Rally around your critical priorities

You need to rally around your critical priorities and cut off the noise of everything else.

It's easy to get bogged down focusing on operational tasks/meetings and feel like you have done productive work that has moved the business forward. That's not necessarily true.

Keeping the business operating as usual is important. However, that's only helping you to maintain the current status quo. Moving the business forward requires focusing on strategic priorities. 

The first step is to be crystal clear on how what you do aligns with your strategic priorities. 

This helps you and your team to

• Focus on the most important tasks and not get overwhelmed or distracted by less important ones
• Have a shared understanding and ensure everyone is working towards the same priorities
• Make better-aligned decisions and increase effectiveness, making sure time and resources are well allocated to the right things 
• Increase motivation and fulfilment. You're able to see the results of your efforts that are making an impact on the organisation

But I get it, it’s difficult. 

As a leader, you are responsible for addressing a wide range of priorities which are often in conflict. This is especially true when you are trying to both put-out fires (i.e., addressing immediate, urgent problems) and be strategic (i.e., planning for the future) at the same time. 

So here are a few tips for managing conflicting priorities:

Set clear priorities: Take time to decide what is most important for your team and your organisation. Focus on those tasks first. This might include things like onboarding new employees, addressing engagement, or developing policies and procedures.

Create a schedule for proactive and reactive work: This might sound basic but it's such a simple and powerful way to start your day/week successfully that not many people do. You turn up to work each day 'going with the flow' and end up being inefficient and unproductive because you don’t know where to start. This doesn't mean you can’t flex and adjust as needed but it's helpful to have a structure in place to start. 

Communicate and delegate: Get your team on board. This can help to ensure everyone is on the same page and decide what can be delegated, allowing you to focus on the tasks that are most important or that only you can do.

Lastly, decide what is urgent: Often we think every request that comes into our inbox is urgent and needs to be addressed immediately. But is it actually? Most things are not actually business-critical and can wait a couple of hours, if not, days. You need to be able to differentiate and find a balance because if everything is urgent, you'll never have time to be proactive and focus on the strategic work.

Let me know how you get along. 

Yours confidently,

 Lily Woi

Culture Change Catalyst and Executive Coach 

p.s. I have a 12-week advisory package that will help you retain key talents and achieve your business strategy with ease. Interested? Book a discovery call to find out more.