Move It to Quadrant Two: stop firefighting, start planning.

Transcript

Which quadrant is the most important, out of quadrants one and two? Ideally, quadrant two is the most important quadrant. If we're working in quadrant two, it means we're working on the important things, but they're not urgent. They're not urgent because they've been planned for. Unfortunately, most people operate the majority of the time in quadrant one. They're working on the important things, but everything's urgent. They're firefighting. They're swamped, because there's no planning involved.

Now, we're never going to move everything out of quadrant one. If a client calls you at the last minute, you could argue that's important and urgent, and it's hard to plan for. But as a coach, what I'll always say to people is: if you've got anything in quadrant one, can we move it into quadrant two? Is there anything you can do to plan better, to prioritise better? Because if you do, you move it from quadrant one to two.

For example, if you tell me this particular client is calling you willy-nilly throughout the day, and it's important and urgent, how do you move that into quadrant two? They might say: I'll proactively call the client, and I'll schedule in three to four every day to talk to them. Great. If you do that, that client has a three-to-four window every day, and it's no longer important and urgent. It's now important and not urgent, because it's planned for. That is the coaching matrix. There are different steps to this: there's filling it out, and then there's the coaching conversation around it that can enable us to be more in control of what we do.