When Everything Is a Priority, Nothing Is
You have too much on your plate. You’re wearing yourself out by trying to attend to everything you believe you have to do. What’s worse, you are not leaving yourself any ‘strategic slack’ to either deal with unexpected developments nor prepare for the future.
I’ll be frank––you can’t sustain this.
Your team is being negatively impacted by this too. They become paralyzed by competing demands. They waste time and energy trying to read your mind about what really matters. They start working on everything simultaneously, which means nothing moves forward meaningfully.
Your credibility erodes as your team stops trusting your judgment. They learn to wait before committing, because they know the priority will probably change. And with your own leadership capacity depleted from constantly making and revisiting decisions, your tank is empty just when you need to face truly consequential decisions.
We Need a Different Approach to Priority-Setting
Traditional priority-setting assumes a relatively stable environment in which you can analyze options, weigh trade-offs, and commit to a course of action that will remain relevant for a reasonable period. That’s not the world most leaders inhabit right now.
But even the world we’ve left behind had a mindset problem. We believed that we could set and hold multiple priorities across our organizations and teams. However, the idea of ‘priorities’ is relatively new, with the plural version of ‘priority’ only emerging about 125 years ago.
We need a different approach… one in which we return to the idea of a single priority that guides all that we do. Or, at most, a few core priorities that function more like navigational principles that help you make decisions as conditions change.
What can help us is what I call “Priority Anchors”—a small number of essential commitments that remain stable even as tactics shift.
Three Tools To Develop and Sustain Your Priority Anchors
- Discover My Priority Anchors – a structured process you can complete in 60-90 minutes to identify 2-3 essential commitments
- Facilitating a Leadership Team Engagement – engage your leaders in developing shared priorities for your work
- Sustaining Anchor Priorities With Your Team – guidance for partnering with your team as they deliver services in a high-pressure environment
Download the workbook with instructions for each activity.
Ready to Go Deeper?
Identifying and maintaining your focus on your Anchor Priorities by yourself will not be easy.
- If you are ready to develop this leadership practice and explore what it can look like to have support, book a complimentary 30-minute strategy call.