everyone. This is Stella

TFT, and this is heating shop.

And in today's episode of the sort of we're gonna talk about creating a sense of urgency or even what is a sense of urgency in your organization or

your team in your company, you like talking about more than your

sales and market. We just want a bullshit chat about business and life. And hopefully, while we're doing that, provide along value to be the best business for people trying to get shit way. Don't want to give you feedback.

That's bullshit. You want you to do your best,

all right. And the reason why we want to talk about this is that you had an interesting conversation about this topic

yesterday. Yeah, I did. So yesterday I was talking to a founder, I advised, and, uh, you know, he's got hundreds of people at his company, runs the company CEO, founder, and, uh, I've helped him for many years and friend and, um, somehow I felt the need to tell him that I think, you know,

in your organization, you know, the team lacks a sense of urgency in a game. Has looked like, Well, what do you mean, like, I have that sense of urgency. I'm like, Yeah, but the team probably doesn't right, Judging by. And then I listed out all the reasons for why and, uh,

because that will be my next specials. Like what, Babe? What prompted you to bring this something? Why didn't you?

Yeah. So it was a rare instance where he wanted to have the meeting, But with him, it's looks like, Oh, you want have a meeting? Great. I don't even doesn't matter what topic it is. I'm actually an advisor, and I have equity. And that's how I treat these. And so, you know, met with him within a couple days, and he's, you know, not always around and whatnot.

So met in person. And I think, you know, he wanted advice on a bunch of stuff, which is cool. And I always learn something every time. And so I just felt the need to tell him this because he was He seemed much more receptive to that kind of feedback yesterday compared to ever before, huh? Right. Might be because I've been pushing on a couple areas. I'm written some long essays to him about these things which I usually wouldn't do unless necessary. Not anything is very screwing up, just like some things that, like I felt really strongly about. And I think that opened up the conversation. And,

you know, I think this is a little bit of a sign of, but like, I don't like to give feedback unless someone is ready to accept it. And that could be by them asking for or them just literally, Aiken sort of feel their sense or whatever that like. Oh, they're open to me saying something some shit that might be a little aggressive or, you know, whatever. Because, you know, it's hard to say to someone that has hundreds of team members that,

hey, her team lacks a sense of urgency because you know that they're in a scale where they could afford hundreds of tea bumpers, a whole different

story, right? And so what? Where what it came up in that specific conversation was that they are turning into a much more mature company, and they have never really built as much discipline around product development as I think they could around like process and, you know, shipping the right things and stuff like that And so as I was talking to him, I came to this conclusion that we were talking about product a lot in that case, and I think this applies to all parts of the business. But in products specifically product and engineering design, they have, you know, some work to do to catch up to competitors and a few key areas, just like everyone else does. And the thing I was mentioning was that, like, the way I think about since urgency on product and engineering today,

especially this ask is this? This is a SAS business is that you need a sense of urgency not necessarily sense of urgency in shipping, like just code or product or shipping to customers. But you need a sense of urgency on knowing that what you're shipping are going to ship in the future is the right thing for the customer. So the sense of urgency isn't like, Oh, we need to go ship, you negotiate. When you put code out there, it's actually like we need to figure out what's right and then aggressively pursued that versus all these other things we could pursue that might not be right and that are gonna take a long

time. All right, let's because of this, because I don't this will fly over the heads of most people. It intruded at first when you describe the me because when we talk about sense of urgency, I think people translate that most people translate that. Let's go fast, very faster. Sure, let's do whatever we do faster that someone just saying

Let me give you contacts so more so when I first said it, he said the same thing. He said, Oh, when I when I get when I try to get certain teams we have a lot of teams there. When I get certain teams to try to go faster, they fuck it up the cut corners. They don't write as good code. And I'm like, Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean sense of urgency equals to make people go faster. Sense of urgency equals for me the idea that you know in any business you need to deliver the right things to customers across all areas. Whether it's sales, marketing, product engineering, all areas require you to be right when you go out to the customer and be,

you know, aligned with what their needs are so the sense of urgency in this case on product. We could go through every department. We could talk about what that looks like to me in this market today. We're like just putting out an M V P doesn't always lead to six us, especially want to have a bunch of stuff. Is sense of urgent team figuring out what's right. So if you take that on product development, a lot of things you would do if you took that framework over just shipping code is you wouldn't just push your team to ship code. You push your team to do more research, you push your team, Thio Thio, answer the question and answer this question of how do we know that what we're gonna ship is the right thing to ship? And so my sense of urgency, even on our teens, regardless of how long something is gonna take the bill,

I feel good as a founder when we have conviction that it's the right thing. So my sense urgency is oriented, not around shipping the code. It's actually rented around, knowing that it's the right thing. That's the first like gate in terms of urgency that I like to have on product. If we want to extend this to sail that I'm sure you have some thoughts in my mind like sense, urgency and sales, this sense of urgency and figuring out what the right thing, the cell and the right way to sell it. ISS. So you would necessarily go higher. 20 salespeople In the beginning, you want to make sure your sales funnel is productive, entire the minimum amount of people that make that

Yeah, the sense of urgency would be around figuring out a way to sell that is repeatable, that is predictable. And then that is scalable and profitable. That profitable? Yes, well, although that's not, though, is the case with many other SAS companies Really give me that look. So coming back on this because I think it's really important to, like, make sure everybody gets this. Yeah, totally. But the sense of urgency, I barely understand it.

Yeah, so sense of urgency, the way I I grasp it in this context is when when I should, When we show up at work, there is in and intensity and focus on on getting it right. Let's

say this for knowing

it's right knowing it's right, confirming that we know what we need to do. And that comes out of what creates that. Typically that can come out off a strong sense of mission like we have something really important to accomplish or those needs that we're trying to care to for Customs are very important that every day we miss that is you know, it is a waste of days that that is something that feels important and feels feels. People feel certainly around a sense of urgency in the sense could be an intensity around. If we don't get it right. This company, our customers, all at stake, Yeah, having a sense for what's at stake when I show up at work. So it's not urgent in the sense of do what you do, do whatever you do, but just keep doing it faster. It's like it's better to do it better but understand the stakes and feel like the stakes are really high and what you do is really important. If you waste today or not,

it matters like having a sense that this matters. If we spend another week not getting it right, it doesn't matter. It's not just like whatever. We'll do it next

week. Don't wait. I'm trying to figure out whether it's right or getting it right. I think if you look at any business, the biggest thing that makes a business failure succeed is them getting their product right for the customer, them getting their sales right for the customer, them getting their marking right for the customer. So if you want to take a sense of urgency and just apply into a business just on a whole holistic level, it's like basically, it's It should be a sense of urgency to serve that customer better than anyone else. And then I would start from there to basically break down while How do we do that In each area that we're trying to work on? Even if you're a smaller company of two or three people, you're trying to get the customer to be happy, ecstatic high net promoter, score high adoption, higher attention with whatever you're doing. So your sense of urgency needs to be around focusing on that customer, focusing on their needs, focusing on what's right for them across all these different areas in your

company. So it's that but they're on top of it. There is a a component around time, which is either the fear that every move every day or every hour that we were not getting this right as a massive cost. A tested for that. Yeah, that there must be a component that we need to get to this result as quickly as we can because there's consequences. If we don't have these consequences, could be our competitors. The market could be, you know, where we're letting our customers down, whatever, where that set that sense off this time is really, really important with you to get there as quickly as we humanly can. That is what turns it into. That's where the urgent part comes it.

But because you could have a company where people really deeply care about building what's right for the customer, but not feeling that there's any costs associated to the amount of time it takes to do that Right? So if it takes us 20 years to do this, whatever. All right, as long as we get it right, quote unquote Well, no, it does find everyone and assesses 20 years. We're not gonna be around 20 years, right? So we need to get it right now. Faster Now. Why do you think? Let's come back to this example. And this. This is a bigger

team tonight, but we could talk about

it, but it applies equally. DiScala. Geez, why do you think some teams are lacking? Is this why are some companies or sometimes lacking a sense of urgency and why is this particular company

so so? Ways you can tell is that in this specific case of the in product, a lot of it has to do with alternatives that the customer house Yeah, right. Like if they if they come to your product and they have alternatives and you're not up to par, you don't have what many would call parody with the competitors. Yet the customers looking for that parody looking for a bunch of features that you don't have your sense of urgency needs to be aligned with. Well, if we want to grow our business and customers are coming to us and then they go to the other competitors er, because we don't have X y and Z well, we better go, Bill next Lions e. So then the question is, how do We know that that stuff that we built is gonna get us more customs, right? And I don't want to make it a circular argument. But in this specific case and in many cases out there today,

even in some examples of my own businesses, we don't have enough of the features that other people do. And our sense of urgency needs to be aligned around that instead of like shipping coat, it's more hitting the right code, shipping the right features. So coming back to censor urgency, it's like my sense of urgency is knowing that we're right and gonna be right about whatever we're shipping before me. Shit cause in product, nothing else matters when you ship it, it works when you ship it. It has the impact you wanted to have if you add a feature or if you make an improvement right. But often times it's like we're in a speedy culture, even internally, inside of many companies where they're shipping stuff, even their shipping a lot of MVP's, they don't fix them.

They don't understand if they're effective, right? So so the urgency isn't isn't around speed, it's around. It is first around getting it right, and I think it's getting it right in every area of the business, not just in one area. So when you have a really like like let's talk about that's good, let's talk about, like, marketing right and say, OK, I'm actually launching something new on Monday, actually, Um, which is already gonna be in past when this comes out,

And my sense urgency on that is a sense on this specific thing is a sense of urgency to figure out whether our pricings correct and the Value profits resident. So what would I do if I'm launching it on Monday? And I want to figure out that as fast as possible? And this is a marketing problem? Basically, I'm gonna do is much where anything is possible next week to make sure that if I need to reiterate it by the next week, I have enough data, which means I need enough traffic to this thing to see if anyone purchased this thing. So the sense of urgency and that first was like, Okay, let's go put something out there and make sure it's good enough, and then once we put it out there, let's go make sure We don't have to wait three months to figure out if it's working. We need to figure it out as soon as possible. So in that case, time is really important and time to getting it right and then knowing that there's enough data that right and and marking a lot of times it has to do with volume of data.

Yeah, OK, but coming back to why is a team lacking back? Why are certain teams on many teams lacking that? Where does that lack of urgency

come from? It comes from founders. It comes from CEO. It comes from the leader of the team that comes from a manager of a group of people cannot. It does not, and cannot usually come from somebody who's an individual contributor on the team unless it comes from somebody who has more

responsibility over more people. So why would some of these people like a sense of urgency,

like on the team? Are you sure?

I think the way you didn't tell him. He likes a sense of urgency, said his team

Lexus. Since I started with this, okay, and then I went to him. OK, OK, because he said he didn't lack a sense of urgency. Okay, Right. And then I said, Well, the way you get it is by re shifting your thinking about what sense of urgency meets. Because the example you gave was, like, I had the team speed it up. That didn't work. I was off their ass about speeding it up.

And did it work like No, no, no. That's not what I because in that area, product sense of urgency shouldn't be shipping code anymore. That used to work back in the day when there wasn't as much software out there. Now it should be getting it right. Yeah, right. So you could pick every area of organization and decide what's insurgency means. Um, we had a value at Kiss metrics called Be Better than Yesterday, and that value is what drove sense of urgency in the company. If we want to get better every day, we better think about how do we get better? And once we get better,

we actually have this sense of urgency embody. Did not. So for me, it's like the culture of the company, the culture of the founders, the values in the company, and how they're aligned around having the right sense of urgency for your market, your customer and what you're built. So it does come from these people. The reason they might not have it is I think it's more of, Ah, mindset shipped and a framework that you would have right, which is really it starts with a lineman with the customer. And once you realize that you're just like OK, well, if we had these 10 features yesterday,

the customer would buy. So then it's like, How fast can we get these 10 features out? Well, if you haven't done the homework to know that those were the 10 right futures, then you shouldn't have a sense of urgency about shipping the features. So it's more about thinking through it and saying is speed what's important here or is getting it right? What's important here? Because once you know what is right or what should be right, then like you can go as fast as you can towards getting that done. But if you don't know it's right, then all those corners people cut and things like that are against

nothing that matters. Yeah, but you, you speed matters is just speed toe What is the race? 20 feeding teams. Do you know you're not speeding to shipping? Get coach. You're speeding to confirming what the right

thing to build. This is why we build at BP's, right? Right. We're trying to confirm something way. Call a minimum viable products because they're minimal. They don't take usually that much effort to create. But the problem is, if those aren't validating something important, you're just shipping code that nobody cares about.

Yeah, right. So how does he change that? Okay, so let's say it, somebody. Is it just a pure much a shift? And then he goes. Now I get it. And then what is the behavioral change? That

product you're looking to build the right product. And when you ship it, make sure, you know, ensure that people will adopt it, whether it's adoption through usage, adoption through revenue, adoption in what ways you want. So if you look taking looking a product first insurgency is towards getting it right. And how you would do that would be when you, when you go underneath that would be more M V peaks more usually reserved before you release it. More validation that it's right or invalidation of things that are wrong faster. So it's much more experimental mindset, I would say in product an experimental meets marrying qualitative like research, user research, customer interviews with actual actual product development which many organizations don't do. But again,

that's me preaching about product. I think you should do it. But that's not my opinion. If you're trying to get it right, you can't get it right unless you get feedback before you even launch

it. Yeah, but okay, on top of it, there's a need for this case for the founder of the company of the CEO of the company to not just mandate, we need to get it right. And we need to have the data, the research know what we need to build. But when people get green, buy into that and they lay out a plan on we need to do. We need to get X y Z data you need here. She needs to stimulate a my friend that allows you like that follows the logic of how can we get that data as fast as past Correct. Right. So we're gonna do this research, and over three months we're gonna figure out if this is something we want to do and not why, like challenging the time frame like I get a habit that the leadership needs to encompass. You

can't have a sense of urgency without thinking about time. So the intention wasn't to remove time from it or even speed. The attention is more like How do you know what you should be like? You said what you should be urgent about. So all the leaders, managers, founders, whoever that's responsible for execution. Basically, they should be thinking about it like that. It's like, How do we know that what We're being urgent about his the right thing, right?

Yeah. So it's two components number one deciding what's truly important. And Number two is making sure we get to that important figures fastest

possible in different areas. It's different things, so in product it has a lot to do it getting it right before you ship it. I think that's the way I would describe the most important thing. First, in any initiative that you do there in marketing, it's making its honestly, it pulls down a lot to making sure you have enough volume that you can trust what's going on right? And trust. It means like if you only have 100 visitors to a landing page, and only one of them by that doesn't mean anything. If you have 1000 visitors and nobody buys, that means a lot. So your urgency should be to getting traffic a lot of the times and marketing if you have something that you're trying to convert, because marketing has a lot to do with statistical significance and things like that when it comes to traffic in sales, as you mentioned, it shouldn't be about urgency to add more salespeople or build the sales team up.

It should be urgency and getting getting the productivity and then the knowledge around how you should be selling first, which I know sounds super obvious. But, you know, sales people don't usually do that. They're like open a higher to sales people that I'm gonna hire 10 more. And here's my timeline is like Wait, hold on. Those sales people get hired. There's no training for them. They don't You don't have any process. You don't You don't know what your funnel looks like. They're going to sit there with idle hands, not knowing what to do. And you're just gonna get lucky with, like,

two of those sales people because they're just good, you know, our great right. But there's no processor system and then, yeah, take another area

and write something supported. People wouldn't have a sense of urgency for, uh, ticket result. That's one of the best ways off every ticket within two.

Yeah, but But if that if the customer is not happy with your resolution, you did not do the right job. And sense urgency doesn't matter cause but And really that speed not sense of urgency. Yeah, right. That's speed to Resolution, Gray. But if that resolutely This is why a lot of a lot of the companies have added the happiness happy faces at the bottom and crap like that because they want to know that even though it got resolved that the fact that it got result in two minutes is not important, the fact that the customer is happy with the resolution

is much more important, but also the distinction between I replied to a support request versus I saw the problem off. Yeah, for

the sense of urgency should be to solving the problem, period. Every time you don't even need to worry about anything else until you get that right. Then you can worry about time.

Yeah, we could go on and on and on, but let I think it's tips time. So what is your number one Tim for teams and people to raise the sense of urgency for what's important?

Just realize that, like speed isn't equal. The sense of urgency realize where you're going too fast versus being so awful about what you should be focused on. So I think a lot of this has to do with focus on your sense of urgency instead of focusing on your speed. And if you focus on your sense of urgency, it goes back to not being fast first, but being right about what? The thing you should be fast about, Right? So the biggest tip I would have on sense urgency is if you take all these areas in your business and you figure out that their slow because it starts with Oh, I'm slow like it always does right? Then you want to figure out well, like what am I being slow about? And am I being slow about the right thing, and then how should I speed it up? So I think a lot. You can look at any business and be like,

Oh, they're slow at this. They're slow it, that they're slow it. That's pretty easy to figure that out. But then figuring out, like, what's causing us to be slow at it? And is it a lack of a sense of urgency? Or is it that we're just picking the wrong thing? So if you're if you're in product, you're saying we're slow it shipping product, That's great. But that's not good enough what you should be saying and what the right slowness is. It were slow at figuring out what's right, cause we have to figure out what's right.

First in sales, it should be like we're slow and iterating our sales process. Right? So you should have a sense of urgency of iterating your sales process in marketing, It could be like were slow in getting traffic. Okay, great. If you have something that converts, then yeah, go speed up. Getting traffic in your sense of urgency should be experimentation around channels.

Yeah, love. So what? Is there really to adhere? Uh, wait

get there. Does it make more sense? I think so. It's a topic. I wanted

to disguise the audience. CTO We both didn't know we would talk about this now. He didn't. And I feel I've thought in tow like I we've got gotten somewhere with this conversation. But how the listeners feel so it's an esoteric topic to be afraid. It is. It is right it because because these words can mean so many different things and for people s. So we had to clarify What does this mean to us in this context? And then what do you do with that? I think you know, just translating this into two simple questions. Maybe to get into the habit of asking yourself You write it out someone, a piece of paper. You put it on a long given something Teoh do right now, which is right down. You know, this is the most important thing we can dio.

And then the second question are we doing it fast enough? So in any meeting, you on every discussion that that any kind of team passed so let you raising these two questions and honestly raising them and trying to discover and explore these questions will always lead to better outcomes. Hey, we're working on this thing. This is the most important thing we could work on is a very important questions, very uncomfortable a lot of times, especially when people already committed to something that they want to work on. But it's an important question. And then once it's really confirmed, yes, this is the most important thing we could work on. How we why would, Why does it? Why does the Thailand we've given it? Why is that a fair timeline?

Could it be accomplished in less time? And if so, what would it take for us to get there? They just asked these questions in every discussion and you do it honestly and you explode these honestly, you should see a positive impact.

Yeah, and for everybody listening like you got to the main claim right there. Those two questions every meeting and you'll have the sense of urgency.