Quadrant II

The essential focus of the fourth generation of management can be captured in the Time

Management Matrix diagrammed on the next page. Basically, we spend time in one of four ways.

As you see, the two factors that define an activity are urgent and important. Urgent means it

requires immediate attention. It's "Now!" Urgent things act on us. A ringing phone is urgent. Most people can't stand the thought of just allowing the phone to ring. You could spend hours preparing

materials, you could get all dressed up and travel to a person's office to discuss a particular issue, but if the phone were to ring while you were there, it would generally take precedence over your personal

visit.

If you were to phone someone, there aren't many people who would say, "I'll get to you in 15

minutes; just hold." But those same people would probably let you wait in an office for at least that long while they completed a telephone conversation with someone else.

Urgent matters are usually visible. They press on us; they insist on action. They're often popular

with others. They're usually right in front of us. And often they are pleasant, easy, fun to do. But so often they are unimportant!

Importance, on the other hand, has to do with results. If something is important, it contributes to

your mission, your values, your high priority goals.

We react to urgent matters. Important matters that are not urgent require more initiative, more

proactivity. We must act to seize opportunity, to make things happen. If we don't practice Habit 2, if we don't have a clear idea of what is important, of the results we desire in our lives, we are easily

diverted into responding to the urgent.

Look for a moment at the four quadrants in the Time Management Matrix. Quadrant I is both

urgent and important. It deals with significant results that require immediate attention. We usually call the activities in Quadrant I "crises" or "problems." We all have some Quadrant I activities in our lives. But Quadrant I consumes many people. They are crisis managers, problem-minded people, the

deadline-driven producers.

As long as you focus on Quadrant I, it keeps getting bigger and bigger until it dominates you. It's

like the pounding surf. A huge problem comes and knocks you down and you're wiped out. You

struggle back up only to face another one that knocks you down and slams you to the ground.

Some people are literally beaten up by the problems all day every day. The only relief they have is

in escaping to the not important, not urgent activities of Quadrant IV. So when you look at their total matrix, 90 percent of their time is in Quadrant I and most of the remaining 10 percent is in Quadrant IV

THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE Brought to you by FlyHeart with only negligible attention paid to Quadrants II and III. That's how people who manage their lives

by crisis live.

There are other people who spend a great deal of time in "urgent, but not important" Quadrant III, thinking they're in Quadrant I. They spend most of their time reacting to things that are urgent,

assuming they are also important. But the reality is that the urgency of these matters is often based on the priorities and expectations of others.

People who spend time almost exclusively in Quadrants III and IV basically lead irresponsible lives.

Effective people stay out of Quadrants III and IV because, urgent or not, they aren't important.

They also shrink Quadrant I down to size by spending more time in Quadrant II.

Quadrant II is the heart of effective personal management. It deals with things that are not urgent,

but are important. It deals with things like building relationships, writing a personal mission

statement, long-range planning, exercising, preventive maintenance, preparation -- all those things we

know we need to do, but somehow seldom get around to doing, because they aren't urgent.

To paraphrase Peter Drucker, effective people are not problem-minded; they're opportunity-minded.

They feed opportunities and starve problems. They think preventively. They have genuine

Quadrant I crises and emergencies that require their immediate attention, but the number is

comparatively small. They keep P and PC in balance by focusing on the important, but not the urgent,

high-leverage capacity-building activities of Quadrant II.

With the Time Management Matrix in mind, take a moment now and consider how you answered

the questions at the beginning of this chapter. What quadrant do they fit in? Are they important?

Are they urgent?

My guess is that they probably fit into Quadrant II. They are obviously important, deeply

important, but not urgent. And because they aren't urgent, you don't do them.

Now look again at the nature of those questions: What one thing could you do in your personal and

professional life that, if you did on a regular basis, would make a tremendous positive difference in

your life? Quadrant II activities have that kind of impact. Our effectiveness takes the quantum leaps when we do them.

I asked a similar question to a group of shopping center managers. "If you were to do one thing in your professional work that you know would have enormously positive effects on the results, what

would it be?" Their unanimous response was to build helpful personal relationships with the tenants, the owners of the stores inside the shopping center, which is a Quadrant II activity.

We did an analysis of the time they were spending on that activity. It was less than 5 percent.

They had good reasons -- problems, one right after another. They had reports to make out, meetings

to go to, correspondence to answer, phone calls to make, constant interruptions. Quadrant I had

consumed them.

They were spending very little time with the store managers, and the time they did spend was filled

with negative energy. The only reason they visited the store managers at all was to enforce the

contract -- to collect the money or discuss advertising or other practices that were out of harmony with

center guidelines, or some similar thing.

The store owners were struggling for survival, let alone prosperity. They had employment

problems, cost problems, inventory problems, and a host of other problems. Most of them had no

training in management at all. Some were fairly good merchandisers, but they needed help. The

tenants didn't even want to see the shopping center owners; they were just one more problem to

contend with.

So the owners decided to be proactive. They determined their purpose, their values, their priorities.

In harmony with those priorities, they decided to spend about one-third of their time in helping

relationships with the tenants.

THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE Brought to you by FlyHeart In working with that organization for about a year and a half, I saw them climb to around 20 percent,

which represented more than a fourfold increase. In addition, they changed their role. They became

listeners, trainers, consultants to the tenants. Their interchanges were filled with positive energy.

The effect was dramatic, profound. By focusing on relationships and results rather than time and

methods, the numbers went up, the tenants were thrilled with the results created by new ideas and

skills, and the shopping center managers were more effective and satisfied and increased their list of

potential tenants and lease revenue based on increased sales by the tenant stores. They were no longer policemen or hovering supervisors. They were problem solvers, helpers.

Whether you are a student at the university, a worker in an assembly line, a homemaker, fashion

designer, or president of a company, I believe that if you were to ask what lies in Quadrant II and

cultivate the proactivity to go after it, you would find the same results. Your effectiveness would

increase dramatically. Your crises and problems would shrink to manageable proportions because

you would be thinking ahead, working on the roots, doing the preventive things that keep situations

from developing into crises in the first place. In the time management jargon, this is called the Pareto Principle -- 80 percent of the results flow out of 20 percent of the activities.

What it Takes to Say "No"

The only place to get time for Quadrant II in the beginning is from Quadrants III and IV. You can't

ignore the urgent and important activities of Quadrant I, although it will shrink in size as you spend

more time with prevention and preparation in Quadrant II. But the initial time for Quadrant II has

come out of III and IV.

You have to be proactive to work on Quadrant II because Quadrant I and III work on you. To say

"yes" to important Quadrant II priorities, you have to learn to say "no" to other activities, sometimes apparently urgent things.

Some time ago, my wife was invited to serve as chairman of a committee in a community endeavor.

She had a number of truly important things she was trying to work on, and she really didn't want to do

it. But she felt pressured into it and finally agreed.

Then she called one of her dear friends to ask if she would serve on her committee. Her friend

listened for a long time and then said, "Sandra, that sounds like a wonderful project, a really worthy undertaking. I appreciate so much your inviting me to be a part of it. I feel honored by it. For a number of reasons, I won't be participating myself, but I want you to know how much I appreciate your

invitation."

Sandra was ready for anything but a pleasant "no." She turned to me and sighed, "I wish I'd said that."

I don't mean to imply that you shouldn't be involved in significant service projects. Those things

are important. But you have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage --

pleasantly, smiling, nonapologetically -- to say "no" to other things. And the way you do that is by having a bigger "yes" burning inside. The enemy of the "best" is often the "good."

Keep in mind that you are always saying "no" to something. If it isn't to the apparent, urgent things in your life, it is probably to the more fundamental, highly important things. Even when the

urgent is good, the good can keep you from your best, keep you from your unique contributions, if you

let it.

When I was Director of University Relations at a large university, I hired a very talented, proactive,

creative writer. One day, after he had been on the job for a few months, I went into his office and

asked him to work on some urgent matters that were pressing on me.

He said, "Stephen, I'll do whatever you want me to do. Just let me share with you my situation."

Then he took me over to his wall board, where he had listed over two dozen projects he was

THE SEVEN HABITS OF HIGHLY EFFECTIVE PEOPLE Brought to you by FlyHeart working on, together with performance criteria and deadline dates that had been clearly negotiated

before. He was highly disciplined, which is why I went to see him in the first place. "If you want to get something done, give it to a busy man."

Then he said, "Stephen, to do the jobs that you want done right would take several days. Which of these projects would you like me to delay or cancel to satisfy your request?"

Well, I didn't want to take the responsibility for that. I didn't want to put a cog in the wheel of one of the most productive people on the staff just because I happened to be managing by crisis at the time.

The jobs I wanted done were urgent, but not important. So I went and found another crisis manager

and gave the job to him.

We say "yes" or "no" to things daily, usually many times a day. A center of correct principles and a focus on our personal mission empowers us with wisdom to make those judgments effectively.

As I work with different groups, I tell them that the essence of effective time and life management is

to organize and execute around balanced priorities. Then I ask this question: if you were to fault

yourself in one of three areas, which would it be: (1) the inability to prioritize; (2) the inability or desire to organize around those priorities; or (3) the lack of discipline to execute around them, to stay with

your priorities and organization?

Most people say their main fault is a lack of discipline. On deeper thought, I believe that is not the case. The basic problem is that their priorities have not become deeply planted in their hearts and

minds. They haven't really internalized Habit 2.

There are many people who recognize the value of Quadrant II activities in their lives, whether they

identify them as such or not. And they attempt to give priority to those activities and integrate them into their lives through self-discipline alone. But without a principle center and a personal mission

statement, they don't have the necessary foundation to sustain their efforts. They're working on the

leaves, on the attitudes and the behaviors of discipline, without even thinking to examine the roots, the basic paradigms from which their natural attitudes and behaviors flow.

A Quadrant II focus is a paradigm that grows out of a principle center. If you are centered on your

spouse, your money, your friends, your pleasure, or any extrinsic factor, you will keep getting thrown

back into Quadrants I and III, reacting to the outside forces your life is centered on. Even if you're

centered on yourself, you'll end up in I and II reacting to the impulse of the moment. Your

independent will alone cannot effectively discipline you against your center.

In the words of the architectural maxim, form follows function. Likewise, management follows

leadership. The way you spend your time is a result of the way you see your time and the way you

really see your priorities. If your priorities grow out of a principle center and a personal mission, if they are deeply planted in your heart and in your mind, you will see Quadrant II as a natural, exciting

place to invest your time.

It's almost impossible to say, "no" to the popularity of Quadrant III or to the pleasure of escape to Quadrant IV if you don't have a bigger "yes" burning inside. Only when you have the self-awareness to examine your program -- and the imagination and conscience to create a new, unique,

principle-centered program to which you can say "yes" -- only then will you have sufficient

independent will power to say "no," with a genuine smile, to the unimportant.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 1392