Managing priorities

Probably one of the most common excuses that you will hear for things not getting done is “I did not have time” but this is never actually true. We all have 24 hours in a day, seven days in a week and 52 weeks in a year, so there is always time, the question is how we use it. As the great Albert Einstein once said:

“Time is relative; its only worth depends upon what we do as it is passing.”

Think about some of the most effective people you know, and you may well wonder how they manage to achieve so much within a particular timeframe when we struggle just to complete the basics. The answer is that these people are typically excellent at managing priorities. The same is true of course in business – those companies that set the correct priorities for the company will do better than those that don’t. However, here there is an extra level of complexity since for this to work, the priorities of everyone in the business need to align.

Okay so if prioritisation is important, how can this be done simply and easily? The table below is one way I have found useful to do this.  The first step is to list all the tasks that need to be considered in planning your time over a given period.  For each task, you determine how important this task is and allocate a score in the range 1 to 5 where 1 = not that important and 5 = extremely important. Then do the same thing regarding each task’s level of urgency where 1 = not urgent and 5 = very urgent. You will then end up with a pair of numbers which should be multiplied together and captured in the ‘Result’ column. The higher the Result number, the greater the need to focus on it.

It is important to remember that the end result provides a guide on the sequence or order in which things should be done, you still need to apply some common sense to the actions you take.

Ian Ash ACC, AInstIB

Managing Director OrgMent Talent Solutions - ianash@ombs.com.au