Doing What’s Important
by Mark Sklarow, Executive Director, IECA
(Attending the ASAE Convention in Toronto)
I heard Newsweek International Editor and CNN host Fareed Zakaria speak today. I was particularly taken by one of his opening lines: “The urgent will always crowd out the important.”
Zakaria was speaking about what Senator Obama had stated as his one over-arching goal in deciding whether to run for president: getting the U.S. out of Iraq. Of course what he has found is that on any given day dozens of other items both large (the economy) and less so (Somali Pirates) demand his immediate attention.
But isn’t Zakaria’s point true of us all. We may begin a day knowing what important task “must” be confronted, yet a panicked phone call from a client or a sick child or a broken air conditioner can quickly grab our attention.
On Wednesday afternoon the IECA Executive Committee will meet. Needless to say there are “important” issues to be confronted, but none of us will be surprised if some urgent matter dominates the 48 hours we have together. I for one hope that our cell phones don’t work in Canada or our Internet connections are just not quite strong enough, allowing us to shut out some of those urgent matters so the important ones can be discussed.
