Purpose over urgency ❤️

I believe a team works better with a “sense of purpose” than a “sense of urgency”.

When you have a purpose, you naturally do what needs to be done to achieve it. When you have urgency, you naturally do as little as possible to be “done”. Which environment lends itself better to collaboration, innovation, and continuous improvement?

A clear purpose helps developers do better work. It is easier to make good decisions if you understand not only the task at hand, but also how it fits into the broader goal and product context.

Studies in cognitive psychology and management show that time pressure can increase speed but often reduces accuracy, creativity, and long-term performance. Setting a tight but realistic sprint deadline can boost output, but constantly high-pressure deadlines lead to burnout and a lower quality product.

Sometimes things are truly urgent in a production-is-on-fire kind of way. Then it is okay to get things done even at the cost of long-term values. But if firefighting becomes the norm, I think it is a sign of an immature organization. It is a necessary evil, not something to strive for.

But creating that sense of purpose is hard. Defining a vision that is clear and engaging is just as hard. So perhaps it is easier to whip up urgency? It is easier to tell developers that something is important rather than making them feel it. But I think it is the wrong way to go, and that a team with a clear purpose will perform better than one that is motivated by urgency.

I believe the role of a leader is to cultivate purpose, not urgency.