Set priorities that translate into action

The group burst in laughter. We were eight people on the dinner table and the favorite topic was healthy eating. One of them bit in five different desserts but she did not want her own because she was on a diet. “Either you follow a diet or you do not. This is about priorities clearly.” Voice of the group echoed in my ears as I drove back home. 

How many of us really prioritise what we want. We know it sure but sticking to it is clearly difficult. Unfortunately, practicing self-control doesn’t get better with age. Unfortunately, there is no serenity kick that comes loaded with planning skills. 

Now that very well explains why setting a limited number of priorities, and sticking to them, is one of the most difficult challenges we all struggle with. Most people in today’s life have too much on realisation on their plates and too many to-do lists that keep dragging to the next day. Leadership teams struggle every day with narrowing their focus. 

The common feeling is that everything is important and nothing could be dropped without grave magnitudes of damage to work. But if everything becomes a priority, then nothing actually remains any precedence and planning is tossed out of the window. 

In fact, what damages heavily is that individuals at subordinate levels, faced with the confusing and urgency-based communication of trying to respond to everything. Now, they end up deciding what is important and urgent as well based on their partial sense of the organisation’s demands and their own ability to get perfect results. Let’s see how we can plan better and set priorities that translates into action. 

Bucket of work that can be stuck with: Every organisation, well most of them, spells out its identified priorities as part of its annual or long term strategic plan. Over a period of time, the clarity and implementation of these priorities squander as they start getting converted into actions.

As one phase after another passes by, new and upcoming assignments and initiatives keep getting added. Just to clarify, companies deal with competitive pressures, operational snags, talent retention, sales figures and customer’s change of tastes. Most of them would love to have a static priority and planning schedule but that is just not possible. 

Therefore, it is useful to intermittently pull the team together to map out all of the projects and initiatives. Have a strategy meet and review every detail. Create a priority bucket and see if each item has the same importance it had three months ago. Is the work moving slow or is it still being done needlessly as people down the ladder were not informed? 

Communicate to all:  Priority and planning as an exercise are done by the senior leadership team. Sometimes, it does not reach the real executors that are lower rung of the team. Writing an email does not amount to action. Each member needs to understand the outcome of that priority and action, so they can calibrate own work and growth plans accordingly. 

Done once, do again: Repetition of the practice periodically is crucial. As stated by many experts, prospects, problems, and pressures will continue to materialise and new projects will continue to emerge. The pick and drop of these are not like hot coal on your hand. Though it is a continuous process but abrupt and quicks and decisions that soak complete energy are best avoided. Setting priorities is not therefore just a one-time exercise. It needs to be repeated periodically to make sure that you and your people are working on the right things.

Please remember that getting frustrated in the process of planning and make that perfect priority-based list is a very normal phenomenon. Just breathe and understand that these processes are dynamic and agile. When you make mistakes,  get the focus back, when you get distracted, take a break. 

The writer is a strategic advisor and premium educator with Harvard Business Publishing