Most teams have more work to do than they have capacity to do it. And depending on who is prioritizing, the work that gets done is often the work requested by the leader with the highest rank, the wheel with the loudest squeak, or the person with the most recent appeal.
When that happens, everything feels urgent, priorities keep changing, and work starts faster than it finishes.
Many books and articles have been written to share systems and formulas for prioritizing work. But many organizations, armed with those systems and formulas, still create prioritization chaos.
The problem isn’t the effectiveness of the system. It’s often one of two other things.
First, these organizations may not have a clearly communicated vision and purpose. I don’t just mean a statement that gets recited or posted on a wall. I mean guiding principles that are lived out and rewarded, even when people have to make difficult or painful decisions.
Second, those making the prioritization decisions lack the courage to tell someone that their work will have to wait. Sometimes that fear comes precisely because the organization retaliates against those who make difficult or painful decisions.
If you’re a leader who finds yourself in an organization like that, you may wonder what you can do about it. You may be just as much a victim of the chaos as your team is.
If that’s the case, it probably won’t be helpful to pretend that priorities are stable. But you can reference values, principles, and long-term objectives when questioning requests. And you can make it clear to your team that you acknowledge the challenge of the shifting priorities. And you can help them clarify assumptions and explore options and tradeoffs so they can have enough of a shared understanding to make progress.
If you’d like to discuss your current situation further, let’s talk. Visit stevedwire.com/talk to start the conversation.