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Leaders Declare What’s a Priority & What’s Not

What would you think if a decision-maker said to your face, “Sorry, your project is not a priority.  We’re focusing our efforts elsewhere”?  Would your first instinct be, “@#$ing @$$-%*&#!”?  Would it be, “Damn old fart doesn’t know what’s good!”?  Would it be, “Senior management doesn’t understand what’s really important!”?

Or would it be, “Thank God we have a clear sense of priorities here”?

You might come to that last one after you calm down and reflect a bit.  Seriously.  Hopefully.

I’ve noticed a chronic inability for non-leaders to declare what is and what is not a priority.  If everything is a priority, nothing is a priority.

I’m looking at a document right now that has the following categories:

• Urgent Priority
• High Priority
• Priority
• Moderate Priority

And that’s it.  That either means Really-High, High, Medium, Low, or High, Medium, Low, Not-Really-Worth-Talking-About.  But the authors of the document don’t want to put it that way.  Everything’s important.  Everything’s a priority.

It takes backbone to declare that something is not a priority.  Why?  Because someone will stand up and voice an objection.  Nobody wants to hear that their concerns are low-priority.  Yet a true leader must prioritize, because time and resources are finite.  Some things must be given higher priority and allocated greater resources and effort.  By doing so, the necessary corollary is that some other things will be given lower priority and allocated less resources and effort – or none at all.

Politicians are possibly the worst at this.  If something is a “priority”, that means it’s worth diddly-squat and they don’t care.  That’s the bottom of their particular scale.  Unofficially it goes something like Priority, High Priority, Urgent Priority, Critical, and … yes, I’ve heard a veteran public servant tell me a politician has used this… a Sacred Trust.  But notice that everything is labelled some kind of priority.

How many politicians do you honestly consider true leaders?  Not frickin’ many, I’d wager.

So don’t be a frickin’ politician in your work and in your pursuits.  Take a stand.  Make it known.  The scale does not run Urgent Priority, High Priority, Priority, Moderate Priority.  A real, honest scale will be something along the lines of:

• Priority
• Important
• We’ll Get To It If We Can
• Why the F*** Are We Even Talking About This

Be a leader, and let it be known what is a priority and what’s not.  Avoid the insipid and dangerous wishy-washiness of declaring everything a priority.