Welcome Backing Your Leadership. I'm Chris'm Lorenzo, and welcome to this week's Thoughtful Thursday. Don't forget to follow us on YouTube at Hacking your Leadership and leave us a review on iTunes. On this Thoughtful Thursday, I want to talk about the what is affectionately known as the Eisenhower Matrix. Have you heard of this, Lorenzo, I heard of it. Is this like a prequel with Yanna Reeves? Or yes? Yes, it's the main Yeah, the Eisenhower
Matrix. It's the one from the nineties that's a remake the Cold War Matrix. Yes, exactly. What if I told you that there was a four box grid that you could assign things too? No karate, Sorry it's kung fu, but thanks whatever. You've heard the terms do delegate, defer right, Yes, I have heard those. Yes, I think we've talked about it once or twice on the show before. The Eisenhower MATRIXES is similar to that, except there's a fourth option, which is delete. Tasks basically get
assigned to one of four kind of quadrants. There's the tasks that are both important and urgent. Then there's tasks that are important but they're not. There are tasks that are not important but they are urgent. Uh, and they are there are tasks that are neither important or urgent. And when when you When I first see that matrix without any of the definitions, my first initial inclination is to say, wait a minute, how could something be urgent but
not important? Right? And and you and you think about something like that, and they classify that as something you should delegate. So it means that if it's if it needs to get done but not necessarily by you, right. So yeah, if something doesn't need to get done by anybody, then you can you can get rid of it. Um. I like this more than the old do delegate defer because of the addition of the delete option there, you know, do delegate defer to me says that whoever is, whoever's
creating the task, there is no option to not do it. It's gonna get done, whether it's you now, you later, or by somebody else. It is what it is. And I like to think that that leaders with autonomy, leaders who are high performing and who lead high performing teams should have the ability to decide what things are unnecessary distractions that don't need to get done. They don't need to get delegated or saved for later. They can just they can just go away. What are your thoughts about this matrix?
Yeah, I like it too, And I like the change in the language where it's instead of it saying defer, where it's like not urgent but important, it's as schedule, right, And I like that because it says tasks with unclear deadlines that contribute to long term success, so they are important. These things do have to happen, but they don't have to happen right now, and so the schedule to me versus defer is a proactive thinking and reasoning of saying, I need to make sure this gets done. I need to
make sure that it's a mainstain, is a priority. But I do appreciate that because I think there are many times when there are things that fall into that bucket. The other thing that I like about this is, you know, urgent important, so to do are tasks with deadlines or consequences health or both, right exactly, yeah, and or right Sometime when things fall into
this buckets, I don't know that I agree that they are urgent. I will tell you that I think sometimes the urgency has passed on to me because somebody else thinks that it's urgent, or somebody else right thinks that it's important, or somebody else. You know. I think it's the old saying that like a lack of preparation on lack of preparation on your part does not constitute
an emergency on my part. Yes, exactly right. Right. So there are many times when I've told that something is both urgent and important and I say, actually, it's neither. I'd like to delete that, but I always say, you can tell me how you're going to do something, or you can ask me to do it exactly. You can't tell me how I'm
going to do it exactly right. Yes, So I like this, and especially because I was just having a conversation the other day with a leader around another leader where maybe priority setting was something they were working on, like they
were struggling with getting some of the work done. And it's definitely not because they're not capable of doing it, not because they don't know how to do it, but I think that they would utilize this, like this could be something to be really helpful when it comes to like, here's all the things that need to get done. Because I think they may be subscribed to. They do delegate defer, which then is like there's no delete, like you
have to do all these things. And I think that could be really really helpful. So like, I like this matrix and it sounds simple and it sounds easy, and most people are like, no, I get it, and I've seen it and I know the quadrants and everything like that. But but to really sit down and utilize it, I think it'd be really helpful
for a lot of leaders. Right right, when I hear the word defer, I think of kicking the can down the road, right, like it would be important if I had the time, but I don't have the time, so I'm not going to do it right now. But if it's not important, then you'll never find the time, right You'll, You'll it will always be something that is urgent and important that pushes that other thing back to the end of the back to the bottom of the list again, and then
it never gets done. Well, if that's the case, if it didn't need to get done at all, then you should have gotten rid of it. Should it should get deleted. So yes, I like the idea of it being not defer but rather schedule, because it implies that you have to address it right away. You don't necessarily have to do it right away,
but by scheduling it, you are addressing it. You're saying, I'm going to put this on the calendar for this time, and then when that time comes, I'm going to do it because it is important to do, it's necessary to do, but it's not urgent in the moment. And I think that I can't think of a task that can be assigned to anybody or that can be given passed down to you by a leader that doesn't fall into one
of these four categories. You might disagree with your leader on which one it falls into, but there isn't a fifth option, right It's either something that needs to get done right away by you no one else. No one else can be trusted with this. It has to be you, either because they can't do it, or because it's your job responsibility, it's your actual part of your role. Or it's something that you can use as a training opportunity,
a development opportunity for other people. But it has to get done right away. So you can assign it to somebody and know that they have to do it right away. But it is I don't want to say not important but not important for you to do. I think that's where the clarity has to be given here. To say something is urgent but not important, I think it devalues the learning opportunity for the person you're delegating it too. So it's not important. It's just not important for you to put on your plate
as the leader. You can put it to somebody else where they can actually utilize that as a learning opportunity. And then again deleting things that are absolutely unnecessary and being clear and honest with yourself, look at yourself in the mirror and saying, am I just not comfortable with deleting this because of what the implications are? So I'm going to continue to kick the can down the road when I should be deleting it. Do I want you to have a conversation
with my leader about what things should be deleted? Do we have a difference of opinion on what constitutes important versus urgent? And so, what I want to ask you, Lorenzo, is have you ever had a difference of opinion with a leader where they felt something was important and urgent and you felt like it was different than that? And so I want to ask you that,
but first I want to get it towards one of our sponsors. All right, Lorenzo, tell me about a time and you had to move through this situation where you had somebody thrown something at you that was both important and urgent to them, and you knew that it didn't necessarily have to be in that quadrant. You could it could go somewhere else. How did you kind of navigate through that? I think sometimes in the short sidedness of urgency, people think like it has to get done right away, it must be you.
You said it a little bit earlier, but then you kind of like glaze over the opportunity for development or learning from another leader. And so there are very specific tasks that only I can do that that only I'm the person who has to do it for different reasons, whether it's legal reasons or whatever the case is. But those are very very very few things. Um the vast majority of the things that I can do, other leaders can also do.
And I think when it comes to the development of leaders, these opportunities sometimes are not always there. So you have to find those spaces and times when there is an opportunity for them to get experienced with something that would be a decision or a situation that they wouldn't really normally be involved in, but can have a chance to go through it and to learn. And that's where I will sometimes say, like, hey, this will get done one hundred percent.
This will get done. It will be done by the deadline, it will be done the correct way, it will be done to your satisfaction. But I'm going to work with somebody to get this done because I see this as a learning moment and I see this as something that could add some value
to another one of our leaders. So again I'm going to be clear about that upfront, because what what you can't do is say oh, I got it, no problems, and you say, hey, theres only I need you to take care of this, and I say, you got a Chris, I'll take care of it. And then I give it to somebody else, and then they do something and it's not exactly right, and then you come back and you say I thought I said you were going to take care of it, and I said, well, I meant that like I would
oversee it. I meant that, like I would make sure it would get done. Right. You should not do that right if you're going to move it from that bucket to any of the other two or three. You got to be clear. You gotta be upfront with that, and you have to say, like, here's what I'm going to do, so that you're aware of that. I'm either going to bring it in another leader and have them to have an opportunity to work on this, or I'm going to schedule this.
I know you say it's urgent for you right now. I don't see it that way. Here's why I don't see it that way. I will get that taken care of next Tuesday or next Wednesday, and you kind of move on. But I think that's that's the important part is if you're going to shift it to a different box, you have to communicate what you're doing and why you're doing it. I completely agree that. I think I think a lot of leaders might fall into this trap where they don't inherently explain the
why they've put it into a certain box. So someone comes to you and says, hey, Laurens, I need you to take care of this, and in their mind they're thinking this is urgent and important, and in your mind you're thinking, oh, I mean I've delegated this before to people on my team, I can delegate this. Again, If the person who's asked you to it hasn't shared with you the context on why you specifically are being
asked to do it, then it might go over your head. It might you might not realize there's other things working in the background that might mean that you don't necessarily understand the gravity of the situation of why you have to do it, and so you go to delegate it. Yeah, that's a that's a miss on your part if you haven't stopped to make sure there's clarity there.
Hopefully the leader would provide that clarity upfront if they need to make sure you're the one doing it, especially if you have a track record of really
positive examples of delegation and that going well. Hopefully they would. But at the end of the day, if you're the one being asked to do it, you don't get to delegate it without making sure that the person who's asked you to do it understands that's what you're going to do, and by making sure there's clarity around that, you're never going to have a situation where you've accidentally or intentionally delegated something and find out later that's going to cause more problems
than it would have if you just got it done yourself. Because you're right, very very few things normally would fall into things you have to do. Almost all of them can be scheduled, almost all of them can be delegated, but the otherwise, otherwise, how would anybody ever get promoted. You know that you have to be able to demonstrate the ability to do the role before you take the role. So by definition, they have to be able to do these things. I think that's such an important clarity there is that
is that have the conversation upfront. Now, don't just assume that you get to decide where where things go simply because you've decided that in the past. Absolutely, And with that it brings us to the end of this episode. This is hacking your leadership. I'm Lorenzo and I'm Chris, and have a great day.