Leaders Do Not Understand Prioritization

If you want to see me turn red and blow steam out my ears like a 1970s cartoon character, just sit me in an audience with a group of leaders as their CEO launches their seven priorities for the coming year. To be fair, it doesn’t have to be seven; it could be any number between two and infinity, and it will cause the same reaction. Why? Because leaders don’t understand prioritization. And it’s their employees who suffer for it.

What is a priority?

The word priority comes from the Latin root priori, which means first. A priority is the thing that comes first. The word came into the English language around the 14th century and existed happily for 500 years with no plural form. You could have one thing that came first, not more than one thing. But sometime after the Second World War, the word priorities emerged. And now, it’s rare that I hear anyone describe a single priority; priorities come by the handful. And here’s…

The Problem with Misunderstanding Prioritization

I’m not trying to single-handedly defend a dead language; I understand English is a living language and, therefore, continually evolving. I’ll throw out a vibey new addition to the Oxford dictionary, like doomscrolling, hangry, or mainsplain, as quickly as the next person.

No, this isn’t about Luddite-level adherence to language rules; it’s about helping employees manage their attention so they can be more productive and less stressed. That goal is almost impossible to achieve when their leaders keep diluting everyone’s focus across multiple priorities at once. I wish leaders understood…

The Difference Between Important and Priority

When I listen carefully to what those leaders giving PowerPoint presentations are really saying, it’s that multiple things are important, or even imperative, to the growth and success of the company. That makes perfect sense. So, why don’t they just say, “These are our seven imperatives,” or “These three things will be most important to us this year?”

I would still argue that you need to be disciplined about how many important things you list because attempting to pay some attention to everything means paying close attention to nothing. If I’m facilitating the strategic planning process, it’s no more than five. Five important things. But every employee still needs clarity about…

What Comes First?

One of my client organizations has noticed profit slipping over the past few years. They’re a healthy, growing company, but margins are slowly eroding. Recently, one of their leaders asked for clarification: is our first priority to continue accelerating growth, or is our first priority to clean up our profitability and efficiency and then grow? It’s a great question; a clear answer will help that leader (and all their leaders) make different decisions. Growth and profitability are both important. Which is the priority for this fiscal year?

Let’s take another real client example. A leader is in charge of revenue operations, which includes a wide range of functions that support sales and marketing. Her team plays an essential role in demand generation, but recently, they’ve been asked to dedicate significant time to activities supporting legal compliance for their customer-facing websites. Without demand generation, the sales team won’t have leads to chase, and top-line growth will stall. Without compliance, there’s some chance the organization will face legal or regulatory risk. Which comes first?

I was feeling this quandary myself this week. From Wednesday to Sunday, I had most of my time free from client responsibilities and held for writing. But that didn’t solve the problem of multiple important activities. The manuscript of my new book is due in 24 days. This post is due today. My monthly newsletter was supposed to go out six days ago. There is too much to do. It is all important, but what was the priority?

Partial Answers Help

In each of the examples I’ve given you, the answer is not to reach one single priority and then stop; that wouldn’t be realistic. The idea is to say what’s first, second, and third.

For the firm grappling with growth or profitability, the partial answer is that in any business unit where the profitability has declined to a certain point, cleaning up their efficiency, product mix, and utilization rates comes first. The second priority for those groups is bringing in new work that fits with the improved profitability profile. In other of their businesses, where productivity is already good, the number one priority is adding revenue.

In the revenue operations example, the partial answer is that the first priority is demand generation, and 70% of the team’s time and energy needs to be invested there. At the same time, the legal and compliance team’s priority is to triage the requests of revenue ops based on the level of risk and to give them a list of requirements they will work through in priority order in the remaining 30% of their time.

I did something similar in allocating my week. I decided that writing the book was my number one priority for the week because I needed big chunks of uninterrupted time to get into the right headspace. This blog became priority number two; I’m writing it now because I’m on a five-hour flight with time to be productive. And the newsletter…well, it’s painful to me that it’s not written, but I don’t think there’s anyone out there saying, “Hmm…Where is that Liane Davey newsletter???” (Maybe only in my wildest dreams.) And I can reassure myself that it will still be a valuable tool when it lands in their inboxes a week late.

Always Get to One

Whether you’re a manager or an individual contributor, the secret to improved focus, greater productivity, and reduced stress is to be clear on what comes first at any given time. Make an honest appraisal of all the important things you could be doing and decide which is your number one priority. It’s ok (and probably necessary) to have a second, third, and fourth, but there’s a big difference between that and pretending you can have four firsts.

Additional Resources

How to Handle Competing Priorities

How to Plan Your Day

Flip Your Priorities

 

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