How to Combat the Tyranny of the Urgent - Embrace the 5 Ps

We often speak at Focus on the Field about a concept called the “Tyranny of the Urgent”, the imperative that what needs to happen first is often what is the most urgent and seemingly important. But when the tyranny of the urgent takes over, processes, systems and inevitably humans start to break down. So how does one combat this tyranny or put more simply “the chaos of now”. Is it possible to stop the tyranny before it starts?

I’m here to say YES it is possible.

The 5 Ps

We all know em, but now it’s time to embrace the 5 Ps - Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance, if you learn nothing else in this article remember that if you want to be more organized tomorrow you have to start the work today. The roadmap you lay out today will greatly impact your future performance. 

How to Use the 5Ps

With the 5 Ps as an overarching mindset and the goal of eradicating the tyranny of the urgent, there are several steps that you can take next:

STEP 1: Set Yourself Up for Success - this may seem obvious, but I find it is one of the most overlooked things, especially in youth/amateur sports. Create a calendar (whether in google sheets, in a calendar program, what have you) and add in all of the upcoming activity, events, key milestones and then ALL of the tasks associated with that activity. Registration open, registration close, submit player data, you name it, it goes on the calendar. 

At FOTF we call these ops calendars, and they are the guiding lights that help us plan out not just a season but an organization’s entire year. 

STEP 2: Take a Look Back - married with Step 1 is Step 2, look back at what you did last year, and make sure that is factored into your ops calendar. If there was a particularly arduous or tedious task, try to break it down into smaller, more manageable chunks. And make sure to check with your colleagues, anyone involved in your operations should be contributing to this calendar.

STEP 3: Clean House - once you have everything laid out, you now need to spend time gathering all the documents that you’ll need to run a successful season(s). Make a new version of previous documents that worked well for you and brainstorm on new ones that will help future you.

Make a centralized folder that all operations personnel can access, and let them contribute as well. At FOTF every one of our clients has their own folder in our operations drive, filled with org specific documents that we use season to season. 

STEP 4: WRITE IT DOWN - this one is in caps because it’s arguably the most important. Once you have laid out all the tasks, gotten your documents together and made a central repository for everyone you need to write it down. Don’t forget all the good work you’ve done to date, write down a simple document that details what you do to change over from season to season or year to year, write down any tasks step by step that are super tedious and leave a cheat sheet for any new/incoming staff. 

STEP 5: Identify Any Gaps - in completing steps 1-4 gaps may become apparent - we don’t have anyone that does carding for us, we were late on submitting our rosters for several tournaments last year, we aren’t tracking our P&L to see how well we are doing year over year. It’s important to pull those gaps out.

STEP 6: Decide How to Fill Those Gaps - with the gaps now identified, what are you going to do about it? Again the goal here is to futureproof yourself. Do you need another employee? Do you need outsourced help like Focus on the Field? Do you need a new system? Whatever the gap may be, it's time to start solutioning.

After step 6 this is where you take stock and say “I think I’m ready”, let’s go host a great season. 

And now if you all followed the above steps I have no doubt that the season will have been a success, and after the season comes:

STEP 7: Post Analysis - did you feel less tyranny of the urgent? Did you feel more organized? Are there still underlying issues you need to address? How do you keep getting better season over season? 

Timing of the 5Ps

Many of you sports operators reading this may be thinking this is either too elementary or you don’t really have time for it, but I implore you that even just doing some of these steps will help you run a smoother season. 

We all have those 4-6 weeks every year (maybe not consecutively) where things are a bit slower, and that’s when it’s best to start implementing the 5 Ps.

Conclusion

As you start to implement the 5 Ps remember your overall goal, let’s stop the Tyranny of the Urgent before it even begins.