Important but not urgent

For those of you working in a software product team, especially in a senior or leadership role, let’s try a little thought experiment…

You’ve just won a once-in-a-lifetime 2-month holiday for you and your family/close friends. But there’s a catch—you have to leave tomorrow morning and cannot contact anyone on your team for 60 days while you’re away. Today is your last day with your team before you go.

How do you think your team will cope in your absence? Will the developers still be able to implement the features you’ve planned? Are there certain parts of the architecture or codebase where they’ll get stuck? Can production releases still proceed at the same cadence? Can new-start developers be onboarded by the rest of the team?

What is the single thing that worries you the most in this scenario? What are you most keen to communicate to your team today to ensure things don’t go to pot in your absence? Is there anything you’ll tell them to “hold off on this until I get back” ? Or might you even turn down the prize altogether citing work commitments?

And now ask yourself—is it time to prioritise doing something to address these important but seemingly not urgent issues?

If you’re ok with sharing what you came up with, I’d love to hear it. Just hit reply.