Don’t Make Everything A Priority
There is an ancient Proverb that says, “He Who Chases 3 Rabbits Never Catches One.”
The reason organizations begin to move slower and slower is because everything becomes a priority. And as the old saying goes: when everything is a priority nothing is a priority. If you, as the leader, make everything a high priority then you are going to bottleneck your team. If you want to move fast, don’t put everything on the highway of progress. If everything is a 70mph project, then there is going to be a traffic jam. You have to assign projects and tasks to the appropriate road. The robust speedy tasks/projects should be saved for the highway and all other things on various side roads.
I see so many organizations do this wrong. They so badly want to compete in the marketplace and get things done that they end up doing the opposite. In the name of going faster, they end up slowing things down. They are making everything a priority and therefore restrict progress. Instead of being very selective about what gets on the highway, they are too quick to believe everything should be on the highway. But this is a lack of planning and prioritizing.
Many leaders assign too many priorities because they haven’t truly taken the time to prioritize. They are quick to shout out orders and deadlines without truly understanding the ramifications of their requests. Now, before you start thinking about your boss, direct report, and superiors, you need to know you are probably doing this to your team. So, before you go pointing the finger at everyone above you, start taking a hard look at yourself first.
“Many leaders assign too many priorities because they haven’t truly taken the time to prioritize.”
Ask yourself, “Am I prioritizing too much for my team?” Or if you don’t have a team, ask yourself, “Am I prioritizing myself well?”
Here are 3 quick tips to help you prioritize better:
1) Get Vision
Prioritizing only happens when you have a clear vision of the future. The clearer the picture the easier it is to know what is important and what isn’t important. If you or your team are unclear about where your organization is going and what you are doing things get muddy. And when things get muddy no one knows what is going on. Start to ask the hard questions about the future and the vision to yourself, your leaders, and your team. Get clarity before you even think about prioritizing. The wise King Solomon once said, “Without vision people perish.” He understood that without a clear vision things start dying a slow death of confusion and chaos.
2) Get Talking
Don’t just take what you hear and do it. Push back, ask questions, seek advice. Get outside voices in the conversation. Get input about what you are going to start to output. Don’t be afraid to talk through projects and tasks. Too many times people are reluctant to talk through things for fear of sounding negative or resistant. But remember it’s not what you say, but how you say it that makes the difference. Don’t push back out of anger or frustration, push back and talk it out because you care about the future. State your intentions up front. Let people know, it’s not that you’re trying to be a “no” person, but that you want to clarify the vision and the why behind what is going on. Many times you’ll find out that something wasn’t a good idea the more you talk through it, but you may also find out something was a great idea that you didn’t realize until you talked through it. Be open!
3) Get Scheduling
Don’t prioritize your schedule, but rather, schedule your priorities. What is most important should be most important on your schedule. I know this sounds simple, but most leaders schedules don’t reflect what’s vitally important. Their schedules usually reflect what is unimportantly important–it’s the urgent but not important quadrant that Dr. Stephen Covey taught about. It’s easy for your time to get sucked away by non-important emergencies. Make sure you save your best time for the most important tasks and projects. Don’t just fill your schedule with stuff, fill it with the most important stuff you could be doing that adds the most value to where you’re going.
