How to: Set Priorities

What does this look like?

Managers who know how to prioritise:

• can quickly distinguish between what’s critical and what’s trivial
• focus the team on what’s most important and put the trivial aside
• sense what will help or hinder in achieving goals
• eliminate roadblocks.

How can I do this?

1.    Identify and prioritise goals

• Be clear about your goals and objectives. What exactly do you want to achieve? Refer to the annual plan and strategic plan
• List goals in order of priority:
  1. mission critical
  2. important
  3. nice to do if time allows
  4. not central to what we’re trying to achieve.
• When choosing which tasks to prioritise, apply the scale and always focus on jobs in the highest category
• If you’re unsure what to prioritise, ask your peers or staff for advice. Sometimes other peoples’ perspectives can help.

2.    Distinguish between the urgent and the important

• It’s easy to get caught up in urgent work and neglect what’s more important. Carefully assess how important your urgent tasks are
• Make the effort to spend time each day on important tasks. Ideally you spend about half of your time working on key priorities
• Keep investing in work that will deliver the most benefits in the long term.

3.    Weigh up your options

• It can be hard to decide what to focus on first, especially if time’s limited and you don’t have all the information you need. Remember that it’s unlikely you’ll make perfect choices every time. All that’s expected is that you take ‘reasonable management action in a reasonable way’
• Try writing down the pros and cons of each option:
  • consider the effect each will have in both the short and long term
  • think about the resources required
  • is one option more efficient?
  • is one likely to be more successful?
• Be careful not to prioritise tasks just because you prefer doing them. Be guided by data and not feelings alone
• Don’t procrastinate. If you avoid making hard choices now, you’ll only have to make more difficult choices in the future.

4.    Take the time to plan

It can feel like you don’t have time to stop and plan but investing time up front to plan out your day (or week or month) will reap rewards. You’re more likely to spend your time wisely and work more efficiently.

5.    Respect other peoples’ time

In the same way you need to prioritise your own time, respect that other people need to prioritise theirs. Try not to take other peoples’ time unnecessarily. Get to the point and be efficient.

You may find this challenging if you…

• Are addicted to action and doing a little bit of everything quickly
• Overestimate your capacity
• Feel the need to do everything
• Feel too busy to set priorities
• Have trouble choosing
• Struggle to distinguish mission-critical tasks from those that are nice to do
• Believe everything’s equally important and overwhelm others with unfocused activities
• Don’t know how to manage your time
• Don’t like saying no
• Don’t know how to eliminate a roadblock.

You may not be setting priorities effectively if you…

• Ignore trivial tasks altogether
• Reject the priorities of others
• Try to reduce necessary complexity by oversimplifying
• Forcefully impose priorities on the team.