Shifting the Burden of Establishing Priorities
I’ve done the exercise describe below in many organizations–with similar results. By posting all the projects, the problem is there for all to see. And then it’s the managers job to do something about it.
When managers fail to establish priority and/or say yes to every request that comes their way from the business or from above, they shift the burden for establishing priorities to the people doing the work.
Too often, those same managers turn around and blame the people for doing the work for not getting it all done. That’s not management, it’s abuse.
Amplify’d from blogs.hbr.org
The head of a large hospital brought together her direct reports and asked them to create a separate card for each major project or initiative underway. They then placed all of these cards on the wall and realized that, between the ten of them, they had over 150 active projects, many of which were drawing upon the same resources or impacting the same groups. It was no wonder, the team realized, that they were behind schedule and that their people felt overloaded.
But if everything is called a priority, then nothing is. In fact, what’s worse is that people at lower levels, faced with the impossible task of trying to respond to everything, end up deciding what is important based on their more limited sense of the company’s strategy and their ability to get things done. By not clarifying the few key priorities, leadership teams unintentionally delegate priority-setting to their people. And then they wonder why everyone isn’t on the same page. Read more at blogs.hbr.org
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