Helpful Tips Setting Priorities

Being a white-collar professional is a mixed bag.  With a few clicks of a mouse or the stroke of a pen, construction projects begin, or new markets born.  It is also suffering through bad coffee, office politics, and people who enjoy humiliating others.  It is a load of responsibility without much authority and being separated from your family to provide them with opportunities you never had.  As a professional, it amazes me to see who rises through the corporate food chain and who flounders.  It feels like the worst moments of high school when you thought you were not smart enough, cool enough, or pretty enough to matter to anyone else.  Those who do rise to the top often depend on the invisible people to manage the business and keep the global economy spinning.  One of the most critical skills of keeping the company moving forward is prioritization, and I would like to discuss it.

Roland Pilcher, in his excellent book about product ownership, talks about how every backlog needs prioritization.  Over my career, I am amazed by how many people in positions of leadership have never been forced to set priorities.  I blame this state of affairs on business cultures who are afraid to say “no” to executives.  It is the creation of a fantasy world where anything is possible, and the only limits are money and ego.

People who do not hear “no” often enough cannot set priorities, so it is up to others to teach them how. I have created a grid to help evaluate how to address priorities.  The Y-axis is importance with the high being very important and the low being trivial.  The X-axis is the urgency of a task from mission-critical to inconsequential.  Any work can fall onto the plane and based on where it lands determines how you are going to take action.

Mission Critical and Important - 

Anything which threatens the survival of the business or costs money falls in this category.  Consider it like the e-commerce site is down or your boat in the middle of the ocean is sinking.  You need to stop what you are doing and address it now.

Less Critical but Important - 

These are things which will improve the business and increase profits.  It could be an update to the company website which has full social media integration.  It might be the addition of a more powerful engine on your fishing boat.  Whatever the issue, speed to market means you should do it before your competitors do.

Need to have Items - 

Items which are less critical than the things above which are not time-sensitive are called need to have issues.  These items will generate profit, but they can be scheduled based on budget or staffing priorities.

Nice to have Items - 

When something is neither trivial or essential and it is neither mission-critical or inconsequential, it is known as a nice to have priority.  Things like changing the color scheme of a website or streamlining an ordering process fall into this category.  Fit these tasks in when time allows.

Egoware - 

In large organizations, some people have a tremendous amount of authority and the self-esteem to match.  These individuals look at priorities which may not be essential and give them urgency.  Often it is to satisfy personal preferences rather than business needs.  In the software business we call this kind of development Egoware.  Any organization which fulfills the construction of egoware is toxic, and executives, scrum masters, and coaches should work to eliminate it from the organization; otherwise egoware will choke out the more important work at the firm.

Willful Ignorance - 

The organization is often blind to these issues, which are essential but treated as inconsequential.  For example, a top salesperson is using his expense account to cover gambling losses.  Another example is a toxic person with a history of sexual harassment stalking the office.  In both cases, the organization is looking the other way and treating these risks as inconsequential.  Eventually, they will pay for this inattention, and the problems become more prominent and the financial dangers more considerable.

Things which can wait - 

If something is trivial and inconsequential; it can wait.  Often, we get ideas, or the business comes up with suggestions.  If they are not urgent or essential, they can linger for another day.  These items sit at the bottom of the backlog or project plan. If something can wait it should have “shelf life.”  After sitting in the “to do,” pile for a certain amount of time, it should be reviewed.  If the idea can deliver value it should be moved to the nice to have priority.  If it does not, then it should be scrapped to make room for other ideas.

Peter Drucker, the famous business consultant, said, “First things first, last things never.”  If you take a look at this chart it should be easy to determine what matters what can wait.  You can spot things which are dangerous or dysfunctional to the firm.  Following this approach will make you more competent than many executives at big companies.

Until next time.