When your organization needs to prioritize: 5 steps to take
Normally, I write my blogs starting with the individual first then moving to managers, and then to leadership/the organization level. I believe we all have some accountability for our success, motivation, and certainly happiness. If things don't fit with where we are working, we should always start by looking at ourselves first.
I know what some of you will say: "But this place is a mess. The leaders don't listen. I am chained to my desk and emails. We step on each other's toes all the time. No one knows the direction we are truly going. I am unclear what my role even is."
Yes. All of these things could be true and more. Many of us have horror stories of places we have worked, roles we attempted to take on, and projects that went sour. And, leaders and managers have a large role to play in setting the tone, culture, working norms, and strategy resulting in priorities, which we will discuss here.
For ourselves, we own our journey and lives. if something isn't working, we need to figure out either how to make it work or how to exit gracefully.
When it comes to being engaged on the job, I find one of the most fundamental elements is to be clear about our direction, priorities, and what matters. When this is missing or hazy, people get confused, disengaged, and even resort to such tactics as playing Lord of the Flies with battles for power and decision-making authority.
Knowing the direction we should all be rowing and the strategies and tactics to best get there are foundational to work and the success of any business. It seems so straightforward yet I am surprised how many organizations struggle with this. The larger an organization gets, the harder it is to align everyone in one or even several directions at once.
We are starting with the organization level first in this series because priorities should flow from the top down. Sometimes they can move bottom up, but to ensure alignment and all oars going in the same direction, let's start with the top and the broadest focus first.
So, where should leaders start? A business plan? A SWOT analysis? A market study? A customer listening strategy? Sure. All of these are good. From a high-level look, I recommend following five steps in setting priorities for an organization.
Start with the why and the what.
All journeys should begin with why -- sometimes also with what -- but rarely with how, which I see some organizations jumping to. How are we going to grab more market share? How are we going to win new business? How are we going to develop new products? We should eventually answer these questions, but why we do the work we do, why we matter to our clients, and why we are even in business should drive strategy, and therefore, priorities.
Align.
Alignment can be tough. The more leaders, divisions, and work teams there are, the harder it is to ensure people and work is aligned to a greater vision or strategy. It certainly is okay to diversify in an organization, but to truly make an impact, focus and transparency are essential. Posting corporate goals so they are not only known but understood and integrated into work is critical to success. If people are in the dark about strategy and high-level goals, how do they know what to work on as well as why they are doing it? This is one of the most important and yet most underdone organizational communication tools. Leaders need to share goals, report progress toward goals and ensure people know how they help move the needle on the goals.
Bite off only what you can chew.
It can be so easy to get distracted by the amount of work we could do, areas we could explore, processes we could fix, and products we could develop. I haven't met one person or organization who tried to do all they could do at one time and be successful. We call it spreading the peanut butter. If you spread it over 12 things, then no one is left with a satisfying amount of peanut butter. I love peanut butter and I like to slather my bread and apples with it. I don't like to skimp! Diversifying too much, and taking on too many projects or clients without the infrastructure to support, expand, grow, and retain people will lead to failure, unfortunately. I know there are many books and leaders out there who revolutionized something, but ask yourself if they truly did that overnight or even in one year. We should all remember the meme: "It took me 20 years to be an overnight success."
Manage and measure.
Certainly, active management of strategies and tactics can lead to understanding if something is working, making any impact, saving any time, or generating any revenue. I think sometimes we get caught in a trap of inertia of just going through the motions. Active management means sharing status, sharing efforts across departments to prevent duplication, or finding ways to integrate or dovetail efforts. Management doesn't mean micro-managing but simply actively focusing, communicating, collaborating, coordinating, and measuring what we doing to ensure it still aligns with the why and the what of the organization and is going in the direction we expected or desired it to go.
Pause and reflect.
My favorite but oftentimes skipped step is to take a beat and reflect on what we have done and are doing. We are so busy doing, that we don't leave space for thinking, reflecting, analyzing, and proactively deciding what to continue, stop or start. That is one of my favorite exercises, called Start, Stop, Continue. Bring a team together and brainstorm what you can stop doing to boost efficiency or free up time to focus on the things you want to start; what should you start doing to move the why and what forward, stay competitive, or be innovative; and continue because you are seeing some progress or the activity is foundational to who you are, or required by law, etc. These conversations should not solely be based on gut, but on data, feedback from employees, customers, or analysts, trends, results from a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats), and more. Great things have come from reflection personally and organizationally. Make time for it and don't make it an annual event tied to budgets or performance reviews. Constant evaluation helps set, align, and move the ship forward.
Entire books, courses, and degrees have been created to talk about this topic. To tackle this in a single blog may have been a bit optimistic. However, integrating these five steps will help any person, team or organization establish priorities and make some progress.
Next week, we will go down a layer and look at what managers can do to help their teams prioritize and stay in alignment with the why and what of the organization.