What’s the urgency?

Years ago, I ran a big corporate rebranding project. Around 100 staff, 11 office locations, and hundreds of branded assets (vehicles, office signage, uniforms, stickers, pens, a fair whack of stuff).

The company was actually changing a lot – they were shifting from being one brand and doing this:

• Moving the current brand up a level to become a “holding” brand for a bunch of sub brands.
• This rebrand was actually to create a sub-brand, but every employee and office location would end up under this public-facing “new brand”, while the holding brand shifted into the background. Structurally it was a new brand, but for staff, customers, and other humans, it would look like a rebrand.
• Other sub brands would follow, this was the first.

So they went from this:

To this:

This was a big project. The new brand needed a new name, new look, new everything.

From a planning, design and new brand rollout perspective, it was just me. I wasn’t stressed – rebrands are my thing, and this wasn’t uncommon.

Until around mid-March, the CEO drops this:

“It’s all gotta be done by May 1“.

Uh, fudge.

This was a long-term client, so I knew this CEO well. Vexley (not his real name) typically moved fast.

Just Vexley being Vexley.

“Geez, that’s not much time Vex.”

“You’ve got this Dan, just tell me what you need. But we’ve gotta hit that date.”

For a day or so, I left it at that. Tight deadline, typical client request. What’s the flippin’ urgency!?

Funny enough, I hadn’t thought to ask that exact question. I threw assumptions at it, and decided to get annoyed instead of get to the bottom of it.

So I asked.

“Industry conference in Qld on May 7th, I’m presenting on stage and we’ll have a booth, plus we’re sponsoring, actually we might be the major sponsor. Yeah, I reckon we’ll do that.”

Now that makes things quite urgent then, doesn’t it…

On this occasion, Vexley had a good answer. There was a genuine urgency, and we could create boundaries to work with that:

• Some stuff needed to be ready very early for sponsorship reasons;
• Some could be ready closer to the date, or even on the day;
• And others could happen after the event.

Very often though, there’s not a good answer. Urgency can creep up because people are impatient, or they’re worried about your costs blowing out, or they’re just excited and want to get moving.

As the person tasked with delivering this urgent request, you need context.

Without context, I could easily have prioritised the wrong thing and blown the sponsorship opportunity.

Urgency is sometimes genuine, and sometimes… just a default state.

Always ask.