How to quickly prioritize strategic challenges and moves?

Talk to any senior leader or employee, and they will complain about their organization having too many strategic initiatives, projects, and priorities.

The entire organization is stressed out, and everybody is feeling overwhelmed.

Leaders complain that there is no significant progress on any of the projects.

Employees complain about being stretched too thin across dozens of projects, usually on top of their “real” job.

Everybody complains about not having the necessary resources to move forward.

The root cause for all these projects is the fear of missing out on something and losing your competitive edge if you don’t implement them all. Everything is sooooo important!

Ironically, you‘re achieving exactly the opposite: Your organization is stuck because of too many projects. It‘s not making any significant progress on any of the projects. Let alone achieve any impact on what really matters to move the needle.

So, how to get unstuck?

How to quickly discern the trivial from the vital?

Step 1: List all your priorities, projects, initiatives, ideas

Step 2: Review and assign them to the Strategic Priority Matrix

• Does it impact the organization as a whole or only parts of it?
• Is the item business critical, in other words, does it concern the short or long-term survival of your organization?

Step 3: Commit to Now, Next, Later.

• Box A = Needs to be dealt with Now.
• Box B = Either Now, if you still have the resources, or it becomes a Next
• Boxes C and D = Later

Step 4: Get to work.