often in the business world. Here’s a Wharton interview with the CFO of Price Waterhouse, for example; the title is about living with a sense of urgency. John Kotter of Harvard Business School wrote a book literally entitled A Sense of Urgency.

I’m of two minds on this book, but generally I think any discussions about a sense of urgency are straight-up managerial tricks. Let’s explore.

A sense of urgency and first-mover advantage

I’d assume most executives and senior decision-makers, when preaching a sense or urgency to their lieutenants on any topic or project, will probably talk in some form or fashion about the first-mover advantage. Essentially, they’re telling their people “We gotta get there first. We gotta capture that market share.” This is logical, because business tends to deify war, and in war planning, “getting there first” makes a lot of sense. The problem is, it’s not really true in business planning.

Here’s an Adam Grant TED Talk that’s been making some rounds:

He talks about “surprising habits of original thinkers,” which feels like a Fast Company click-bait headline — but it’s a good talk. One of the things he mentions near the end is that first-mover advantage is actually a farce; oftentimes the third or fourth company into a market wins it, which is logical. That fourth company in can iterate on the first three and correct their mistakes. See also: most Apple products tend to be better in later versions, at least IMHO.

As The Washington Post pointed out in 2012, Google is a great example of the first-mover advantage being a myth. There were dozens of search engines before Google popped big. Remember DogPile? Now Google owns search. But they weren’t the first. Facebook wasn’t either. Remember Friendster? MySpace? Etc, etc.

So if the sense of urgency concept is tied back to the first-mover advantage concept, well, then the sense of urgency concept is flawed.

A sense of urgency and corporate mission