![]() Not long after starting his presidential mandate Eisenhower gave a speech during a conference in which he stated “I have two kinds of problems: the urgent and the important. He approached every situation with a calm and rational mind, reaching a solution that would avoid war without putting a finger on America’s prestige. One of Eisenhower’s main focuses was maintaining world peace. He procured the truce of the Korean War and carried forward the Cold War firmly despite hoping to improve the relationship between Americans and Soviets. He was the President of the United States of America from 1953 to 1961 and a former commanding general during World War II. Someone who did distinguish very clearly between these two concepts was Dwight David Eisenhower. The Eisenhower matrix History and evolution As in normal daily activities it applies likewise to tasks in projects, programs and portfolios, where it is not hard to confuse what is truly important from what is just urgent. It is this power of “the now” and the immediate response to our actions. We feel the urgency of keeping up with all this data, giving it all equal relevance. Nowadays, we have made our problems a bit more complex than that, with the constant increase of the use of technologies information becomes more and more powerful and more and more pressing. Back then, the civilizations main concerns were to hunt, make fire and find shelter to live to the next day. As the start of this article anticipated, we live in a world where we place our energy in short-term issues rather than in the long-term strategy, just as our ancestors did. And viceversa, people mistake urgent activities being always important. Important tasks are also sometimes urgent, but that is not usually the case. It requires proactiveness and initiative. ![]() Oppositely to urgent tasks, they don’t act on us, you have to go for them, the action comes from within you and not from the deadline of the task. As Brett McKay mentions: “Important tasks are things that contribute to our longterm mission, values, and goals.”. On the other hand, an important task is one that provides results. If you weigh out the two tasks it will result in the simplest task (replying the email) being more tempting than completing the more time consuming but more important task. Most probably the task you are doing has a bigger outcome magnitude, however responding the email will give you a sense of accomplishment and effectiveness, which is much more rewarding (at least for the now). The pressure of receiving a new email in your inbox and leaving the notification hanging until you are done with your current task is unbearable. An example of urgent tasks are incoming mails or phone calls. These tasks transmit the feeling that you have to act on them as soon as they are put on your desk. If we look up the word urgency in the dictionary it is defined as “the quality or state of requiring immediate action or attention.” The definition itself highlights the instantaneous responsiveness urgent tasks urge. With the Eisenhower matrix as a starting point this article explains how to achieve effectiveness in project, program and portfolio management by identifying the tasks that are urgent but important and leaving out the ones that are distracting. Urgent activities are much more visible short-term, whereas important matters will pay off on the long run. This article aims to portray the current society in which we live in, where outcomes are needed “for yesterday”. Eisenhower developed a method to classify and plan tasks in relation to these two factors: importance and urgency, in which tasks are organized in a matrix of 2x2, categorized in Do, Schedule, Delegate and Don’t do. There is a global misconception of what is important and what is urgent when it comes to task prioritization. The success rate of projects increases when prioritizing, but not only, it also plays an essential role in the alignment and focus of management teams in the consecution of goals and eliminates uncertainty in decision making for operational teams. And in some cases non of the two are performed. The leaders responsibility is to prioritize tasks and projects, and to make the right decisions while doing it. One of the most important parts of task management is prioritizing. In order to fulfill the established triangle, and therefore the project be a success, there must be an effective task management amongst people in the team. The quality of a project in the center of it all is constrained by the administration of these three factors. This is what is known as the Iron Triangle. A successful project is one that can accomplish a balance between three factors: scope, time and cost.
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