How urgency culture is derailing your business, and what it takes to regain control

This is an issue of The Performance Review, written by our CEO Latesha Byrd. This newsletter is for leaders who want to cut through the noise to examine how performance, leadership, and culture intersect.

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Executives don’t always plan to build a culture of urgency. But somewhere between chasing growth, managing reorgs, cutting budgets, and scrambling for board deadlines, everything starts to feel like a fire drill.

I remember juggling two big projects, prepping for a leadership offsite, and dealing with back-to-back team issues. I kept thinking, “Let me just get through this week.” But then the next week looked the same, and the one after that.

It hit me during a one-on-one when I brought up some concerns about the quality of work slipping from one of my top performers. She looked at me and said, “Honestly, it just feels like we don’t have time to slow down.”

That’s when it hit me. People weren’t cutting corners, they were just trying to keep up. And I’d been so focused on pace, I hadn’t noticed how much pressure we were all carrying.

Your day-to-day is filled with managing crises, leaving little room to connect with your top performers or focus on the company’s bigger picture.

As the pressure gets heavier, you start to question what’s driving the pace of your culture: strategy or survival?

This is the cost of urgency. At first, it looks like leadership in motion. But over time, it becomes your entire operating system.

When urgency becomes the norm, people stop planning and start reacting. Your best talent burns out and starts chasing goals out of fear, not purpose. And performance becomes less about excellence and more about endurance.

Inside most organizations running on urgency, there’s a deeper conflict sitting just under the surface: leaders are moving fast to stay in control, but that speed is costing them the clarity they need to actually lead.

If this is sounding familiar, you're not alone. Urgency culture doesn’t just emerge in chaotic companies. It can also show up in organizations filled with high-achievers, ambitious goals, and good intentions, but no breathing room.

So the question isn’t, “How do we move faster?” It’s, “What are we avoiding by always being in motion?”

🔎What’s under review

This week, we’re reviewing four leadership habits that reinforce urgency and quietly shape the culture that’s moving fast but underperforming.

1. Leading with responsiveness, not direction

Executives are praised for being “available” and “fast-moving.” But this availability signals to your team that your job is to respond, not to lead. As a result, people stay busy, but there’s no alignment or shared vision. This approach isn’t sustainable or strategic.

2. Prioritizing speed over standards

When tight turnarounds become the norm, teams see that speed earns praise, even if the work is rushed, reactive, or shallow. You’re telling people "done is better than done well and over time, people lose the ambition to deliver creative, quality work. This kills innovation.

3. Rewarding urgency, ignoring overextension

You notice the person who jumps on last-minute requests. But do you notice what they dropped to make that happen? Or how often they pick up the slack from broken systems? This habit reinforces that responsiveness equals performance. And nobody raises a red flag until it’s too late.

4. Mistaking pace for power

When leadership is anxious, they speed up because they’re afraid to slow down. You internalize this fear that if you don’t keep moving, you fall behind. Your team then sees that pausing is failure, instead of a much-needed tool to regroup, realign, and move forward strategically.

✔️ Your next 60 days: Reset how you lead under pressure

You don’t fix urgency culture by working harder or moving faster. You address it when you stop reacting and start realigning. These next few months are your opportunity to recalibrate how you lead and how your team experiences you, especially during moments of pressure.

That starts with presence, clarity, and honest reflection on the habits that have been driving your decisions. Here’s where to begin:

1. Clarify what’s actually urgent and what’s unplanned

When every request feels like a fire, it’s a sign your organization may be mistaking poor planning for necessary urgency. Urgency should be the exception, not the standard.

✅ Action: Track all “urgent” or last-minute asks for two weeks. Then, meet with your leadership team to identify patterns. Where is the pressure coming from? What could have been planned better? Use this data to improve workflows.

2. Protect your space for strategic thinking

Many leaders spend their entire week solving problems, but never make space to prevent them. When urgency runs the show, strategy takes a back seat.

✅ Action: Block out two non-negotiable “strategic hours” each week. Use that time to review priorities, pressure points, and what your team is learning, not just producing. Invite a peer or advisor into one of those sessions once a month to get an outside perspective.

3. Set pace expectations with your people leaders

Urgency at the executive level turns into burnout at the manager level. Your pace becomes theirs. And if you don’t clarify the difference between “fast” and “focused,” they’ll mirror your urgency even when it’s not necessary.

✅ Action: During your next meeting with senior people leaders or department heads, have an honest conversation about pace. Where are teams rushing unnecessarily? Where do they need more clarity instead of speed? Co-create new default timelines for common deliverables.

4. Ask what your culture is reinforcing right now

If your team had to define what gets rewarded here, what would they say? If the answer is speed or responsiveness, you may be reinforcing urgency even when you’re trying not to.

✅ Action: Survey your team (formally or informally) and ask: What behaviors feel rewarded here? What feels unsustainable? Use this feedback to adjust what you recognize publicly, how you model leadership, and where policies or practices may be sending mixed signals.

Reminder: Urgency might keep the wheels turning, but presence is what keeps the team aligned. When everything feels like a sprint, it’s easy to mistake constant motion for real momentum. But leadership isn’t just about how fast you respond. It’s about how clearly you lead when the pressure is on.

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