I read this interesting passage in Launching a Leadership Revolution:

A leader begins investing time in important issues, and then gets interrupted by urgent issues. Gradually the urgent issues eat away the time the leader has to spend working on important issues. The more this happens, the more urgent issues erupt, because the important things are not being handled. Eventually, the leader is engulfed by urgent crises and has no time for important, vital issues at all.

At this point the leader is finished.

It all goes back to that old philosophy of ‘busy work’. Too many people feel that being busy and the affiliated sense of accomplishment is relevant. It isn’t.

Leaders must live in the realm of the important, not in the realm of the urgent.

Interesting book. Half way through.