There are many personal ingredients that are required for success. A great attitude, hard work, honesty, knowledge and more. Each of these variables are very important and without these key ingredients one is more likely to fail. This month we would like to introduce you to a key ingredient that we often-times overlook. It is a “sense of urgency.”

What is this “sense of urgency” and why is it so important?From this point on we will call the “sense of urgency” just “urgency” for short. Urgency is what makes us elevate our performance beyond the performance of others. It also allows us to perform well under adverse conditions. The inverse of urgency in this regard would be the feeling of complacency. One can see that those who are complacent are not likely to achieve as much as those who have a sense of urgency.

Here are a few quotes from articles we have reviewed on the topic:

Have you noticed that the people who make things happen in this world share the same sense of urgency? Gary Ryan Blair

The fewer natural resources a country or company has, the more it will dig inside itself for innovations in order to survive. It’s the sense of urgency that makes them survive, and the same principle applies to individuals. Thomas Friedman from “The World is Flat”

This period of our lives is certainly one that calls for urgency. There are fewer resources available to us in terms of money and even consumer confidence which can be defined as positive energy.

However, there is nothing within this time period which dilutes the internal energy and time resources available to us. We start every day with the same amount of time and the same amount of available energy.

Many react to down periods by spending their time and energy worrying about why things are so bad. Of course, this exacerbates the situation. In an era in which we need as much energy as possible, we lose our urgency because we are focused upon a “woe is me” attitude.

Those who are going to succeed will need to overcome this very devastating tendency. They are going to have to rise up and gain urgency. What will urgency do for you?

• Urgency will enable you to look at opportunities instead of crying about how bad things are. In other words, you will look up instead of down.

• Urgency will help you rise above the masses of those who are mediocre to differentiate yourself in a positive way. In this period you can actually become different just by being positive and that, in itself, represents an opportunity.

• Urgency will help you achieve more in less time with less resources.

Let us take an example. How quickly and how positively do you follow-up on opportunities? Whether you are responding to an individual lead from a consumer who wants to purchase or a potential business partner, your response time and your response attitude will make all the difference in the world. You would think that, in this environment, business people would be hungry. Yet, many with down attitudes make their belief about failure a self-fulfilling prophesy by the way they respond to potentially positive stimuli.

Successful people follow-up more quickly than average. Have you become complacent because of your previous success or the environment of negativity or both? If you answered yes to this question to any degree, you must move 180 degrees in the other direction. You must follow with all the urgency you can muster.

The business opportunities you solidify today will be the building blocks for tomorrow. Those without urgency will not have this foundation in place. Their performance will be poor today and when things pick up, they will be too far behind to catch up.