Resolving our Top Priorities

At one point in my career I became champion for one of the most critical projects for an organization - one whose previous lack of focus on completion had already caused harm (including physical damage) to the organization twice in two years. As such, this critical project had been labeled "top priority" for this organization.

As champion, I had been dissatisfied with the lack of management focus on this top priority project, and brought this to the organization's attention. I was given a stern reminder by management that this goal was one of five or six top priority projects, and that the resources and focus necessary to complete this goal would be utilized across all five or six projects as they were available. And in the months that followed, this project did not experience the appropriate increase in focus as it continued to compete with the other projects for attention.

In your organization, is there an actual "top" to the list of priorities, or is it more of a raised plateau of several priorities all seeking to be fed? Can any of the following priorities for an organization be considered absolutely Priority One:

- Generating new leads
- Delivering increased product
- Bringing the next technological innovation to the marketplace
- Replacing aging infrastructure with current or next-generation systems
- Reorganizing to maintain competitive advantage
- Generating enough revenue to keep the lights on

Certainly every organization needs to do all of the above, and needs to do them well in order to thrive in the marketplace. It seems impossible for many organizations to focus on one of these priorities over some of the others, but some careful examination may yield more clarity in addressing priority:

- Do these priorities compete with each other?
- Do they complement each other?
- Does the completion of objectives of one priority facilitate the completion of objectives in another priority?
- Will our resources be able to address one or more of our priorities while covering business-as-usual responsibilities?

These may be simple questions that require intensive analysis to answer, but it is worth re-reading the questions often when we start to lose ourselves in tools, charts, and numbers. It is also worth reminding ourselves that allocating and juggling six top priorities really amounts to seven in number - one priority is the actual juggling effort that takes place while trying to manage the other six priorities.

Another consideration is where in the organization these priorities need to be addressed. There are areas in an organization where priorities and responsibilities must be partitioned in parallel, and there are areas that must be focused on a top priority objective. The management of the organization above had not quite figured out the optimal locations of partition and focus.

As many of my readers know, this is not as simple as a top-down partitioning and arrangement of responsibilities. An organization's current structure and its culture can greatly help or greatly hamper this analysis. You see evidence of this when organizations announce numerous reorganizations and restructures within the span of two or three years. They are still seeking the proper structure of partition and focus to complete top priority objectives. Or worse, they are seeking the proper structure that will help them define their top priority objectives.

If your organization is experiencing uncertainty with juggling or establishing an order for top priorities, try taking on at most TWO top priority objectives at once, one primary and one secondary. This way your organization will have TWO objectives completed rather than five or six that remain suspended in a perpetual juggle-state. In today's marketplace, juggling priorities is not an excuse for lack of completion of any one or two top priority objectives.