Abbe’s co-worker is so laid-back. “He waits on everything,” she says. “He doesn’t return calls or respond to emails. He loses orders all the time. I wish he’d show some interest in his job!” The guy Abbe works with probably doesn’t lack interest. What he lacks is urgency. Urgency: the instinct to move rapidly to impact an outcome. Urgency can’t be taught. Or can it?First a person needs to know what urgency is. The same guy who is slow to respond to customers likely would recognize urgency in other settings. Imagine walking into a sandwich shop, placing an order and hearing, “Oh, let me get back to you on that.” Instead, a good server moves rapidly to make the sandwich happen, because they know what’s on the line: customer satisfaction, money, their job.
