Is this how you prioritize? Hmm.. there are better ways.
Plan, Prioritize, and Perform.
The phone rings again. Another request pops in from a partner to prioritize something new he wants me to do. During the call, two more emails come asking me to do something. The owner just left and wanted this other task completed by tomorrow. The sales guy just left a message saying this new approach we just put in place has to change. They are all crucial, number one, numero uno, and must be done asap.
Oh brother.
How in the world can I prioritize this list?
A client describes having fires to put out continually, resulting in his day being one big rush from one urgency to another. Of course, there is no time to prioritize or plan for that matter.
“Every minute spent planning saves as many as ten minutes in execution.” Brian Tracy.
Hmm… How do you plan when your day is hectic with all these priorities?
Take a guess how you start this process to prioritize…
Okay. Enough time.
The answer is to know what you want to accomplish.
What is your goal? What are trying to accomplish?
Yes, and “put out all the fires,” can be thought of as reasonable goal but certainly won’t help you in the long run if you are running a business or operation. It will keep you a firefighter. If you keep choosing that approach, then you’ve decided on your goal. To be a firefighter, not a business manager.
So, now is time to do your job. A key portion of your job as a senior manager, owner, director, manager is to plan, establish goals and prioritize those goals and the tasks associated with the goals. You cannot prioritize without clear goals.
Here’s a quick refresher on setting goals.
Prioritize with the Covey Matrix.
Here are 2 key questions to ask to help you prioritize once you have goals in place?
- Is the task urgent or not urgent?
- Is the task important or not important?
You know this drill. This is the urgency matrix, “Covey’s Time Management Matrix.” See Stephen Covey’s book, First Things First. In Chapter 3, “The Urgency Addiction.”
Urgencies are easy to identify. If they were brought up, they are probably urgent in someone’s eyes to get their projects done. The question is, “How urgent is this task to accomplish the overall goal?” Urgencies are enemy to those who plan and prioritize.
5 Key questions to prioritize a task or goal list.
How do you determine just how important the task is?
- How much does this task help achieve the bigger goal?
- Can you get this task done in a day, week, month or longer?
- Does this task build or improve processes to achieve the goal or does it directly achieve the goal?
- – If your goal is to achieve some particular thing, going backward and building processes only delays achieving the goal.
- – Separate these goals.
- – One is achievement of the goal and the other is really building a process to make achieving the goal more efficient.
- What impact does this task have on the goal?
- – Grade the effectiveness of doing this task on the achievement of the goal.
- – Compare different tasks’ effectiveness.
- What are the risks or costs to do this task?
- – Yes there is a cost for each task in either money or time.
The hard part with some projects is to determine the degree a task impacts the goal.
Tasks impact on goal achievement
Take the time to review the goal, review the task, and it’s impact. It can be done quickly.
Take 15 minutes or less. Call in 1 to 3 others to help determine the effectiveness. If you take more than 15 minutes, even with others, you are not prepared and wasting everyone’s time.
Take 30 minutes once a week and 10 minutes each day for planning and revising. You could save yourself lots of heartache with well planned projects and maybe move from firefighter to your actual job.
Brian Tracy has nice process with 4 master list to distinguish today, weekly, monthly and other tasks.
- Take time weekly and daily to plan.
- Set an overall goal
- Set goals.
- Assemble tasks.
- Prioritize tasks by asking yourself a series of 5 questions.
Get after it and be more intentional with your time.
Helping Leaders Breakthrough
“Dominate your life with Focus, Decision and Execution.”
