There are only a few “Top Priorities”

The new year is a time filled with possibilities, but to many employees this time of year can be overwhelming. At the end of the year, we can point to what needs to be finished, what can be wrapped up nicely and what we are just going to have to abandon, but at the beginning of the year, hopes, dreams, and previously set commitments abound. As a leader, your job is to help the team determine what SHOULD be done in the sea of what COULD be done. Setting priorities is one of your most important jobs and at the start of the year it is critical to help the organization focus.

If you are like most organizations, it’s not until the end of January (maybe even early February) when you clearly set measurable objectives, so now is the time to get serious. If you are one of those groups that is mature enough to have this going into January then well done; the rest of this post is probably not for you. But for the rest of us, simply knowing which category a particular objective fits in (1/2/3, A/B/C, high/medium/low…) is important for your team to be successful.

Throughout the year, your team is going to be asked to make decisions about trade-offs and you will not always be there to help them. This means it’s imperative that they are clear on how to make the decision, and if you as the leader have not armed them with the information necessary, then it is on you when they make a bad decision.

Your list may have 5 or 30 or 50 (or more) things on it, especially if you have a large team, but very few of those should be a top priority. Do not fall into the trap of thinking that objectives fit into a bell curve where everything falls in the middle, this isn’t the case either. Your communicated priorities should be heavily weighted towards a few things being critical, the next smallest group being important, and the vast majority being the ones that are negotiable. If you haven’t done the work to sort that out, how can you ask your team to do it?