If Everything’s Urgent, Nothing Is

Some workplaces treat crisis as part of the job description. Every note gets the “urgent” stamp, every project turns into a scramble, and nobody blinks when the fire alarm gets pulled.

Most of these emergencies start at the desk, not in the field. Urgency becomes a habit, a way to skip planning or to look like you’re pushing the work forward. Deadlines stop meaning anything, and people rush through ordinary tasks like there’s a prize for exhaustion.

That kind of pace drains a team. After enough fire drills, the steady workers go into hiding, knowing tomorrow brings another one. Teams learn to slow themselves down because it’s the only way to survive the noise. Ironically, everything takes longer.

There are better questions underneath the commotion. If a regular Tuesday feels like a tornado, what’s the actual source? A fuzzy goal? A loose handoff? Is it a leader who rewards the hero at the end instead of the planning at the start? Bottom line, a calendar full of red flags isn’t a sign of intensity.

Steady leaders don’t wait for the panic. They define the work early and make sure people know what’s coming. They call out the fake emergencies before they build momentum. When you dig into these incidents, most shrink down to a simple oversight or a missing answer.

If you want to settle the place down, start by giving each deadline a date and leaving everything else alone. Let people breathe. Let them think. Watch who’s flooding the inbox with urgent tags and ask what they’re avoiding. Habits do more damage to a culture than any one mistake.

You’ll know things are turning when the room feels calm again. That calmness is a team getting its energy back. Urgency should be reserved for the work that earns it.

For the people,
Leland