Increase Urgency within Your Cultures With a 3-Part Formula with Gene Hammett, CEO Coach

In this episode, we're diving into something every organization talks about but few truly master urgency. I share what I've learned coaching CEOs about why urgency matters so much and how clarity, energy, and ownership all work together to create real momentum. We'll talk about setting clear goals, getting people emotionally connected to the work, and helping teams feel genuinely invested in the outcomes. You'll also get a chance to gauge your own urgency score and pick up a few simple ways to boost it. And along the way, I'll touch on how coaching can help leaders and teams move faster, stay focused, and keep growing. Episode Highlights & Time Stamps 0:07 Introduction to Urgency 2:21 Creating Clarity for Urgency 5:51 Energizing Your Team 8:05 Fostering Ownership and Accountability 10:11 The Urgency Formula for Growth Why Urgency Matters More Than Ever In this episode, I dig into the idea of urgency, why it's such a powerful driver of growth and momentum, and why so many organizations quietly lose it over time. Drawing from my work as a CEO coach, I talk about a common issue I see: urgency fading at the executive level and slowly rippling through the entire company. I also introduce the three interconnected elements that shape a culture of urgency clarity, energy, and ownership, and how they set the tone for everything that follows. The Three Ingredients of a High-Urgency Culture Urgency isn't just about moving fast—it's about creating an environment where people feel motivated and empowered to act. I break down the three elements that fuel this: Clarity: Without clear priorities, standards, and success metrics, teams struggle to know where to focus. I talk about the importance of transparent conversations around goals, milestones, and expectations so everyone understands the path forward. Energy: This isn't a buzzword; it's the emotional charge that moves teams into action. When employees feel connected to their work and understand its purpose, engagement skyrockets. I share ways organizations can build energy—like communicating meaning and celebrating small wins to keep momentum alive. Ownership: Beyond responsibility, ownership is about personal investment and proactive accountability. I discuss how leaders can create a culture where team members genuinely feel the work belongs to them—and why that shift changes everything. Assessing Your Urgency and Raising It I challenge listeners to calculate their own urgency score using a simple formula built around clarity, energy, and ownership. This diagnostic helps leaders pinpoint where urgency is thriving and where it needs immediate attention. From there, I offer guidance on turning those insights into real, actionable improvements. I wrap up by inviting leaders who want deeper support to consider coaching as a tool for unlocking their team's full potential—because building urgency isn't a one-time task; it's an ongoing journey. Key Takeaways Urgency drives growth and momentum—but it often weakens at the top and spreads throughout the organization. Clarity is the foundation of urgency; teams need clear priorities, expectations, and definitions of success. Energy fuels action by connecting people emotionally to their work and reinforcing purpose through communication and small wins. Ownership creates accountability, encouraging team members to take proactive responsibility rather than simply completing tasks. The three elements—clarity, energy, and ownership—work together to form a high-urgency culture. Leaders can assess their team's urgency using a simple score based on these three components. Improving urgency is an ongoing process, and coaching can accelerate progress and unlock organizational potential. Ideal For: Founders, CEOs, executives, managers, and anyone committed to elevating their leadership capacity. Resources & Next Steps Ready to take your leadership energy to the next level? Explore free training and resources at training.coreelevation.com https://training.coreelevation.com/ to help you identify energy leaks, strengthen your leadership presence, and elevate your team's performance. Explore More: training.coreelevation.com https://training.coreelevation.com/ Listen to the Full Episode: Growth Think Tank Podcast https://growththinktank.com/

• 0:00Speaker 00

  If you don't create energy, urgency dies. Because even with clarity, without energy, there's no fuel to move forward. And so you want to make sure that you understand energy. You get buy-in through questions. You get, you know, ask people about purpose and connect it. Welcome to Grow Think Tank. This is the one and only place where you will get insight from the founders and the CEOs of the fastest-growing privately-held companies. I am the host. My name is Gene Hammett. I help leaders and their teams navigate the defining moments of their growth. Are you ready to grow? Today, we're going to talk about urgency. Recently, I had a client come to me and say, "I just don't feel a sense of urgency around the company."

• 0:44Speaker 00

  It starts at the top. Their executive team had lost their sense of urgency. And it, you know, goes out throughout the organization. It trickles down, if you will. When you think about urgency, what do you think is the real problem? Well, today, in this episode, we're going to dive deep into urgency, how to create more urgency, and really try to understand this better so that you can, you know, develop your team to activate that sense of urgency a little bit more. So before we get started, my name's Gene Hammett. I'm a CEO coach. I've been doing this for about 12, 13 years. And it's my sole full-time job is to help companies through growth challenges and leadership challenges.

• 1:29Speaker 00

  And we mainly work with growth-oriented companies. I've worked with more Inc. 5,000 companies than anyone in the world. And I come to you to share some of those insights and some simple tools and frameworks that we use to help those clients activate more. Now, if you're curious about some of the work that we do and you're not quite ready for a conversation with me, I totally get it. But you can lean in and you can get some free training around this because if you want to be a better leader, if you want to activate more growth and specifically have a company that grows without you, then you want to come to our next training. And that's, you can sign up for free at training.coreelevation.com. If you go there, you'll find out more information about when the next one is, what we actually do, what the promise behind this is.

• 2:13Speaker 00

  But in short, become a better leader and grow your company and create a business that grows without you. Go to training.coreelevation.com, sign up for free now. Now that that's out of the way, let's get back to urgency. Now, if you're feeling like you're having to continue to pull people along, if you feel a sense of complacency and some of that hunger is gone, then I invite you to look at this with fresh eyes and look at some, you know, what can we do better? I'm sure you're doing some of these to some let some degree. If you think about it, it's not a yes or no. It's like it's a spectrum. And so there's many kind of shades of gray inside of this sense of urgency.

• 2:55Speaker 00

  But when I break it down for you, I want you to think about each of the three core elements of this. And it really ties well into our work and and let's just dive into this. Right? And your job is to figure out what could you do just a little bit better to increase that sense of urgency? If you want to do a lot better, I'm happy to have a conversation with you to to unlock this. So let's dive in. The first part of this is understanding that there's a three parts to urgency. The first part is clarity. People who know what they're doing will will do it to a higher degree. Energy, energy is really about the emotional state that happens while you're doing this. And then finally, ownership.

• 3:35Speaker 00

  Ownership is about, you know, you taking pride and identity and getting that a job well done. Now, those three things will all, you know, help you raise your sense of urgency across your culture. So let's break them down one by one. Clarity. Clarity is about priorities. What is most important right now? What are our deadlines? What are the milestones? What are the standards? What does good look like? What does excellent look like? And who can make decisions around these things? Those are all part of clarity. And if you have a team that doesn't have clarity, that's on you as the leader. Now, they should be driving for clarity. They should be asking for it.

• 4:17Speaker 00

  But your job is to activate that inside them to to show them what good looks like, what the vision is for it and to inspire them to want to to make that a part of their world. Now, if you do a really good job with this, you will. Find that people don't ask you what needs to be done and what the priorities are because it's very explicit. You're you're talking about them in your executive team meetings. You're talking about them in all of the things that you have to do. Uh, in the conversation you're having and those projects are the ones get the resources that gets your attention. They get your energy. And the clarity of that helps you narrow down to what's most important. The problem I see most in fast growth companies is the fact that they want it all.

• 5:01Speaker 00

  I want it all within my business, speaking, books, uh, new clients, workshops, working with AI. All these things are competing for our time and energy, but can we do all of them right now? And the answer is probably not. Now I have some organizations that have a couple of hundred employees, so they can do a lot more than the companies that might have 20 employees. But it doesn't matter where you are. You definitely want to narrow your focus to the highest priorities. What will make the most difference? You want to be clear about the deadlines. You want to be clear about what good looks like or what excellent looks like to in this journey. And you want to be clear about decision making and so that things aren't slowed down by you.

• 5:44Speaker 00

  And the more you can do that, the more likely you are to have a sense of urgency by your team because there's nowhere to hide. Now that's the first part of the formula is clarity. Without clarity, speed is impossible. So number two is energy. Energy is that emotional state that comes with, uh, that becomes a behavioral one, if that makes sense. Teams lose urgency when they feel tired or disconnected or complacent. And they're detached from the outcomes. But energy comes from purpose, like knowing that what you do matters, that when, what are the stakes if we don't do this? You know, how do we really, you know, find someone to to see that they're a part of this?

• 6:28Speaker 00

  And then momentum comes with the small wins. Now you don't create energy. Urgency dies. If you don't create energy, urgency dies. Because even with clarity, without energy, there's no fuel to move forward. And so you want to make sure that you understand energy. You get buy-in through questions, you get, you know, ask people about purpose and connect it. I find a lot of companies have these excellent case studies and excellent reasons for, you know, existing inside their business, but they don't share them very well internally. They might share them within their marketing and they, we narrow them down.

• 7:10Speaker 00

  But I think within our organizations, we could go a little bit deeper, a little bit more emotional in telling some of the stories. I've worked with clients before that have incredible before and after for different products. And one of them comes to mind is Earthly. Earthly is just an incredible company. They do natural products and I really believe in what they're doing. I use a lot of their products and they've helped me in different areas. And they have many different types of products and I'm not trying to make a commercial for them. But I will tell you that the energy that this company represents toward getting things done has gotten better when they tell better stories of the before and after, the impact that their products make.

• 7:52Speaker 00

  And that being said, you want to make sure you do that with your company. And so, again, I'll say what I said earlier, you don't create, if you don't create energy, urgency dies. And so that's the second part of the formula. The third part of the formula is ownership. Ownership is when people feel like it's up to them. They feel like they are on a journey that's personal with the company. So it's kind of like a shared goals, if you will. They're taking initiative, they're being proactive, they're anticipating the problems that are coming up. They're following through, they're working through challenges, they're holding other people accountable.

• 8:35Speaker 00

  Ownership is one of the things that has said, you know, when in my research of fast growth companies, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these companies and these conversations on this podcast come back to, we don't want people to take responsibility, we want them to take ownership. And so I share with you that you've got to have a higher level of ownership if you want more urgency. All this being said, it is a very important thing for you to break it down into pieces so that you can see, do we have a clarity problem? Do we have an energy problem? Or do we have an ownership problem? And you give yourself a number on these things. Call it one to 10 or something like that. One is low, 10 is high.

• 9:19Speaker 00

  And the formula I would offer to you is clarity times energy times ownership. And what is that score? The highest possible, if it 10 times 10 times 10 would be a thousand. And so where are you in that, your urgency score? And it's better to be honest and self-aware at first so that you can, you know, say this is where we are, and then we're going to do some things, we're going to take some time, and we're going to see where we are in a month from now. If you had 30 days to increase your sense of urgency, you got more clarity, you got more energy activation, and people were taking more ownership, you would see that urgency score increase.

• 10:02Speaker 00

  I can't tell you how much, I don't know how committed you guys are at this, are we just a little bit better, or are we a lot better? But this formula will give you some insight around this. So if you want to increase urgency, take the three-part formula and see where you can improve. If you're looking for more support in this, I'm happy to help you, I'm happy to give you some of the tools that we do. I give away most of the things for free because I always know that there are some blind spots, there are some internal traumas, if you will, within leadership that keep people from doing these things. And so in order to really unlock them, we have to have conversations. And that's the reason I think coaching is such a powerful platform for growth and transformation. So, again, my name is Gene Hammett, I'm a CEO coach, we work with a lot of people.

• 10:47Speaker 00

  If you want the free training, go to training.correlation.com. If you want to activate a sense of urgency and growth and better leadership, make sure you show up for that. It's absolutely free. And if I can help you in any way, make sure you reach out to me at [email protected], that's my email. And as always, you think of growth and you think of leadership, think of growth, think tank, and leave with courage. We'll see you next time.