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3 Focus on Priorities—Yours, Mine, and Ours

Job Requirements (continued):

Someone who understands that activity may not equal results.

I use this phrase in many workshops: leadership, time management, performance management, and culture transformation. I rarely meet someone in class or in the workplace who says they are not busy enough; this also includes me. If you look around where you work, I think you will agree that with all the activity generated from meetings, incoming emails and messages, and new initiatives, you would expect that great things are happening. In some cases, they are—saving lives in health care, reacting to real emergencies of safety, ethics, restoring power after storms, fighting fires, as well as other less dramatic but important achievements by organizations. However, in many cases, some of the activity relates to false alarms; redundancy; lack of focus, planning, and organization; and poor results.

In this chapter, we are taking the next step toward an engaged, productive, satisfying workday. Please note that I did not write “perfect workday.” I don't think that we need to have a perfect day in order to make the most of our typical workdays. But there will be more about the difference between good and perfect workdays later.

In Chapter 2, I encouraged you to discover or confirm some personal and professional priorities, such as goals, dreams, and needs. This may be hard to hear for some readers, but I have to be honest: Organizations are not usually developed around our needs or even professional goals. If you are fortunate enough to be part of an organization that did form around your needs and goals or that does match with yours, you will still need to keep your engagement fresh to sustain your work relationship. We all need some match or alignment in the work partnership. Remember the application tools in Chapter 2, the workday balance sheet and analysis of the type of job/role you are playing in your current organization. I hope your reflections led you to see some areas of this match between your organization's priorities and your own. You will probably have to take some time outside of your workday to see the stepping stones, springboards, and even opportunities from stopgap jobs or roles. This will take time, but it's important that you find a balanced view of your situation.

At work, as you try to focus on your organization's priorities (as well as your own personal ones), there is so much competition pulling and tugging on your time, energy, and resources. The path forward from this tug-of-war is to become an effective priority manager as the first step for managing time, energy, and work relationships. Several decades ago, I first remember hearing about time management in the work world and training courses that were offered for adults. In the 1990s and 2000s, priority management took center stage as people looked for help and answers with the increased volume and complexity of work, the new technologies, global competition, and reduced resources. In the 2000s, managing chaos and our own energy began to get my attention in courses and articles. Today, research continues to help us (neuroscience, biology, technology, mindfulness, psychology, health and wellness) with workday challenges.

These priorities are incoming all the time, do not remain static or stable, and do not even appear to be logical. In her article “Time Management Training Doesn't Work,” Maura Thomas writes, “Knowledge workers are so overwhelmed by incoming information, they spend much of their time ‘playing defense,’ operating without a clear picture of their total responsibilities. . . . The pace is frantic, with a new interruption every few minutes, so it feels like there is no time to stop and organize it all.”¹

I experience and agree with this idea, but strongly argue that we must still find time to stop and organize around priorities. The tough solution continues to be the shift from time management to priority management; this chapter is focused on the importance of understanding and committing to priorities as part of managing ourselves and making the most of the workday.

As part of your work in Chapter 2, some of your priorities may have emerged: short-term needs, longer-term goals, and dreams. In this chapter, we will explore your organization, department, and team priorities, and try to link and align them with some of your own personal ones.

Let's get started by going back to Scenario 2 and develop a “Before” profile for Carla and Jim. These two people worked on a virtual team and were pretty much siloed in their work. Carla was feeling overwhelmed with her work and showed that frustration to Jim in her aggressive communication and reactions. Their negative energy was impacting the larger team.

“Before” Profile for Carla and Jim

Manage Yourself

Carla's annoyance with Jim and the team is showing more and more, especially at meetings and in emails.
Carla's communication style under stress is to speak without filtering.
Jim prefers to avoid conflict, withdraw, and try to hide his frustration.
Mindsets are negative. Carla: This team is a farce; I am in it alone. Jim: Carla is always the problem; why aren't the managers solving this?

Focus on Priorities

Carla and Jim each focused on their own priorities.
Collaboration is viewed as an option or “nice if we have time.”

Value Time and Energy

Different team members overloaded at various times.
Relationships determine getting help or not.
A lot of energy being spent on negative emotions.

Communicate Effectively

Deteriorating with snide remarks or silence at meetings and a lot of side conversations and gossip.
Frustration and anger building up, but not addressed.
Complaining and whining about team and work.

Confront, Challenge, and Conquer Chaos

There is no time for this.
This is the way it has always been on this team.

There are some opportunities for Jim and Carla who may be adequate solo priority managers but are not moving beyond “mine” to consider “yours and ours.” If your activity is to equal results, you have to become or continue to be a priority manager who takes a broad perspective. We will come back to these two people at the end of the chapter.

Your Organization's Priorities

Priority managers begin at the beginning by considering the organization's perspective as a way to frame their own focus and to plan effectively. Organizations hire or contract with people to fulfill their mission, reach a vision, and achieve strategic priorities. The reason any organization exists is to provide a service, make a difference, fill a gap, deliver a product, make a profit, grow, govern, inspire—you get the idea.

Let's begin with a very simple clarification of some key terms that are often used in and about organizations:

Mission: The reason that an organization exists.
Vision: Usually a short statement regarding what an organization seeks to be and to achieve.
Strategic Goals: Broad primary outcomes along with approach.

Partners In Leadership describes key results as: “those most important objectives that are prioritized as strategically essential to the organization's success and which must be achieved. They should be memorable, measureable, and meaningful for everyone in the organization, so that every person can easily connect his or her daily work to the Key Results.”²

Whatever they are called—key results, strategic goals, the top three—these are critical not only for organizational success but also for people's productivity, engagement, and satisfaction.

Mission, vision, and strategic goals lead to longand short-term objectives, projects, responsibilities, assignments, tasks, and activities—the “work” that follows from planning. Our own priorities during the workday should align with the organization's top goals, be easily understood, and be clear to everyone. However, in the work world today, the label “priority” is given to many tasks, projects, and assignments to mean “this is very important and I/we need you to do it now.” The challenge today is that everything can be called a priority or top priority. The danger with that approach is that if everything is a top priority, then nothing is, and the purpose of establishing priorities is negated.

Because activity does not necessarily lead to results, understanding alignment and prioritization is an essential skill for formal and informal leaders. Here is an example of leader-led planning around priorities done with Post-it notes on a blank wall.

Application Tool: Aligning Organization Goals With Team and Individual Goals

I know a manager who held a team meeting and used a blank wall for some basic strategic planning. At the top of the wall he posted the top four strategic goals of the organization on four large signs: safety, customer service, company stock return, and employee satisfaction metrics. Below that horizontally, he posted the department goals that were aligned with one or more organization goals. Note: Sticky notes are disliked by some but can still be useful for others.

He then asked the team to record every task, project, and assignment individually on separate Post-it notes (the ten team members each used different colored Post-its) and to scatter them on the wall. Team members were asked to group their Post-its under the related department and organization goal. The manager then asked a key question: Is there anything you are doing that is not aligned to department goals? A “yes” answer led to a discussion:

Why is time and talent being given to this task, activity, or project (value or risk attached)?
Does this work belong somewhere else?
Could this be eliminated without risk?
Are you the only one who can perform this task?
What are your top priorities and why?

Although this planning activity was a good starting point (and I share this example frequently in training seminars), there is much more that is needed for today's challenges and that can build on this planning process. The ten people were pretty much working on their own things. Each thought they could use some help and that their things were more important than the other priorities, assignments, tasks, and projects.

Later in the chapter, we will use a collaborative approach to make prioritization even more effective, but this leader understood the need to plan and align team goals and individual work with organization goals. (I will talk about groups and individuals who don't have such a leader at a later point in this chapter.) But at least this team had a good basis for:

Working as a group/team to “see” larger priorities.
Face-to-face conversation, debate, and discussion.
Commitment to being on the same page.
Developing collaboration and teamwork.
Individual and team prioritization.
Time and energy management.
Even planning for the unexpected.

Effective priority management requires all of the above!

Prioritization Approaches: Solo, Silo, or Team Collaboration

Once there is clarity on your organization's priorities, groups, and teams, individuals need to prioritize their work. The application tool helps to set the stage and align organization, team, and individual scope of work, but there is still an ongoing prioritization that needs to happen. Prioritization—ranking work in the order of importance—is a process and a skill.

It's important to consider the special connection between Chapters 3 and 4. We need to rank work activities, tasks, projects, responsibilities, and goals so that we can plan our time. Mind Tools summarizes the benefits of prioritization well: “With good prioritization (and careful management of reprioritized tasks) you can bring order to chaos, massively reduce stress, and move toward a successful conclusion. Without it, you'll flounder around, drowning in competing demands.”³ With good prioritization, we ensure that our activity does equal results!

There are several different types of management and planning tools, one of which is a priority matrix used to sort and make decisions about what to work on and the reasons why. You may be familiar with (or already using) some types. The matrix tool is intended to help you make decisions about your priorities by sorting these into quadrants with different criteria. You will then have a visual picture of your different projects, tasks, and assignments where everything does not look equal. A prioritization tool or process is necessary before planning or scheduling your time. One should flow from the other, especially since we know that there will be incoming priorities, emergencies, interruptions, and chaos.

There are different types of priority matrix tools, and are resources in this book that can help you to find the best type of matrix tool for you. I use the concept and create tools that work for my different situations. My customers have also done the same thing. Many of the matrix tools included consist of four boxes, or quadrants, exactly like the following example.

A simple way to think of priorities is to break them down into quadrants:

Top priority (based on organization goals and risk versus opportunity).
Top priority and urgent.
Less important priority.
Less important priorty, but urgent.

Priority management will lead us to time management, so it is important to note the following observations regarding the four quadrants:

Most people are spending more than enough time in the “top priority and urgent” quadrant.
Most people are also spending time on tasks from the two quadrants for “less important priorty” and “less important, but urgent.”
Most people are not spending enough time in the quadrant for “top priority and not urgent.”

These are the elements that are truly proactive with longterm benefits: planning, developing self and others, organizing, innovating, expanding networks and relationships, and so on.

If you want to understand where some of the chaos is coming from, then imagine the implication of many people in your organization not spending time in that proactive category. How much of your workday time do you spend in each category? If you are satisfied with your answer, then great. However, if you are like many people today who are frustrated and worried about spending too much time or too little time on certain priorities, then use that frustration and anxiety as energy to change some things.

The matrix tool is an effective individual tool and even more powerful when shared and discussed with your leader. This important step is critical even if your team is missing a leader or manager. Remember that Nicole in our first scenario approached the interim leader to make sure her current large project was still important to the organization. However, even with great individual prioritization, there are challenges to workload balance from time, staffing resources, and personality clashes as demonstrated by Jim and Carla in Scenario 2. Our individual priorities do not exist in a vacuum but within the larger set of organization priorities, group priorities or department priorities, and each team member's priorities.

Application Tool: Paper Plate Activity

This activity can be done individually or within teams and departments. Each person doing this activity needs one paper plate and plenty of Post-it notes.

Write down every task, assignment, project, and goal for which you are responsible on a separate Post-it note. Just brainstorm and write; do not think or sort on importance, resources, urgency, time, and so on.

Place all the Post-its on the paper plates and ask for reactions. Most people will comment on needing a bigger plate, more time, more resources, and more energy, which are all valid reactions in today's workplace. We are working under the assumption that resources are not added, and that staying later and later at work is not the best way to be engaged, satisfied, or productive.

Using a basic matrix, individually prioritize the Post-it notes. You can also use a six-box matrix variation or the four-box model presented earlier in the chapter.

The following diagram is a matrix variation I use that can be used individually and also with teams:

We then have another choice in organizations: What approach will we take? The most effective priority management comes from a team approach rather than a silo approach. Since we face budget, skill, and time shortages with increased workloads, a new approach is needed. However, the silo approach is still entrenched in many organizations even though we use the word “team” most of the time when referring to departments and groups. Self-interest is necessary and yet hard to break out of as a total work approach.

Patrick Lencioni states that the self-interest expressed is normal: “What is it about us that makes it so hard to stay focused on results? It's this thing called self-interest. Self-preservation. We have a strong and natural tendency to look out for ourselves before others, even where those others are part of our families and teams.”⁴

Lencioni wrote for leaders, managers, and facilitators, however, his work is included in this book to help those who will need to lead informally and manage themselves and their teams. We can relate to and understand Lencioni's thoughts about the individual's priorities overshadowing those of the team. Scenario characters Jim, Carla, and Nicole understandably come from a perspective of self-interest. Lencioni talks about placing collective results ahead of their own needs to as a remedy to that idea.

This is probably one of the top two things that separate good teams from bad ones. On strong teams, no one is happy until everyone is succeeding, because that's the only way to achieve the collective results of the group. Of course this implies that individual egos are less important than team achievements.⁵

Application Tool: Team Matrix

To take this activity to the next level of shared responsibility for collective results, develop one team matrix. If you are doing this with a group or team, combine sorted priorities into one matrix. This will take some time and effort to collectively decide, agree, and commit to the following:

Where do individual priorities fit into the matrix?
What can be eliminated (a “luxury,” redundancy, no longer needed)?
What can be delegated within the team and outside of the team?
What priorities may be in jeopardy?
What priorities can move from a higher status to a lower status or even a “holding” zone?
What are possible incoming projects on the horizon?

The following diagram is how the outcome of this approach looks visually:

A note about those people who are needed to fulfill reactive roles: Your work may center on health care responses, public safety, IT trouble-shooting, escalated customer service, and so on. The nature of your work and role could require immediate reaction and response. In some ways your priorities are straightforward because you are supposed to be reacting and spending your time in the most important/urgent quadrant. Some would argue that time management training is useless for these people. I still suggest that even in highly needed reactive roles at work, there is a need for planning, innovation, preparation, and “down time.” In Chapter 4, we will use priority management to plan time and schedules and even though emergency work can't be scheduled, there may be opportunities to spend time in proactive work.

Key Points About Prioritization Tools

There are various uses for a priority matrix sorting such as:

Breaking down a project by deadlines or complexity.
Including prioritizing email and meetings.
Reviewing regularly, asking who may need help or have some time, negotiating.

A matrix is a good individual starting point but needs feedback and validation. A team matrix is a start toward collaboration and chipping away our silos.

An important note about visual tools: Do not underestimate the power of low-tech tools such as whiteboards and wall charts used in conjunction with high-tech tools to draw pictures that help us to comprehend information faster and to see connections between concepts. The actual act of writing things down is helpful to our overloaded brains. We can gather others around these visuals and brainstorm for even more effective solutions. We don't need another email to read; a picture or image is an efficient and welcome relief.

If you consider both the volume of things that you have to read in your workday and knowledge about the ways that we take in and process information, then the usefulness of images, grahics, and visual tools makes sense. Haig Kouyoumdjian, PhD, details this idea in his article “Learning Through Visuals: Visual Imagery in the Classroom”:

Research indicates that visual cues help us to better retrieve and remember information. . . . Our brain is mainly an image processor. . . . The part of the brain used to process words is quite small in comparison to the part that processes visual images.⁶

Check Your Mindset: Solo vs. Team

Do you recognize or relate to any of these mindsets?

I know my own priorities and these other things are not in my area of responsibility.
I may do favors and help sometimes if I have time and feel like it.
I own my priorities and have responsibility to validate, revalidate, alert, negotiate, and/or ask for help.
We are all responsible for department/team collective results.
Everyone for themselves.

A true team mindset is not easy, and you have to begin with understanding, committing, and focusing on your individual priorities. However, if you and your team go beyond and move to a broader perspective and then collaboration, you will achieve both collective and individual benefits such as:

Better productivity and quality outcomes.
Better relationships among team members through getting to know each other, work styles, and strengths.
Opportunity to grow and earn trust.

You can go home more engaged, satisfied, productive, and happier because you are not alone. However, just when you think you have sorted out these priorities, there are incoming helicopters (I see a picture of constant information flying in, some important, redundant, annoying) bringing new requests, demands, inquiries, and problems. Some of these are real emergencies—top priorities based on risk and value—and some are someone's new idea or question. In addition, priorities change, grow, and compete. Leaders come and go, stuff happens, commitments aren't kept, and deadlines are missed.

Before jumping up to abandon priority management, I offer three strategies:

Stay calm.
Try the priority shuffle to identify solutions.
Remember you are not alone and don't have to suffer in silence; ask for help.

Application Tool: The Case for Calm and Composure

Let's start with the need to remain calm, which some people/personalities may find easier than others. There is a leadership competency of composure, and in their book FYI, authors Michael Lombardo and Robert Eichinger suggest counting to ten. Our thinking and judgement are not at their best during the emotional response. Create and practice delaying tactics. Go get a pencil out of your briefcase. Go get a cup of coffee. Ask a question and listen. Go up to the flip chart and write something. Take notes. See yourself in a setting you find calming. Go to the bathroom. You need about a minute to regain your composure after the emotional response is triggered. Don't do or say anything until that minute has passed.”⁷

Thinking about a recent work crisis, I remember that I stood up and walked around the room after realizing that my work was in jeopardy and that I needed to come up with Plan B quickly. Though FYI is written for leader development, let's view this competency as a must for everyone.

Five years ago I was working on part of the implementation of an urgent and highly visible company-wide initiative. This is a story you probably know well: A big new initiative with no extra resources and varying responses, engagement, and interest from those we could ask to take on extra work. Another person was coleading our part of the implementation with me, and we took turns leading the calm for each other. When the strain got to one of us, the other person would double up on composure so the other could vent it out and then get it back together. I remember one of my pep talks to her when we were working through the holidays, and I told her this intensity would last a few months until the first phase ended. I saw us as calm “warriors,” and she told me that she has kept that image with her as she moved on to even tougher projects. In turn, when I lost my composure at another point in the project, I remember her direct but kind feedback when my communication to our small group of team members was too aggressive, even for an aggressive timeline.

Never underestimate the need and skill of keeping yourself and others calm. Other people (both at work and outside of work) can be great assets to help us remain calm and focused on priorities when any kind of chaos happens. The best workdays include relationships with supportive, honest, and positive people who are also trying to be engaged, productive, and happy at work.

If you don't have a predisposition for staying calm, some practical tips can be found at www.seyfthrive.com. Mindsets and self-talks can help if you are increasing or building this skill from scratch.

I will handle this.
There is other help.
I am not alone in this.
Let me get up, move, and breathe.
I have managed tough challenges before.

Some people also have techniques or routines they use to help them regain composure and calm. Music, photographs, moving around, humor, and the outdoors are some things that might help.

Application Tool: The Priority Shuffle

As we disussed earlier, some of us are in roles that are meant to be reactive: firefighting, medical emergencies, fielding irate customer calls, restoring power, and ensuring safety. However, for many of us, we are not intended to be in totally reactive roles. One of my client groups wished for something like focus but with flexibility. By that they meant that their work required remaining focused on their roles and responsibilities without becoming inflexible silos with the rest of their department and organization. This concept of focused flexibility is needed when priorities change, new ones come along, or there is conflicting information that arises.

The following chart can help you understand the concept of focused flexibility. Here are the concepts to keep in mind as you go through each stage of the chart from left to right:

Know your top priorities for the day/shift/week.
Check for incoming priorities at a time you predetermine/schedule (if you are not in a highly reactive role). If you are in a highly reactive role, you will probably not have this choice.
Shuffle/readjust priority focus if necessary and keep track of “shuffle/readjust impact.”

Manage any emotions (anxiety, annoyance) and have the mindset that you are using focused flexibility and tracking impacts of shuffling trends. You track these trends and changes as a way to be proactive and not in a repeatedly reactive mode.

This is not easy to do, but I know from experience that these actions make the difference between going home feeling lousy and going home feeling like it was a good day (not a perfect day). Build in the expectation that your plan is flexible and not meant to be inflexible. This may mean changing your own expectations and mindset about planning:

Why bother to plan anymore; give it up.
My plan is a framework of top priorities for the day, not a structure set in stone.
If your plan changes, that does not make the day a failure.

Key Points for Priority Shuffle

Not every incoming email, call, or question marked “urgent” is a priority worthy of bumping another; it might be or it might not be.
Decide how many times during the workday you need to check incoming emails, messages, and so on.
Be calm, take time, stop, and compare the day's chosen top priorities against incoming priorities.
Make new decisions about your focus, time, and energy.
Keep track of shuffle impacts and patterns.
Communicate your choices, any risks, and request validation of your revised priorities and suggest alternative options, such as delaying incoming or assistance. (This will take strategic communication skills and is also a way to cut down on chaos.)
The solution does not always mean staying later (lower productivity, quality, work-life balance).
A shuffled workday is not necessarily chaos, just different from your initial plan!

Application Tool: Escalate—You Are Not Alone

One of the best skills I ever learned was when and how to escalate with the intent of concern for the work, myself, team, and organization. An essential skill for better workdays is to know why and how to escalate. Escalation: positive, proactive problem-solving.

Why Do You Escalate?

Because a current priority—time, cost, quality, communication, resources—is in jeopardy.
Escalation is not fault-finding, punishing, getting even, or a method to cover your back.
Escalation is a part of professional accountability to solve problems and do good work.

How Do You Escalate?

Let others know you intend to escalate and that your intention is positive, coming from concern for the team, customer, organization, and problem-solving.
Let others know to whom, when, and how you will escalate.
Invite other people or teams involved to also escalate, if they choose.

It is a given for most of us that one of the biggest workday challenges is conflicting, growing, and changing priorities. The priority shuffle includes ongoing communication with other people; the paper plates can only expand so far and putting in longer hours does not result in productivity, accuracy, creativity, health, or job satisfaction.

I have seen some people drowning with real work while others have free time in their silo world, picking and choosing their level of efficiency and effort and not considering team or coworker needs. Managers and leaders, you also struggle with workday overload and yet many that I meet refuse to delegate for various reasons (Scenarios 3 and 4). It takes time and thought, giving up control and knowing your team, among other things. Some of you know the workloads are uneven and lean on certain people, ignoring the capacity of others. If you are not a manager, don't suffer in silence; speak up professionally and strategically, and learn how to escalate. Anger and resentment won't help, however, I encourage you to go on record with suggestions, collaborative ideas, requests for help, and confirmation of priorities.

Let's return to Jim and Carla and do an “After” profile for them. Remember how their verbal and public conflicts at work were growing and negatively impacting the people they worked with? They were engaged in work and personality conflicts and wanted their manager to intervene, but they did have some other options.