Relative importance

I was recently involved in a workshop for executives from a financial services organization. Over dinner they spoke about the problems, challenges, concerns and uncertainty they and their teams were experiencing at the moment. Then one of them started to talk about his divorce and the battle he and his wife were fighting about his two sons who he hadn't seen for 6 months now.  His biggest fear was that he would never see them again.

This led to a conversation about the relativity of importance. Almost all participants shared examples  of times when their sense of importance and priorities changed as a consequence of events happening in their lives. They also realized how quickly the priorities were “reset” as life goes on.
I noticed something similar last week. Within 6 days  the media headlines in The Netherlands shifted from economic crisis and all i's aspects, to a
possible flue pandemic,  to the terrible incident during Queens day.  Even though nothing had changed with regards to the world economy or the Mexican flue, these suddenly felt less important.

It reminded me how relative notions like importance and urgency are. They are very personal, depend on context, on what (else) is going on in our lives and they can change overnight. 

At the dinner I asked the participants, why does it take a disaster, illness or another serious incident to become aware of the relativity of importance and to make us realize what is really important? Why doesn't this
awareness last? Would you want it to last?  Not questions to which I expected an immediate answer. But it triggered a good discussion.

One of the participants mentioned that in our organizations we often expect people to understand , share and support what we consider to be important or urgent. We are surprised, disappointed or frustrated when people don't share our sense of urgency. He raised the question  “do we understand their context and do we understand what is important from their perspective?” I'm pretty sure the answer is “no”.  What I'm not so sure about is how to change it. 

Usually change starts with awareness.  In this case awareness that importance and priorities are personal and relative. That we cannot expect others to automatically accept and share what it important to us.
I suggest that asking these questions is a good way to start .

I would love to hear your suggestions.