Business Management Tips: Handling urgency (humor)

Most of you would have heard of Murphy's laws and many a time you would have seen how apt those laws of Murphy were in the reality of business life. In my 30 years of business experience, I too have formed my own laws on one specific aspect of business life - “Urgency”. I am glad to share these with you, though I am not prominent enough to declare them as C.V.Rajan's laws of business urgency!

The main law of urgency: “Nothing is really urgent”

Any urgency thrust upon by one upper link of a business chain on another link below it is essentially a wrongly-perceived, over-bloated or a non-existent contingency or it's the outcome of one's sluggishness, inefficiency or outright procrastination thrust on to another next in the pecking order.

It works in several ways:

Type 1: Laziness / Procrastination:

Example: A production Engineer, who forgot/ delayed/ procrastinated to check the stocks of a critical raw material, wants the purchase department to procure the material urgently. The purchase department, delays placing the order but wants the supplier to supply the items urgently!

Type 2: Over cautiousness:

Example: A production engineer knows that the purchase department will delay any requisition that is not marked as "urgent". So he marks “urgent” even those requirements which are not really urgent!

Type 3: Ignoring over cautiousness:

The purchase department, over a period of time learns that almost all indents are marked “urgent”! So they equally delay ordering all the items irrespective of true urgency!

When urgency is thrust upon you, think of this golden law: Nothing is really urgent. A little bit of thickening of skin (to reduce over sensitivity) will help you a long way in tackling urgency. The rule is: Relax, procrastinate, add your fair share of delays and then pass the bug to the next in the pecking order and demand urgent action!

Now let us see some corollaries of the main law of urgency:

The urgency of a purchase requirement comes to an end once the quotation is received

A purchase officer will keep on chasing the potential supplier to give a quotation stating that the requirement is “urgent”. A supplier may run helter-skelter to work out the quotation and submit it. The moment the quotation is received, the urgency will come to an end and things go to the back burner!

You see, to place order and procure the item, there has to be a budget, a sanction of money, preparation of a purchase order, making an advance payment – so many elements are involved and each will naturally have its share of delays!

The urgency of a supply comes to an end once the order and advance are received

When the buyer wants something “very urgently”, a shrewd and experienced supplier knows how to handle it. He says he will supply the item "off the shelf" or "at half the time any other competitor takes" and press the buyer to place the order urgently.

He knows for sure that in receiving the order and advance, there will be delays and he will judiciously point out these delays and say the stock had been exhausted or work schedules have got altered in the delayed period! Now it is his turn to keep his customer at his mercy and go happily making false promises and delays in delivery!

The urgency of sending payment comes to an end once the material is received

The buyer will clearly state in his order that the payment will be made “before taking delivery” (if the item is too critical), or “immediately against receipt of items” if the seller insists so. But the seller, who has delayed his deliveries may have to succumb to the demand of the buyer “not to wait for payment formalities” to deliver the items, considering the urgency and the inordinate delays.

The moment the items are received, all the commitments about making a timely payment will become null and void!

All commitments for providing urgent after-sales-service become null and void once the payment is received

As long as the buyer withholds the payment, the seller will provide prompt after sales service to the customer in the interest of collecting the pending payment. Once the payment is received, providing prompt after sales service will no longer be “urgent” for the seller!

Any project declared as very urgent will end up twice as much delayed

When any project is begun with very tight schedules (even if the reasons are real) and there is a constant pressure at every stage and at every level, you will ultimately find the project getting delayed and screwed up more and more! People under pressure do more mistakes, do less checks, do a less-than-perfect work and they show up for rework at every stage! Reworks take up more time than normal and the delays accumulate.

All oral urgencies are worth ignoring until made formal in writing

Every business action requires certain procedures to be followed and some written commitment in the form of a letter, an indent, a quotation, an order, a check payment and so on - something tangible, signed by an authorized signatory. Where business stakes are high, investment is huge and a project demands deployment of manpower and materials, unless this sign of authority is there, no amount of oral expressions has any binding, whomsoever expresses them and however be the urgency.

If you think your oral communication should be taken as a commandment by the opposite party, and it were truly so, what is the problem in going through the procedure quickly and complete the written part too? This is where most of the people fail, because they are not too sure to make a written commitment, but they want to somehow makes things move fast to cover their sluggishness and inefficiency!

Where risks and stakes are high, no one wants to share the risk of acting purely on another person’s oral instructions, but every one wants the next person to act on his oral instructions! This is how the “urgency” becomes bogus!

For example, “A” orally tells his supplier “B” to proceed with manufacture of a critical item urgently saying “Don’t wait on formalities; it’s all on the way”. B does not want to take the risk of acting immediately on A’s demand, but he wants his sub-contractor C to start his share of work saying, “Order for me from A is expected any time; they have orally given the go-ahead. You please proceed; it’s very urgent; don’t wait for formalities; it’s all on the way”.

In this case, “A” may have some bottlenecks somewhere to formalize order on B; but he wants to B to absorb the delays; he is not yet ready to do the formal paper work, because he is not sure. B is not sure of A and he, in turn, is not willing to give a written purchase order to C, but he wants C to act on his oral instructions, so that the delay can be absorbed by C!

Now, do you understand and agree with my law of urgency? Nothing is really urgent!