From a small northwestern observatory…

One thing I truly miss about running a large organization is the opportunity to mentor young people in the early stages of their life journeys. I hesitate to use the word “career” because that suggests a path that not everyone ends up following. For example, one young fellow came to work for us with us fresh out of his Masters degree program. I can’t recall if we were his first job or second, but he was pretty early in his career. After a few years, he decided to take off for New Zealand to hike and mountain climb. Somewhere along the way he met his special someone and came back to us. Then he decided to get his Ph.D. and did some remarkable research at the doctoral level. After a stint back with us, and a stint teaching college, he ended up as an equity partner at a fabulous tech company, where he continues to do interesting stuff.

In my own life, my best mentors were never my best friends. Bosses who tough on me, demanding, goal setting, and hard to please turned out to be the ones from whom I learned the most. As an example, one of the greatest Generals of the between-the-wars period was Fox Connor, who made a habit of finding young Army officers who needed grooming. One young Major joined General Connor’s staff at a point when his career was stagnating and the likelihood of getting into the Command and General Staff School (a necessity for further advancement) seemed distant. General Connor saw something in this young fellow that others hadn’t seen, and spent several years as a hard task master, teaching him how to be a senior officer. Finally, with General Connor’s encouragement, he made it into the prestigious school, and young Dwight Eisenhower graduated number one in his class.

One thing I used to do was give every new analyst I hired a copy of Stephen Covey’s Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. I didn’t expect them to use it as a cookbook, but it had some important ideas that young up-and-comers needed to know. However, in my humble opinion, one of Covey’s best ideas has been misinterpreted over the years, that of the 2-by-2 “important” versus “urgent” matrix. I have to admit that for a long time, I also misused this vital tool. It really wasn’t until later in my career that I “amended” the idea with a bit of my own seasoning, and my version is shown below.

The italicized numbers in red are my addition, and I’ll get to those in a minute. For so very many years, I focused my energies almost exclusively on the “Important and Urgent” tasks, and I fear many others do as well. “Important but not urgent” got put in a holding stack until they became urgent and often then got farmed out. “Urgent but not Important” tasks generally got farmed out to subordinates immediately, and tasks that were “Neither Important nor Urgent” ended up in the circular file cabinet.

After a while I learned that I was missing out on a lot of good stuff. Many “Important but not Urgent” tasks might not have seemed urgent to ME, but may have been urgent to someone else. I was missing out on a lot of good will (or worse, engendering “bad” will) by not giving these some attention. Worse, whenever I farmed stuff out to subordinates without at least a bit of personal attention, I was giving some folks the impression that their “important” problems weren’t “important” to me. The same was true with “Urgent but not Important” tasks, because, as I found, “important” or “not important” was often in the eyes of the beholder. Finally, the “neither urgent nor important” file often contained EITHER some neat stuff OR (worse) some stuff that had the very real potential to bite me in the behind if I wasn’t careful.

Thus, the numbers. They represent the proportion of my time that I try to spend on each of these areas. The proportions aren’t hard and fast, but they’re there to remind me not to neglect anything. Important and Urgent items still get my first attention. Rather than deal with “Important but not Urgent” items, I try to break those tasks down into manageable “to do” lists and process them over a period of time, keeping a good written record of what I’ve done and what remains to be done. (Yes, I’m an inveterate list maker.) “Urgent but not Important” stuff gets looked at but in proportion. Unfortunately, yes, some people get disappointed because at the end of the day, not every “Urgent” item gets addressed. Finally, I spend at least a little time everyday poking thru the “Not Urgent/Not Important” stack to make sure nothing bites me in the behind.

By the way, I still get bit, but not as often anymore.

Anyway, just some musings for a Wednesday afternoon. By the way, writing this blog is in the “Important but not Urgent” category.

John A. Kilpatrick, Ph.D., MAI

john@greenfieldadvisors.com