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Reports : Managing Priorities – who executes wins!
In this article by Peter Rogan of Future Positive Consulting, Peter looks at setting and managing priorities in the work place and beyond.
Peter alludes to a story about the England Fly Half and World Cup winner, Jonny Wilkinson. One of his coaches said “The difference with him was that he executed. Most of us know what to do, but doing it is what makes the difference”.
So in this article, Pete asks "what are the things that help people bridge this ‘knowing-doing’ gap and execute?" One of them he believes is clear purpose which we have covered elsewhere in this series. If we have a clear purpose that we are genuinely committed to (and if we haven’t what on earth do we have??!!), then from that comes the motivation to do something, be that at work or elsewhere.
Another, and the subject of this article is Priority Management.
Peter argues that "the first question to ask ourselves (every day, week, month etc) is “what are my most important priorities”". A simple approach that works well her suggests. is to ask “if I could only do one only thing today (this week etc) what would it be. “If I could only do two things...” etc up to five at the most. (In the unlikely event you do ‘em all by 11.30 or Wednesday you can always go round again, if you start out with too many so-called priorities your setting yourself up for disappointment and frustration).
To find out more, see below
As you ask this, be thinking about the quality of the priorities you are setting. What is the balance between operational/task stuff and performance, improvement and development stuff (communication, motivating people, delegation, empowering people, improving systems, processes, increasing efficiencies identifying ways of winning more business etc – the stuff that only you can lead in your team and goes undone if you don’t lead it)? There’s an exercise in the action pack to help you set priorities quickly and well.
If you are not spending enough time on these priorities you may be generating more ‘failure demand’ tasks for yourself, i.e. neglecting things which will come back as big time-consuming problems. (For example, not taking time to manage and motivate people may cause them to leave, then you have an expensive recruitment problem, a gap to cover and more training to do, all needing more time than it would have taken to prevent the problem). The big danger is that this simply attacking urgent stuff and stepping back and identifying important stuff can lead to getting sucked into a busywork black hole from which escape becomes increasingly difficult.
So the first thing is to identify priorities which balance operational/task stuff with problem-prevention actions and team improvement activities. Next comes planning. Sounds crazy but few managers have any kind of a system for planning how their week will be spent. Planning is simply thinking things through before they happen: Being wise before the event, (rather than during or after it) which is a massive time saver. Research suggests that every minute spend planning saves between 10 and 40 times that in execution – no magic involved, simply because it’s easier to correct (i.e. prevent) most of the avoidable mistakes on paper beforehand rather than once we’ve fallen down the hole. Planning need not be complex or time consuming. An example of a weekly planner and a daily time blocker are provided in the action pack. Once you’ve used them two or three times and gotten familiar with them you can complete them both in less than ten minutes a week. These are simple but invaluable tools to help you block out the time you need to address your key priorities and get a bit of traction on all those important things that have been hanging around for ages making you feel guilty and frustrated).
The other great things about these tools are that they help you:
• Identify inefficiencies and sharpen up your ability to focus, execute and work within deadlines
• Protect your time and stop you being bounced by other less important ‘urgent’ demands (for example if the boss wants something done urgently you can now have an informed discussion about which priorities can be shifted to accommodate it.)
• Identify genuine overwhelm and begin an informed discussion with people who can help you secure adequate resources to operate sustainably and profitably.
• The third and final element is review, reflecting and adjusting. Review is one of the master habits of success. Again, just common sense really. It’s the equivalent of looking out the windscreen while driving – helps us see where we are, allows us to gain reassurance and make any course corrections. Makes the planning (and learning) process more real-time responsive. The priority list, plan and time blocker have captured the ‘map’ of what’s meant to be happening and so give you a simple and quick way to review also. Almost zero time cost but potentially significant benefits.
Simple system, but it works, helping you execute better, get more done, be more successful, and feel and look more in control.
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