How do we know what’s next? In Seth’s blog post here, he calls out a few methods of how people and organizations may set priorities. I have been in orgs that use the first in/first out, which I completely agree is lazy. I have also been in orgs where the squeaky wheel gets the grease so to speak. This method leads to what many people call firefighting. When everything is a fire, then nothing is, right? Setting priorities in an ever-changing business landscape is a hard task for any leader.
Some of the ways I have found success in this effort are below:
- Identify what you can control in the lifecycle of your product and become great at them.
- Ask your customers what it would take to fire you, then make your processes and product rock solid in those areas.
- Find areas where you have limited or no control. Worked harder, invest more, or build systems toward increasing influence or connections with others that can help with those areas.
All three of these approaches can work together or be used alone. Each of them takes discipline, especially when moving from a firefighting culture to a planned and organized machine determined to execute and deliver. Each of these three take a commitment to relationships and candor with your teams and those you look to for help.
In any org, stay the course and commit to making improvements each day and noting what you find for future fixes if you are not at a place where you have the capacity to act now. There is great power in a ‘parking lot’ of future ideas.
Hitting base hits on a few planned and targeted initiatives that you have the capacity to truly hone is much more impactful in the long term than trying to do too much too fast…
Discipline to choose the priorities, then Execution and Adoption are what matters.
Jason A. Belt 