Dealing with Bears and the Eisenhower Decision Matrix

Okay so where am I?

How you ever been in the middle of the innocuous RFP (Request For Proposal) process? Well, I have and it’s alternatively intense, ridiculous, mind-numbing, and about eight other adjectives that I cannot list here.

I love getting new business. It breathes life into the agency. It’s great for the bottom line. It rewards the soul if you can produce some Big Ideas and generate success. But the process of creating the RFP and submitting it is a real bear. Like the bear* from The Revenant. The process can eat you alive mentally.

Why? Because just when you think you are ready to collect your entire presentation and merge it one complete document, it chases you down again like the bear** in The Edge. The worst part of the entire game is that a) you don’t know if the fix is in with the companies offering the RFP, and b) your staff assembling your response to the RFP will tell you that everything is urgent and everything is important.

Now while the struggle of point “A” is definitely a real, most of us ban manage point “b” with a little technique I learned decades ago in college (yes, I am old…) called The Eisenhower Decision Matrix. You’re probably saying, “Wow, that’s a mouthful; The Eisenhower Decision Matrix. What is it?”

The Eisenhower Decision Matrix is how to distinguish between urgent and important tasks and make some real progress in your daily projects. If you’re a manager—or aspire to be—I’m sure that sometimes feel like you spend the majority of your time managing crises. I bet you feel like your life is spent putting out one proverbial fire after another. At the end of it all you are completely zapped and drained of energy. Some days you look up and can’t point to anything you tangibly accomplished.

This is where The Eisenhower Decision Matrix can benefit you more then you know. Here’s the philosophy crux:

I’ve written before leadership lessons that came from Attila the Hun and now I want to add Dwight D. Eisenhower to the mix. This principle of this matrix guided him through his entire, hugely successful career as general and president:

“What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.”

So what’s the difference between “urgent” and “important”?

Urgent means that a task requires immediate attention. These are the to-do’s that scream “Now!” Urgent tasks put us in a reactive mode, one that is ultimately marked by a defensive, negative, hurried, and narrowly-focused mindset.

Important tasks are things that contribute to our long-term mission, values, and goals. Sometimes these tasks are also urgent, but usually they aren’t. When we focus on important activities we operate in a responsive mode, which helps us remain calm, rational, and open to new opportunities.

It’s a fairly intuitive distinction, yet most of us frequently fall into the trap of believing that all urgent activities are also important. This is because our evolutionary ancestors centered in on on short-term concerns rather than long-term strategy. Maybe that’s because a charging saber-toothed lion could mean the difference between life and death.

Because of the 24-hour news cycle, we are constantly bombarded with information that has only heightened this deeply engrained mindset. We experience “present shock” – a condition in which “we live in a continuous, always-on ‘now’” and lose our sense of long-term narrative and direction. In this state of being, it’s easy to lose sight of the distinction between the truly important and the merely urgent.

The consequences of this priority-blindness is the primary cause of burnout and stagnation and on a broader level our culture is unable to solve the truly important problems of our time.

Business thinker Stephen Covey popularized the Eisenhower’s Decision Principle in his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, where he a decision matrix to help individuals make the distinction between what’s important and not important and what’s urgent and not urgent. The matrix consists of a square divided into four quadrants:

Urgent/Important,
Not Urgent/Important
Urgent/Not Important, and,
Not Urgent/Not Important:

If you need extensive tutorials on the four quadrants, you should really buy the book (here’s the link; only $5.44 on your Kindle), but for my purposes, I’ll break them down quickly.

Quadrant 1—With a some rudimentary planning and organization, many Q1 tasks can be made more efficient or even eliminated outright. For example, instead of waiting until the last minute to work on an RFP (thus turning it into an urgent task), you could schedule your time so that you’re done a week in advance.
Quadrant 2—We should seek to spend most of our time on these activities, as they’re the ones that provide us lasting happiness, fulfillment, and success. Unfortunately, present bias challenges that keep us from investing enough time and energy into Q2 tasks. We all have an inclination to focus on whatever is most pressing at the moment and make this our default mode. It’s hard to get motivated to do something when there isn’t a deadline looming over our head. Departing from this fallback position takes willpower and self-discipline.
Quadrant 3—These tasks require our attention now (urgent), but don’t help us achieve our goals or fulfill our mission (not important). Most Q3 tasks are interruptions from other people and often involve helping them meet their own goals and fulfill their own priorities. They’re important to others, they’re not important to you. They need to be balanced with your Q2 activities or you’ll go crazy.
Quadrant 4—These aren’t urgent and not important. This is goofing around work . The kinds of work Prince sung about in “Raspberry Beret”: “I was working part time in a five-and-dime / My boss was Mr. McGee / He told me several times that he didn’t like my kind / ‘Cause I was a bit too leisurely / Seems that I was busy doing something close to nothing / But different than the day before.” If you specialize in Quadrant 4, you won’t work for me long.

In our present shock world, the ability to filter the signal from the noise, or distinguish between what’s urgent and what’s truly important, is an essential skill to have. So now, you’ll have to pardon me because we have to make FedEx by 4:30 P.M. to get this RFP overnighted to make tomorrow’s 2:00 P.M. deadline.

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World’s Worst RFP – A brilliant play on the entire RFP / Spec Work game:

Zulu Alpha Kilo takes on the RFP world with their “World’s Worst RFP” where they extend the conversation to the RFP and pitch process for both clients and agencies alike.