I have recently been working with a client helping them create a winning culture across their team. Fairly early in our working relationship we were discussing what we needed to address in order to move us forward towards the organization’s goals. The client was spot-on with their insights, yet struggled to launch the process. They were overwhelmed with all of the potential actions that could be taken and were in a stage of paralysis. It looked like the weight of the world was on her shoulders with the worry of making the right choice.

When driving change, there are so many different levers to activate and tasks to do, it’s like you are in the garden trying to clean it after you have been away for several weeks with no one to tend to it. You can’t always tell the weeds from the vegetables. You don’t want to pull the wrong one for fear of having to start all over. The task can feel hopeless because the weeding seems as though it will take forever. It’s far easier to just grab the brightly colored vegetables you can see and not worry about the rest, or run it all over with your rototiller and outsource at the farmers’ market instead :) . The problem with this approach is that you have left so much on the vine. So many of your blossoms still have promise, and the underlying roots of the weeds are unresolved and likely to crop up again and again.  

My garden analogy extends to the corporate world, where leaders sometimes opt to tackle the easiest problems or appease the most vocal individuals. Choosing the easiest or most demanding task to start with isn’t always the right strategic answer. This approach can create more work because you did not unlock the right piece of the puzzle.

Instead, I want you to think of all of your initiatives like they are icebergs in a river. They have jammed up in a narrow part of the river and created an ice dam. You’re trying to change the culture to improve your organization, but there are systemic barriers and obstacles that are jamming up the flow. You can start working away at the ice chunks nearest you, chipping away to break them down with a lot of tedious, back-breaking work that is exhausting. That’s one way to unlock the flow. However, if you choose the right two or three key icebergs to attack, these key pieces can unlock the jam behind them and the movement just whooshes everything free to become smooth and fast flowing. The key is to know which two or three initiatives to tackle first. 

John Doerr's book "Measure What Matters" provides a compelling anecdote that underscores the importance of focused prioritization. In the book, Doerr recounts how Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel, implemented a system called OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) to align the company's efforts with its overarching goals. By ruthlessly prioritizing key objectives, Intel was able to achieve remarkable success and maintain its competitive edge in the industry.

How do you know where to focus your prioritization?   

I have created a version of the Eisenhower Box to help move people from just doing what’s easy or obvious to tackling what’s actually aligned with mission, vision, values and purpose in order to create the greatest impact. This tool helps you decide what tasks to prioritize to help drive the change you want.  

My Priority Matrix based on the Eisenhower Box is a simple two axis grid. One axis measures the amount of resources a task demands (which could be dollars or time): low resources or high resources. The other axis measures the amount of impact a task will make in helping your team fufill the organizations missions/goals: low impact or high impact. This two-axis grid creates four equal quadrants.   

When leaders are stuck figuring out where to start, I ask them to list out their daily, weekly and monthly tasks; and, plot them out where they think they would fit on this grid. What takes hardly any of their time, but is really mission critical? What might take a lot of their time (like spending hours responding to every disgruntled customer) that is not really aligned with mission and goals? People are often surprised at where their tasks actually line up. 

Once they have plotted all of their tasks on the worksheet, I label the quadrants. You’ll notice the bottom left corner aligns with highest impact and least amount of resource. These are your ‘Do Now’ tasks. These you should be prioritizing. You’ll notice the top right corner are tasks that take the most time and are least aligned with your mission and purpose. Those are the things you need to ‘Ditch’ or ‘Dump.’ There are also tasks that might be in the middle ground for use of time and resources and can be seen as aiding your mission. These are the things you need to actually slow down and think about to build a plan for labelled: ‘Discern.’ There are also tasks that are aligned with your mission, but are taking too much of your time. These are the items you need to ‘Delegate.’ You’ll be surprised when you do this exercise and start charting where you are spending your hours and dollars. You should now notice where your energy and brain power are actually going. 

High performing leaders know how to prioritize and focus their energy on those things that have the greatest impact on their organization. I encourage you to workshop this with your team to help operationalize your day-to-day work with the strategic alignment of your mission, purpose and values.