There are literally hundreds of thousands of prioritization type tools out there. And that alone, I feel like should tell us something like these things are not working. And the thing is. It's not the tool. That's the problem. It's how we're using them. So I bet if I asked you right now, how many of the prioritization tools you've been using that aren't working, you could rattle off like eight or nine easy, like there's the get things done method, the Pomodoro Eisenhower.
Can ban time blocking. Um, and that's not even talking about all like the workload management type tools. So like Trello, Asana, Notion, monday. com, there's literally hundreds of options out there and we as leaders are so freaking overwhelmed with our team's workload and everything that's on our plate. We are desperate for some sort of magic solution that's going to bring organization to the chaos.
So, what do we do? We flip through the tools. We try Eisenhower Matrix, and then when that doesn't work, we jump to the next one. We jump to the next one. I'm totally guilty of this. Like every January, I'm like totally team go invest in like the latest and greatest journal and fancy sticky notes and pens because it gives you this sense of productivity.
And we spend all of this time setting up these tools and our latest planner and getting it color coordinated and getting it organized. And then it doesn't work. One, we're not able to organize our stuff. I can't tell you how many times leaders come to me. I'm like that tool didn't work. I still ended up with 15 number one priorities.
Or we spend all of this time setting these tools up and then lo and behold, it takes more time to simply manage the tool. So we just stop doing it because we don't have that time. And here's the thing, it's not the tool's fault. It's that we aren't using the tools properly. Because these tools are not a replacement for proper strategy.
The Eisenhower matrix is not responsible for telling you what your team should be prioritizing. Ooh, yeah, I went there. The tool is not responsible for setting the strategy for your team. You are. You are, the tool is simply a framework to help you put your team's workload through the filter of your strategy and visualize the priorities based on your strategy, which means if you don't actually have a strategy as a baseline to utilize the tool, the tool's not going to work.
And it's not the tool's fault that you have 15 priorities as a number one priorities. It's that you haven't done the work to define your team strategy. And when I say strategy, I'm not talking about some like 50 million page PowerPoint deck. It's really three simple questions about figuring out where your team is going, what it's going to take to get there and what you need to prioritize even over all of the other options in order to achieve it.
So whatever your preferred prioritization tool is today, here's the three questions I want you to answer before tapping into that tool. Okay. The first thing I want you to answer Is where are you trying to take your team? What is the impact you want your team to achieve in the next one to three years?
If there was only one thing your team could achieve in one to three years, what does it have to be? Whether it's some sort of impact on your end customer, whether it's some sort of impact on your larger company goals. Or maybe it's just some sort of impact on how your team operates that is significantly hindering their ability to perform at the level, you know, they need to perform at what's the one most biggest thing you need to achieve in the next one to three years.
You have to have a destination because there's too many of y'all out there. You are simply letting your team show up and run on a hamster wheel every day. That's not enough. What are you trying to drive towards? That's like getting in a car with zero destination. You're just driving around in circles.
You're not making any progress. It's no wonder that you are working and so insanely busy all of the time, yet feeling like you're not making an impact. It's because you haven't defined what you're doing. What you're trying to move towards. You have to have an end destination for your team. So I want you to imagine I'm asking you right now, what is that end state that you are trying to get to in one to three years?
What's the biggest, most meaty priority that you have to achieve? What would you say? And for some of you guys, you're like, ah, there's a million things we need to do. No. If you only had to choose one, what would it be? What's going to drive the biggest impact on your company, on your customer, on your team?
What's the one thing that's going to make the biggest difference? That's question one. You need to answer. What is that? Where are you taking your team? Question two you need to answer is what is the, what are the gaps between where your team is today and where you're trying to take your team? You need to get clear on your current reality and what is hindering your ability to achieve that vision you just outlined.
And I don't just want your perspective as the leader. You need to ask your team, the ones that are in the day to day, can't tell you how many times I've talked to leaders and asked them what's going on with their team. And they gave me their perspective just for me to turn around and interview their team members and get a completely different story.
I don't care how long you've been working with these people. I don't care how long you've been in this position. Ask your team. They're the ones closest to the work. They know it best. Then ask the people you rely on other departments, other leaders, the people you rely on to do your work. Ask them, what are the biggest gaps to achieving that destination?
You just outlined, ask your leader. What do they see from their perspective? Get a full 360 degree view and write them out. Here are all the things that we could need to do to achieve this end state vision. And then the third thing you need to do is say, what are the top three to five that are going to have the biggest impact?
Because here's the thing. So many of us are getting caught up in that question number two, and that's why we have 15 million number one priorities. Because we're like, here's all the things we have to solve in order to get to our vision. And all of them are important and we have to do them all right now.
But your team has a limited time, talent, and energy. Those are the biggest resources. It is your job to protect as a leader is your team's time, talent, and energy. And when you spread those across 15 number one priorities, They're not achieving anything. I love the quote of when you're prioritizing everything, you're not prioritizing anything.
You have to make trade offs. You have to make the call because if you're not making the call, you're putting it on your team to make the call for you, and that's not leadership. It's our job to make the call. It doesn't mean it's stuck in stone. It just means that, Hey, based off of the information I have today, I believe that these are the three to five most important things we need to solve, to do, to strengthen.
In order to achieve our vision and in Q1, we're going to go all in on those. And at the end of Q1, we're going to see what worked and what didn't and maybe three of the five stick. And maybe the other two, we go back to our list and we pick two different ones to try, but you got to pick, you've got to set some sort of clarity for your team, because that's what they crave.
Your team is craving clarity in the chaos. They're craving direction in the chaos and they're looking to you. So you have to pick the three to five things that are going to make the biggest difference in driving you closer to that vision faster. And those are your priorities. And so that those three questions are now what you filter those tools through.
So when you're prioritizing, you have that long term vision, that impact you are trying to make at the top of the tool. And you're saying, which of these things is getting me closer to this? Okay. Now, which of the three to five things did I say? I was going to prioritize Q1. Cool. These tasks align with those.
These tasks don't. So now those go into the back burner and maybe we revisit those in Q2. Thank you. If we're not seeing the drive, the impact that we were wanting to see from the ones that we've already selected to prioritize, you have to have some sort of strategy. You're actually filtering tasks through for these tools to work.
Now, some of you are like, that's all fine and dandy, but what happens when I've selected my three to five areas that I'm prioritizing? And then my executive leader comes down and says, like, We're prioritizing this. I need you just to quote unquote look into this for me when really that's like 10 hours of work or Your stakeholders are blowing you up saying you need to do this or there's a million fire drills coming down the pipeline Saying you need to do this.
Well now well now we're not just basing it off of some arbitrary Guess of what you feel like is in your head Of the direction you should be taking your team, you actually are coming back to them with a succinct strategy saying, Hey, this is where I'm trying to take my team over the next one to three years.
This, this is my vision for them aligned with, based off of what I talked to you about, because remember in question two, we went and chatted with all of these leaders, with all of our stakeholders, with all of our team and got their opinions. So this is what I came up with based off of that conversation.
And here's what I believe is going to drive the biggest impact on that. So what do we need to take off in order to prioritize this? Because in order to take on your request, I'm going to have to stop one of these three to five things. And if I stop one of those three to five things. It's going to, um, slow down my team's ability to achieve that vision we've outlined based off of all of your feedback.
And that alone, you're now having a strategic conversation about pushing back, not just, Oh, my team doesn't have time or, Oh, we're going to have to stop things. It's like, this is the impact that this request is going to have on the vision. We. Collectively outlined for our team, does this make sense? And if the answer is still yes, okay, cool.
Of those three to five priorities. That's fine. One of those maybe needs to shift to a pause. And that's okay because guess what? We've, we, we only have three to five priorities instead of 25 that we're now having to stop and shift and adjust and do all these things to. It's just like, okay, maybe that process improvement we were trying to achieve this quarter, we just need to put a pin in it.
And that's okay because we've just paused one thing and we are operating in an agile way with our strategy where it allows things like fire drills and stuff like that to work. Be okay with adjusting on course. The other thing that this helps with, with fire drills and last minute requests and things like that is you are moving at a much quicker pace of achieving these things.
So if you have 15 number one priorities, you were trying to achieve your ability to complete those, it's going to take you like a year. Cause you're spreading your team's limited time, energy, and capacity over 15 things. So yes, every time something new comes in and it derails those, it just throws everything into flux.
But if you're focusing your team's time, energy, and capacity on three to five things, they are checking boxes off a lot quicker. So now, okay, we've completed these three to five things. It's the end of Q1. And it's a lot easier to filter new things in. Because we've just thrown off a 12 week plan with 3 5 things, not a 1 year plan with 15 things.
It's more agile and it gives you more influencing power because it's actually based off of something versus just a guesstimate versus just a, well, my team's got a lot going on right now. So if you're struggling with these prioritization tools, it's not the tool. We've got to define out a strategy, a direction for your team.
And if you're needing help with that, you need to be inside activating strategy because we're breaking it all down for you. We'll link that in the show notes. Okay, guys, let's go do the work.
