The Urgency Trap — and How CEOs Can Escape It

If you’re leading an organization right now, chances are you’re feeling the pressure: to move faster, to innovate sooner, to respond yesterday. But during June’s CEO Hub Meeting, one thing became clear: there’s a difference between moving fast and just spinning your wheels.

We spent two hours—two hours that delivered more ROI than most off-sites—exploring a question that haunts many executives:

How do I drive urgency in my company without burning out my team or myself?

Because let’s be honest: too many leadership cultures confuse motion with progress. We glorify long days and nonstop Slack threads as if they’re signs of commitment. What they often reveal is a deeper problem—what Kotter called “false urgency”: activity driven by fear, optics, or inertia rather than strategic clarity.

In the Hub, we talked about the cost of this. Deferred decisions that later exploded into crises. Teams are stuck in “firefighting” mode. Cultures that reward being busy over being impactful.

And we talked about the antidote: realistic urgency.

Urgency with purpose. Urgency that sharpens focus, not just accelerates chaos. Urgency that gives your team energy, not ulcers.

Some of the most powerful takeaways came from real CEO stories:

• One leader canceled three significant initiatives to get one right. The result? A complete mindset shift across her team.

• Another described the moment he stopped being the chief firefighter and became the chief fire preventer.

• A third admitted, “We’ve been in urgent mode for so long, we forgot what regular mode feels like.”

If that line resonates with you, you’re not alone.

We also addressed the tension every CEO faces: how to convey urgency internally while maintaining a calm external presence. How much of the burning platform do you show to your board, your customers, your investors?

This kind of nuanced conversation only happens in a room full of peers who get it. The Hub is where leaders stop posturing and start problem-solving—with candor, insight, and shared experience. We don’t offer a playbook. We build one together.

If you’re not already part of a peer group that challenges your thinking and sharpens your leadership, I’ll say this:

You’re leaving value on the table.

Two hours a month. That’s all it takes. And the return?

Clarity. Confidence. Better decisions—and fewer fires to put out.

Let’s stop celebrating motion and start building momentum.

See you in the Hub.

Matt

Interested in learning more? You can reach Matt at Matt@afn.global