| Many people want to
know where we got the name QUAD II. We got the idea from a book written by
Stephen Covey ... The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.
In the book, Mr. Covey explains that effective
people spend their time on Important matters regardless of how Urgent they are.
By contrast, ineffective people spend time on Urgent matters regardless of how
Important they are or, worse yet, spend their time on activities that are
neither Important nor Urgent. He diagrams the concept this way:
|
URGENT |
NOT URGENT |
| IMPORTANT |
Quadrant I |
Quadrant
II |
| NOT IMPORTANT |
Quadrant III |
Quadrant IV |
Any activity can be categorized into one of
the four quadrants on the basis of two criteria:
 | How important is the activity?
| How urgent is the activity? |
|
The founder of Quad II, Rick Bushnell,
identified with this concept very quickly. A true industry leader and innovator,
he realized that we often work on matters that were urgent but not important.
Answering a phone call which interrupted long range planning is a good example.
Given a limited amount of time in the day, any time spent on Not Important
activities takes valuable time away from Quadrant II issues ... those that are
Important but not necessarily Urgent.
We named our company Quad II for two reasons.
First, as a reminder to ourselves to focus on important issues,
especially the ones that aren't necessarily urgent because these are the
matters that often get postponed indefinitely. Second, we felt that the name and
associated concept positioned us as the consulting firm that companies could
hire to work on their important but not urgent projects. |
