If you’re a corporate adrenaline junkie, urgencies can be a tempting distraction. They can bring instant validation and gratification. The adrenaline high from urgency is invigorating. For a time, anyway. Then it peaks and quickly fatigues people.

As leaders, it’s our responsibility to help protect our teams against urgencies by identifying and rewarding the specific behaviours that lead to achieving our goals. Act on the important, don’t react to the urgent. Focus your team members on the “wildly important” (important and proactive efforts) and not the wildfires — even the ones you set! But first, ensure you haven’t modeled or reinforced a culture that rewards firefighting more than fire prevention.

How will you find the courage to keep your team focused on what is most important, including saying no to some of your own best ideas?