A sense of urgency! Guest: Fran Jakubowicz

Today, we’re talking about a sense of urgency in professional services firms.  There are (considerable!) benefits to knowing when to speed up and when to slow down. Having the skill to do that can be a game-changer in terms of keeping your team productive and motivated, reducing turnover, maximizing the value of your business development efforts and retaining client loyalty.

This conversation explores the full range of situations where sometimes a sense of urgency is:
- Completely lacking and, as a result, leaders experience the frustration of lost opportunities
- Non-stop go-go-go because leaders have lost their ability to distinguish true from false urgency

In this episode, we share stories and ideas from our own experiences of ramping up our response rate to slowing down and making space for planning, coordinating and collaborating. We even suggest some specific ideas to try if you are running into typical inner obstacles like perfectionism, hypervigilance and people pleasing. 

The tools we share (including leadership presence, communication strategies, priority management systems and ways to balance teams) have worked for us. So, we encourage our listeners to draw on these hard-won insights! 

To learn more about Fran Jakubowicz, please go to SunHouseMarketing.com.

You're listening to Get in the Driver’s Seat! We’re telling stories about leadership moments in small to mid-sized professional practices. I’m your host, Sandra Bekhor, Practice Management Coach for lawyers, architects, consultants and other professionals at Bekhor Management.

Transcript

Hello and welcome to the podcast. This is Get in the driver's seat. We're telling stories about leadership moments in professional practice. I'm your host, Sandra Bekhor, Practice Management Coach at Bekhor Management. 

Today, we're talking about a sense of urgency and the benefits of knowing when to speed up and when to slow down for professional services firms. I'm excited to introduce Fran Jakubowicz, CEO of SunHouse Marketing, a globally recognized digital marketing agency. With over 16 years of experience, Fran has spearheaded campaigns that have generated millions of leads and millions in revenue for clients across diverse industries, including tech, SaaS, pharma, law, healthcare, education and consumer goods. Welcome, Fran.

Thank you, Sandra, it's so nice to be here.

Yeah, it's nice to have you, and I really hope I said your last name correctly. You did. I was like cheering you on, because you're one of the few who actually got it right. 

Good. It's long, right? Okay, so I'm remembering one of our earlier chats. I don't know if you remember this. We still didn't know each other that well, and you started sharing with me your thoughts about the value of having a sense of urgency. And I happened to be leafing through this book, literally. 

Wow. 

‘A sense of urgency’ by Kotter. Literally, it was on my desk as we were having this conversation. It was such a funny coincidence, and so I thought this is perfect topic for our podcast today.

It's actually something I feel really close to, believe it or not, because it's part of my personality. It's part of my DNA. So I feel equipped to talk about it, for better, for worse.

Yes, and we have had lots of experience to work together on client stuff. I have witnessed that this is absolutely part of your leadership style, Fran. 

Yes. 

So why don't we start there? Can you tell us a little bit about how and why you naturally bring a sense of urgency to your work with your clients.

You know, I thought about this before we spoke, and honestly, it's in my DNA. If you were to meet, you know, my father and my siblings, they're actually, I think you've met, perhaps one of my siblings in a business environment, you'll see that we actually all, you know, sort of have this, that same character trait. It's sort of built in, I think it's part of the work ethic, not that you need to, you know, have that trait in order to be successful. But we all have that trait. So I really, actually believe it's in my DNA. But I've also found it to be extremely helpful for me as a marketing founder and as a marketer, because I'm especially in digital marketing, I'm in an environment that's forever changing, like there, it just never stays still. So the only way that I have learned to navigate that is by, you know, quickly maneuvering, and that does take a level of urgency. But also, I know that as a business owner, I appreciate urgency, a certain healthy type of urgency, when I work with consultants. I work with people who service my business that you know, they come across as someone who really cares and really wants to impact the work that I do. That type of urgency is fantastic for business.

Yeah. And do you feel how this natural sense of urgency that you have impacts your clients?

I think for the most part, they're very grateful because they feel very cared for. They feel that I'm on top of everything, and that they see I am trying to push forward activities that will benefit them and help their company grow. So for the most part, I think clients really do appreciate it. Now, sometimes that passion doesn't properly communicate, especially if you're dealing with a really laid back client, you know, who doesn't perhaps this isn't going to sound right, because it's not the right word. Who doesn't value time and urgency the same way I do. And then I have to, you know, take a step back and understand that this client isn't going to respond well to my normal mode of business conduct. But generally, people really appreciate it.

Right. They feel cared for. I love that phrase and the comment about the ones that aren't exactly in alignment is a perfect segue to my next question. So sometimes people understand the sense of urgency, but they don't act on it. And what are some of the ways that you have noticed people getting in their own way and missing out on opportunities because they responded too slowly.

It's very interesting, because a lot of it might be driven by fear or certain things that you need to check in on. Sometimes people don't respond well to urgency, because they feel like they might be making the wrong move. Sometimes it's because they have a strong perfectionist side to them, and they are afraid of missing a detail. I appreciate that so much, because actually that shows tremendous like care and value in their work. So when that happens, I have to have a conversation. Again, particularly because I'm in marketing, and everything does move super fast, you know, like I need to have that piece. Often, if I have a conversation, I check in to see, like, what is their big concern? Often I find, you know, there's a fear factor. Maybe perhaps I didn't give them enough information to help them move forward in whatever work they had to do. So it's always good to check in. And sometimes there's fear and sometimes it's perfectionism, and then, you know, it's important just to lay the groundwork that the goal here isn't to be perfect, but it's to move forward. You know, I'll take a step back. One of my favourite sayings is, I believe it's like a military saying, the enemy of good is perfect, or something like that. It's okay when, when you're trying to deliver and roll something out. It's okay to sort of come in with really good and not perfect, so that you're out there and you're beginning the process. Because I find over the 17 years that I've been in business, in my own business, and the many years before that, for working for others, that it's a lot of it is about the momentum of getting it started and getting it going, and then if you have a good process in place, things will fall into place nicely. 

I'm so aligned with that. Yeah. Perfect gets in the way of progress, yeah.

But, if I can just say there's also a different type of personality. I think we've all come across that type of person as well. That's when you're approaching this in a very unhealthy way. And you know, sometimes you see leadership that come in, and they have this huge level of urgency in a meeting, sometimes that masks something else that perhaps they don't really know what they're doing, so they're creating a little bit of chaos in order to sort of be perceived as someone who's super action oriented, when in fact, they're off kilter. Those actually are sometimes very dangerous personalities to work with them, although we've all sort of encountered them at different times. So I just wanted to mention that as well.

Yeah, that's fair, and we're going to look at all the different aspects of a sense of urgency on this podcast. So it's not all, yeah, go, go, go. There are many different sides to it. Can you just talk a little more about what you were saying earlier? Sometimes you notice the fear and you have to have a conversation with the person. Do you remember any stories where that actually helped, like, what did you say? Or do you remember anything about what happened afterwards?

Well, I'll tell you a frank and honest story, real life scenario. Because, as a business owner and somebody who manages the team, I'm always in a process of learning. As I mentioned, I run always with this sense of urgency. But when you're always running in that direction, with your team, at some point, one of two things can happen, if it's not done well. That is a certain type of fatigue sets in where Fran is urgent about so many matters all the time that you know, like it doesn't really matter all that much, meaning you have urgency fatigue, because when everything's urgent, then nothing's really urgent. So, you know, I had to learn to change my style of communicating so that that didn't happen. And you know, I'm fine to share those types of things, or it might have led to, you know, rushed or poor decision making. That's why processes and planning prior to an event are so important to do. And I'm lucky now that I'm a seasoned business owner and I've had the time to create those types of processes. But when I hadn't put those processes in place, I often saw that, like my big personality and my desire to just get to the finish line would sometimes stall my team, sort of paralyze them or they would just become fatigued. So that's a true story, and one that I've worked on and improved on, you know, to the point that now my team gets it, they get it. And nice things that I've seen that have changed over the years are things like, you know, from the very smallest thing, and that is responding quickly to clients or anybody actually, you know, that's something that's very important to me and I value. So I want to ensure that my team responds quickly also. So they know that during a business day, they have to respond, you know, even if it's to say, you know, I'm working on it, and I will get back to you by end of week, just to create acknowledgement, yes, I received your email. Yes, I hear you. Yes, I'm on it.

So it sounds like what you've learned over the years is how to prioritize. And do you have a priority system that you use? 

I do have a system.

Can you tell us about it, just high level?

Well, I have different systems for different processes. You know, because of the business that I'm in. One type of urgency that used to get created, for example, was working with, let's say, clients that were the wrong fit for our agency. You know, perhaps they were, I don't know, too small, or they're, I don't know. I can't think off the head what that might be. But one of the systems that we put into place was like a client assessment tool, where we would have questions that we would ask ourselves in advance to ensure that this client was in fact, going to be a great fit. You know, did they have a marketing budget? Did they understand the lifetime value of their client? Did they know what the revenue, potential revenue generation was for that client? Whatever those questions were, we made sure to lay it all out in advance, so that we weren't scrambling and creating negative urgency. And that was so profoundly helpful. So there's, you know, just one small area of our company where we you know, we had urgency, but it was negative urgency, so we created systems to move that away.

That's such a great story, and it's so relatable. You're reminding me of some of my earlier experiences in my career, before I started my business, and I had experiences on both sides of it. So one of them was, you know, where, who's really junior in this, in this job, and I was so overwhelmed, because I guess I had that, that scenario that you just described, where everything my boss said was urgent, urgent, urgent, urgent. And I was, I was like, frozen. I'm like, Okay, I literally don't even know where to start. And the manager came over to my desk one day, and she looks at my desk and it's like, literally heaping piles of paper. This is when we used to use paper. And she's like, she pulls something out, like, from the pile. Like she knows what she's looking for. She pulls this thing out, and she goes, Why is this still here? I'm like, Look at all this stuff I'm supposed to do. She goes, Yeah, but this one's urgent. And I learned so much in that moment. She's explained to me why that one was urgent. She said, if you do this one first, then the people who are going to be able to do the work, because it was a delegation task, then they will actually be able to do their work. Right now they're sitting idly. I was like, that's a prioritization skill, I just learned in the moment.

Right that she probably should have shared with you. If she prioritized what needed to be done, that would have really reduced a lot of stress for you. 

Yes, it would have, thank you. 

For sure. But then there are times to be urgent. You know, there really are times to be urgent. You know, we're talking about priorities. Like one of the areas that we provide services in digital lead generation, right? So our company will generate the qualified lead for the sales team, for example, and then they need to follow up with that lead, however that looks. It might be a phone call, it might be an email, might be WhatsApp or, you know, a message, text message. And if you don't follow up on that lead quickly enough, and that that potential prospect needs that service or product now and you haven't, you know, responded quickly enough, you're going to lose that that customer. So it's called speed to lead. And these are things you need to apply, and that's good urgency. That's real urgency. It's a fact, if you don't respond quickly to a lead, that lead will go elsewhere. So that those are the types of places where urgency has a really important place.

So and it sounds like as part of your prioritization system, what you've done is you've created categories, categories of tasks, so that it becomes almost easier for your team to assess for themselves, what is priority and what is lower priority.

True, but we also do check in with each other. The senior team members check in with each other every day, and then as a team, we check in once a week, so that we're all clear about what the priorities are. And also priorities change as things happen. And you know, everything's always changing, so we just have to be there to respond to that. I do believe I've learned a lot of these skills, sort of on the job because of the nature of the work that I'm in. I know that urgency is in every industry without a doubt, but I think I've learned to move quickly because that's just the playing ground. So perhaps that's added to my inner my inner urgency. I don't know.

It's a balancing. So can you describe some of the opportunities that you have seen lost because, you know, clients haven't responded quickly?

Well, I can talk about on both sides. When the client doesn't respond quickly to the lead, they lose that business. You know, clearly, that's the worst for us, you know, or for any client, for any client, any business, we all have our processes in place, and that's wonderful, and we need those processes just, you know, to keep our heads above board. But what happens when this incredibly exciting project lands on your desk, but they needed it yesterday? If we can get back to them in the next 48 hours with a great proposal of how we're going to work on this and get them to, you know, point B, you know, great.

But if my team says, Well, you know, it takes us a week to put our in depth proposals together, you know, and we can't pivot. I hate that word, because it reminds me of COVID. But if we can't pivot, then, you know, we lost a really big contract, a really big project. So you have to have flexibility. You have to have the ability to bend and, you know, wiggle through the process. It's really, like life or death in business to be able to do that.

Yeah, those are such great words because they're so visual: to bend. It makes the sense of urgency work. 

It does. 

Yeah. And so here are some other aspects of it, when, when I think of a sense of urgency in the real world. You can, a building's on fire, run. People need to run. Get out right? And if you think about the state of mind of those people, it's not the best. They're nervous, they're scared, they're not able to rationally think so. How do you bring this sense of urgency into business, a business setting, and maintain calm, so the team doesn't get frantic? 

Yeah, it's first of all, approaching any scenario with calm yourself, meaning, even if there is urgency, if you come in hysterical, you know, everybody shuts down, so that's going to be ineffective. It's coming in with calm and a plan, where you're saying, Okay, this is the opportunity in front of us, or the problem, the challenge in front of us that just, you know, hit our desks. This is what I'm recommending. What do you recommend? Let's talk about it. Let's give ourselves, even though this is an urgent situation, let's give ourselves one hour to pretend that the urgency isn't there, so we can all think and breathe and provide good answers. Because when you panic, you make really bad decisions. All of us make terrible decisions when we're panicked. So that's what I do. I give everybody the opportunity to breathe and to think and say, there's no wrong answers here, you know, let's just be creative. So I'm creating space, I guess. And everybody understands anyways, that, you know, because it doesn't go away. There is that outward pressure. It exists, but here we are in a safe place right now, and there's no answers wrong, by the way, that really helps to create great creativity and positive urgency, positive excitement, you know, passion and excitement, because there are no wrong answers. It's just like, let's brainstorm it. Let's develop this together. And then we take all the different pieces, and we like building blocks, and we put them together to create, and I guess, in my case, a marketing strategy, and that's how we do it, so I don't come in harassed or harassing. I have an initial plan which helps us see an end result, even if doesn't end up being the final plan, and then getting my team to help me put it all together, because I work with really smart people, far smarter than me, probably, and they can fill in those gaps, and we create a plan, and there we are. And also not being afraid of not being perfect also, and that is something that I've been very clear about with my team from the beginning. It's okay not to be perfect, just be really good.

Wow, what a great answer. There's so many levels to what you just shared. You know, first of all, I'm seeing you as being the calm leader, and that just right away, changes the mood. And because if you exude that calm yourself, even if you are talking about a sense of urgency. People feel it. They actually respond more to your energy, and you know your tone, your body language, your facial expressions, than the words. So if you're like we have to do this quickly, but you're saying it calmly. That's what they feel. 

I mean, in any dynamic in my life, whether it's with a family member, a child, friend, a colleague. You know when you come in, you know in an intense way, in that bulldozer kind of way, it just doesn't work. It's so ineffective, even if you're feeling it, even that's how you want to be. But that's really just like the child in us that we have to sort of hold back and say, No, this isn't the responsible way forward. It's a work in progress, Sandra, let me just say, you know, like, I wish you could say I did this all the time. It doesn't happen all the time, but it's in my mind as something that I need to do. I need to come in calmly and I'm grateful because it's allowed me to have, like, this really creative environment for my team to thrive in. And it's been very beneficial to create that environment for the company. So it's been, it's been a win win. 

Well, what you're actually describing is creative leadership. And creative leadership is maybe one of the least understood of the leadership styles, one of my favorites. The idea is that you create an environment where you make it permissible to make mistakes. Because the reason people aren't creative isn't because they're not creative naturally, it's because they're afraid there's going to be a penalty, if they make a mistake. 

100%. 

Yeah, and that's how you've taken it from fear to fun.

And it is fun, by the way. Oh, I like that. Thank you. 

But, you know, human beings, we're all very complex, and nothing is, you know, black and white, and there's, you know, you know, a lot of personal dynamics that are involved in in all of these pieces in order to be to create healthy urgency. So I'm trying to have awareness about that. And I finding it's very helpful when I have all of these things at top of mind.

So one of the management tools that addresses this, because you're right, Fran, it's very complicated, is looking at diversity. The world we live in now thinks of diversity as in, like skin color and, you know, race and religion and that. This is a different way of looking at diversity. It brings in these attitudes and personalities. If you make a map of, okay, what are the skills I have in terms of personalities and attitudes of your current team? And you say, Okay, well, all of us have this sense of urgency, you may find that you're unbalanced. 

Absolutely, yes. You don't want your office manager or your operations manager to have… they need to be thoughtful. And yes, 100% not everybody can be urgent.

That's diversity. So you have to look at it big picture wise and think, Okay, well, what would balance us and what would work well within our environment, not necessarily rigid, but somebody who's more of a planner, more analytical, more research oriented, and, you know, who likes having the meetings and that sort of thing. So just to think about it that way, so that it actually works.

Okay, so the listeners who are listening to this podcast, they have their own feelings about sense of urgency, and it may not come natural to them the way it comes naturally to you, or it may come naturally to them, and they may struggle with balancing it out. So how can we leave them with some ideas about overcoming avoidance, you know, approval seeking can get in the way, and perfectionism, which you've spoken about. 

Yeah. 

Can we leave them with some ideas about acting on the sense of urgency appropriately?

The best way to act on it successfully is to have it all planned out in advance. That's the truth. I'm speaking on behalf of business owners here, not as an employee. It's critically important to create healthy urgency, and the only way to do that is to have processes in place and the right work environment where it's okay to make mistakes and it's okay to try something out and not be shot down or laughed at because it was a dumb idea. So creating an environment where, you know, we embrace people, and also a check in environment, I don't know how to say this, where we check in, literally, with our team, and say, hey, you know, how are you feeling about this? And I see that you're hesitating. What's holding you back? And did I give you all the information I needed to give you, you know. So before you know, you jump in and say, why aren't they doing their job? Don't they understand that I have to have this big deadline? To understand where they're coming from and to help them, motivate them and give them space to do the work properly. Those are the things that I do that I find to be very helpful.

Yeah, that's awesome. I'm going to add one thing, which is another way of looking at priorities, which is just such a simple technique. Have you heard of the 80/20 rule?

The heard of the 80/20 rule? I'm not sure in which… 

So I'll expand. So basically, the rule is that almost any scenario you look at, you can apply this. So you say, okay, 20% of my clients generate 80% of my revenue. So focus on that 20%. How can I find more of that type of client? So if you're the type of person who doesn't naturally feel comfortable with a sense of urgency, you naturally feel like, Oh, I'm worried about the things that could go wrong. If you start thinking about, you know, this rule. There are many ways you can apply it to make that feeling of overwhelm, or fear come down and examples would be okay look at your task list and say, which is the 20% of this task list that will generate the 80% most benefit and just start there. Instead of saying my whole task list is urgent, I don’t know what to do. Bring it down to that 20% and don’t even look at the rest of the list. Take some steps.

Exactly, you said it so beautifully and that’s a great approach. If you can tackle that 20% then everything else sort of falls into place after that too. Yeah, and focusing on what's actually going to move the needle.

And I will acknowledge that I do not have this natural sense of urgency. I'm one of those people who has to, like, you know, find a way to make it comfortable, but I do have enough belief systems to value the sense of urgency, and I have enough business experience to see where not having the sense of urgency leads you to losing opportunity. So I guess the way you describe Fran for yourself that you had to learn how to, you know, slow down at the right times? I had to learn how to speed up at the right times. So I've learned these tools for myself, right? And they work. They work. So I really encourage our listeners to try.

Yeah, we all have a toolbox, yeah, to hone our toolbox and refine our tools. And that's, maturity, you know, that's just maturity. 

It’s interesting, the way the two of us work so well together because we come from the opposite ends on this and both of us in our own way have balanced ourselves but we still naturally gravitate toward one end. But this is the diversity I was talking about earlier. Where you work with people who have a little bit of a difference in their style. But together you go after that sense of urgency appropriately and successfully.

You said it actually, and you said it earlier too, that you need different people in your work environment or in your personal environment too, to like counterbalance you and help promote your strengths and help to reduce your weaknesses. And I very much enjoy our work together, and you do help me to slow myself down, like, because you're very in a good way, like you create a structure and a process that we walk through together, and it gives us the space in which to brainstorm. It gives us the space in which to be creative. So it's very successful. But again, it's a balance of personalities and learning how to work together and as a business owner, again, you have lots of personalities in an environment. You got to make sure that everybody's going to be able to work well and feel good about what they're doing also. 

So the way I respond to you, Fran is because you have that natural sense of urgency, I think, I'm not even sure if you're aware of it, but you actually speak to the opportunity frequently. So you know, the person who might not be comfortable with going as quickly, is reminded of the value of the moving quickly, because we're going to be able to do this, and if we're slower, this thing that we all agree that we want, is going to go away.

Good. And I'm glad that I’m not just bossy and annoying. I'm glad to hear that. Sandra, thank you. I’m not sure that everybody would agree with you, but good.

Okay, wonderful Fran. What a great discussion. 

So fun, Sandra. 

Yeah. Thank you so much. 

My pleasure. 

And to our listeners, excuse me, because I'm just getting over a cold. And to our listeners, if you are interested in learning more about Fran Jakubowicz, please go to SunHouseMarketing.com. 

You've been listening to Get in the Driver's Seat, stories about leadership moments in professional practice. I'm your host. Sandra Bekhor Practice Management Coach at Bekhor Management. Take care, everybody. Bye.