Leadership - Prioritise - basics
Prioritise - basics
Leadership
The aim of leadership is to cast a vision and achieve an aim or goal.
If you don’t learn to prioritise you will fail.
One of the key aspects of prioritisation is to use the Pareto 80/20 rule and spend 80% of your time on the 20% of areas that will bare the most fruit.
As referred to earlier it is a good idea to know the difference between a task that is ‘urgent’ and one that is just ‘important’, see below.
The Pareto rule is reflected in many examples:
- The classic is that 20% of your time and effort will produce 80% of the results.
- 20% of your product range will give you 80% of your profits.
- 20% of what you say will lead to 80% of the impact on the listener etc.
Many leaders might intrinsically realise that 20% of the personnel are responsible for 80% of the output.
It is because of this that you should identify the tops 20% of your staff and spend 80% of your time trying to develop them.
The Pareto rule is very important and can be ‘passed down the line’.
For example:
It doesn’t only refer to time.
You should spend 80% of your budget on the top 20% to develop them.
By identifying all of your tasks and ranking them in terms of the value they achieve you can determine the top 20%.
If you can do this delegate the rest.
Having identified the top 20% ask them to do the same for the staff below them. They can then carry out on-the-job training for this group.
Identifying the top 20% may not be easy and you may need to consider your own criteria.
Put simply if their contribution is so valuable you can’t do without them put them at the top of your list.
It is likely that the top 20% know their value and if your ignore their latent talents there will be plenty who will not.
They will leave causing you greater problems.
Remember, you are not a leader with no followers.
Organise
This is covered in a little more detail in ‘The Complete Time management package’.
Having spoken about ‘urgency and ‘importance’ it is good practice to rank tasks in this manner.
The definitions are:
Urgent
Urgent tasks are deadline based. This is usually independent of yourself and is often driven by others. The sooner the task needs completion the more urgent it is. This has no relation to importance. It is a simple matter to rank any jobs that you have in terms of their deadlines.
Important
The importance of a job drives how much ‘time’ you want to spend on it. Notice that this is independent of ‘urgency’ and is what you want to do not what you actually spend on it. For any task the quality of your output will often relate to the time you spend on it. Again, it is a simple matter to rank the importance of the same tasks, for example, ‘high’ ‘medium’ or ‘low’ or a simple numerical ranking.
Each quadrant of the square in the diagram represents one state of a possible four.
Important and urgent (1)These tasks should be at the top of your list.
Important and not urgent (2)For these tasks you have decided that you will spend the necessary time to give a high quality result but you need to establish your own deadline as none apparently exists at the moment. Once you have a deadline schedule the task in to your diary.
Not important and urgent (3)These have deadlines but you don’t really want to spend any time on them.
Get them out of the way quickly by delegating them. Make sure you tell the person the deadline and the level of their input required.
These are little items that have no deadline and which you don’t want to do particularly.
Try to put off for as long as possible or delegate.
These may include items like filing which you can give to an assistant.
It is an easy matter to generate a form to make some aspect of organising your tasks a little easier and to act as a reminder.
As tasks come in rank them as above.
Consider phone calls and any note you may wish to make.
Each day in your diary could have a list of tasks ranked according to the above with others delegated.
If you delegate tasks make sure you have some form of control and feedback on their progress.
After all, you will still be accountable for them if not directly responsible.
Distinctions
The leader is always proactive and initiate items.
He or she will telephone people to sort out a problem rather than wait for others to telephone.
They will plan instead of just tripping over activities.
A leader will prioritise and a follower will just create a list.
When a leader receives a task he or she will evaluate it and decide if they are able to delegate it or not.
If you can delegate then do so.
A leader will evaluate what he ought to be doing for the organisation and whether he is achieving these aims.
Some of the key problems in an organisation are:
- Many personnel are not doing enough.
- Others are doing too much.
- Others are doing the wrong thing.
If you have the advantage of doing something that you like doing this is a big bonus.
In theory, this should be the case for the leader as he or she should be guiding their own career.
If a leader can match a person’s strengths with their tasks it is quite likely they will enjoy it more and flourish.
Many people actually plan for neglect.
In this case put off things for as long as possible.
Eventually, these items will drop off of the radar and may well become irrelevant.
Equal priorities
Sometimes putting the tasks into boxes will inevitably end with one or more on equal footing.
You can then use a few techniques that will help prioritise these further.
- If in doubt ask someone else higher up the chain what they want completed first. Asking your boss moves the decision making and keeps them aware of the areas you are working on.
- Do you really need to do it yourself? If not delegate it.
- Which one would afford the greatest benefit for the customer?
- Which one fits best into the organisational values.
- Attempt to do both until one shows as the dominant task and then focus on that.
- Clarify each of the tasks and then reassess them.
Having a lot of high urgency and high importance tasks can lead to a paralysis as you fail to know which way to turn.
Re-evaluate them. Have you really put them in the correct boxes?
Another really good technique is to learn to say ‘no’.
At the end of the day a nice list of tasks may look impressive and neat but will ultimately prove your own downfall.
Others will not be impressed with your system if you fail to deliver the right result at the right time.
Force
If you have only a few tasks it is usually the way that they will inevitably take up the available time.
This is Parkinson’s law. Often, having a lot of tasks and little time is the driving factor for prioritisation.
For a true leader this should not be the case.
You should prioritise in any case.
It is well known that when an extreme emergency occurs an individual’s priorities will change dramatically.