Urgency Culture Is Not a Strategy.

Urgency feels powerful. It makes you feel like you’re moving, accomplishing, responding. But urgency is not strategy. It’s adrenaline in a suit, and it’s wrecking teams.

Here’s what’s actually happening. When leaders frame everything as ASAP, the nervous system shifts into chronic fight-or-flight. Stress hormones spike, focus narrows, creativity tanks. You get reactive workers, not strategic ones. Instead of solving problems, teams scramble to plug leaks — usually the ones yelling loudest.

Clinical psychology calls this stress inoculation failure. Humans can adapt to short bursts of pressure, but constant urgency erodes resilience. It leads to decision fatigue, short tempers, and eventually, burnout. And let’s be honest: no one does their best work in survival mode.

So why do leaders keep doing it? Because urgency looks like control. It creates the illusion of productivity: people rushing, inboxes pinging, meetings stacked. But it’s just noise. Without clarity, all that frantic movement produces exhaustion instead of results.

A real strategy balances urgency with pacing. It asks: what’s truly mission-critical, and what can wait? It makes space for deep work, rest, and course correction. That’s how teams innovate instead of collapse.

Urgency culture isn’t leadership. It’s anxiety, handed down the chain of command.