101: Prioritizing
Successful leaders have a honed sense of focus on their company’s projects and what should take priority. They are also skilled at juggling talent, resources and individual department needs with the company’s needs to make it all happen. Here are some tips to keep only the truly important things on your priority list.
Check in with your core motivations and direction. Ethan Brooks of entrepreneurial newsletter The Hustle offers this checklist of sorts for your current priority list: Is this task still important, or has the situation changed? Am I really the only person who can do this? (In other words, are there certain tasks you can delegate?) Is this the most important thing right now, or am I using it to avoid doing something else? And, if this was the only thing I completed today, would I be satisfied with my day’s work?
Let projects and priorities cascade from your company’s strategic vision. Project-management expert Antonia Nieto-Rodriguez subscribes to a Hierarchy of Purpose framework, where work is prioritized in accordance with its adherence to the company’s overall purpose and strategic vision. Once priorities are formed from those concepts for the coming two to five years’ time, executives should ask, “Which projects are the most strategic and should be resourced to the hilt? Which projects align with the purpose, vision and priorities, and which should be stopped or scrapped?” he tells Harvard Business Review.
Know it’s OK to let low-impact, high-effort projects fall by the wayside. Simon Smith – a member of the Forbes Technology Council – recommends establishing a workplace culture when it comes to projects, weighing impact for effort. In other words, when it comes to projects, “Pursue only easy wins (high impact, low effort) and big bets (high/high). Kill maybes (low/low) and losers (low/high),” he writes.
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