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The Art of Focus: Mastering Priorities in a Changing Landscape

All leaders and teams grapple with priorities. Why? Because change is the only constant in business.

When you need to switch gears, your team is left staring at their work-in-progress, scratching their heads. 

They have tasks from stakeholders and are left wondering, "How do we know what to put aside when they are all priorities?"

That's where you, as their leader, step in to guide them.

The Art of Letting Go

When your organization needs to change course. Every piece of work needs to be re-evaluated through this new lens.

Your goal, as their leader, is to help your team understand:

  • Why the change in direction?
  • The new goals and outcomes to achieve.
  • The success metrics to track progress.Notice its outcomes, not outputs. 

We are not talking about what feature to build, but what customer problem to solve, what measurable impact we expect to see when we do, and how we will know if we succeeded.

Outcomes and success metrics are the north stars that guide your team's focus. Every task and activity should align, provide learning toward the outcomes, or move the metric. If not, it's time to let it go.

Permission to Prioritize

Here's the kicker: This won't happen unless the team feels empowered to say no to work and have your permission to let things go that no longer align with the newly defined focus area, even if it means disappointing a stakeholder.

But remember: if everything is a priority, nothing is.

When a new request appears, the team should be confident enough to assess it against the prioritized goals and outcomes and, if necessary, set it aside.

Your team can't make meaningful progress if they're spread so thin across a multitude of "important" tasks. 

The Focused Future

By mastering the art of focus and prioritization, you are beginning to transform how your team operates. You're creating an environment where:

  • Clarity reigns supreme.
  • Outcomes and success metrics guide the work.
  • Innovation thrives because there's space to explore, discover, experiment, learn, mitigate risk, and find the fastest path to value.
  • Decisions are made based on impact, and evidence, not inertia.

The ability to focus and prioritize is the difference between treading water and riding the wave of success.

 

Written By: Pam Krengel