I wonder how often the word ‘priority’ is spoken by managers each week – undoubtedly more than we are aware. The concept is embedded in our thought structure: individuals have prioritized task lists, as do teams, departments, companies and business partners. We incorporate priorities and hierarchies in our processes and business rules. Supposedly, priorities focus any person or group on the highest-gain activities at any time, and help us make the best choices in how to use the resources we have.
While priorities shine a light on the preferred activities, they simultaneously obscure those activities that are now left behind ‘to do later’ – if later ever comes. The reality is that we set priorities only because there is more need than resource to meet it. When we set a priority, we accept a view that scarcity (of labor, knowledge, equipment, time, cash or materials) is inevitable. And, given the pervasiveness of this practice, we accept that scarcity in any and all areas is inevitable.
Surely this is self-fulfilling: if we never challenge the scarcity, it never goes away – in fact, priorities accommodate the scarcity so well that we ensure it never goes away, since in fact we never prioritize the scarcity itself.
What if we declared it unacceptable to set priorities: tasks are either worth doing or not worth doing, and if they’re worth doing, they’re worth doing now. Just this challenge would force the business to confront the obstacles they currently face, and acknowledge that they can choose to eliminate the obstacles. Imagine: employees would never feel the burden of tasks undone, or having to explain away a customer’s disappointment while feeling the shame of knowing that there just wasn’t enough resource to meet the customer’s very valid requirements. With time saved in not deciding what work ‘really’ has to be done, managers and teams could invest the time in challenging the fact of scarcity and actual capacity.
So, I’m challenging myself to bring this awareness every time I hear someone utter the word ‘priority.’ This should be interesting.
Wednesday, May 14, 2008
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2 comments:
Time is the great universal limitation here, whether described in terms of labor (man-hours) or money (which buys us either more time or more labor to apply over time to a task or something else. And time is indeed a scarce resource in terms of individual human experiences. But I do see the point, I think, that we waste a lot of time thinking about how exactly to spend our time, and a certain amount of time goes into worrying about whether or not to do things that perhaps we shouldn't spend much time worrying about in the first place. Ouch, I just hurt my brain.
I think that we need the concept of priority to some extent in order to stay focused on utilizing the time we have. While tasks change, the fact of time's arrow, at least for humans trapped in time, does not. But I think, too, that we sometimes use the idea of creating priorities as a crutch to support a wish list of tasks that cannot possibly be accomplished in the time alloted and thus, as you say, set ourselves up for failure on low priority projects. What I understand you to be saying, then, is that we should stop calling low priority tasks 'low priority' and start calling them something else, like, 'not-gonna-even-try-to-dos.' To which I agree, now that I think I understand it.
It is easy to find examples where the word priority is used as an excuse not to do something at all. I could not be in larger agreement to that idea. I just always thought though the priority setting results are determined by the manager who set them and how regularly the tasks are at least considered by the team at large.
It is the discipline or habit of regularly considering all that is worth doing and when doing so to considering how much can be worked into the current month or period that gets things done. 5-10 minutes every day on immediate concerns, 10-15 minutes at the start of every week for mid level tasks including the immediate, and 20-30 minutes at the start of every month to get back on track with everything on the plate/serving platter always worked for me as a regular appt to look at my priorities and make plans on tackling priorities and setting deadlines for results. Regularly spending the same amount of time with the team concerned was a habit too. As regimented as that is it is definitely as important if not more to be able to adapt the plan/deadline on the fly and to do so intelligently. No plan can survive the first few obstacles/speed bumps, whatever they may be to 100% effectiveness so worrying about these things is where that time waste factor comes back into play. With a good plan, a good disciplined work ethic, a willingness to adapt, and most important the confidence and faith in your ability to get EVERYTHING accomplished even if it will take time in my mind determines the output of all priorities. Now if only those were the types of qualities that were easy to train... The challenge of finding the highly successful outside the box solution for training characteristics into employees has always been the biggest obstacle for me...
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