When everything feels urgent, teams become trapped in reactive work—and the strategic priorities that matter most keep getting pushed aside.

In this Best Of conversation, productivity expert and bestselling author Dermot Crowley explains why workplace urgency is not simply a personal time-management problem. It can become part of the team’s culture, particularly when people feel they must immediately respond to every request from a senior leader.

In this Best Of, we discuss:

– Why teams become stuck in constant firefighting

– The two reactive patterns that reduce productivity

– Why a request from the boss is not automatically urgent

– How leaders can unintentionally create urgency for their teams

– The importance of giving people permission to negotiate priorities

– Why teams should consider importance before urgency

– How clearer expectations can help people focus on work with greater impact

Dermot Crowley is a productivity expert, bestselling author and founder of Adapt Productivity. He has spent more than 25 years helping leaders and teams work more effectively. His books include Smart Work, Smart Teams, Lead Smart and Urgent.

Claire Gray is a leadership and team facilitator, executive coach, keynote speaker and author of Thriving Leaders and Thriving Teams. Through Thriving Culture, Claire helps leaders build aligned, accountable and high-performing teams.

If you want practical conversations about leadership, team effectiveness, accountability and workplace culture, subscribe to the Thriving Culture channel.

What creates the most unnecessary urgency in your team, and what would help your people focus on what is genuinely important?

Chapters

00:00 Why everything feels urgent

00:38 A proactive approach to priorities

01:40 Scheduling work before it becomes urgent

02:45 The two reactive work zones

04:00 It’s not urgent because it came from the boss

05:00 How leaders unintentionally create urgency

06:10 Importance before urgency

07:35 When everything is urgent, nothing is

#leadership #teamproductivity #workplaceculture