Priority Management: Keep the Main Things the Main Thing

Written by Marcia Zidle | Edited by Rory Hart

Last updated on Jul 31, 2023

Sections of this topic

young-businessman-working-business-reports-using-computer

“I’ve fallen into this trap too many times. In my mind, I tell myself if I’m busy, I’m adding value. The reality is that we can be busy with the wrong things. And, if we don’t discipline our lives, we’ll find ourselves investing a lot of our time with little impact.”

Some leaders have this ailment called activity addiction. Do you? They think that having their plate overflowing each day means that they are excelling at their job. Being busy is not the same as being effective. Truthfully, some highly effective people are not overly busy. They have learned to focus on priority management, not activities; to delegate but not micro-manage; and to know when to act and when not to.

The most effective managers today are not addicted to being busy; rather, they are addicted to producing measurable results by doing the right things, in the right way and at the right time.

YES or NO!

People think focus means saying yes to the things they have to work on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. So pick carefully. Get together with your boss, team, or board in the next week and answer these 6 questions:

What are the key things we have to accomplish this quarter?
Which are the most important or have the highest priority?
Why are they important to our team or organization?
When are our deadlines? How firm or how flexible?
Who are the key people or groups we must satisfy?
When faced with competing tasks or requests:
– What do we say yes to?
– What do we say no to?
– What do we put aside for later?

Management Success Tip

Make sure your time is used to its best advantage. If you’re like most hard-charging managers, you have a long to-do list and feel proud of it. Now take another look. Start a stop-doing list. Effective leaders have developed the discipline to stop doing anything and everything that doesn’t lead to the results they want.

Do you want to develop your Management Smarts?

Build your skills with The Effective Manager.
Sign up for Quick Wins: 101 Management Tips.
Find performance boosters in the Smart Moves Blog.
Fast-track your leadership. Be part of a Success Team.
Need a speaker? Get the Edge keynotes-webinars-workshops.
Copyright © 2012 Marcia Zidle business and leadership coach.

Marcia Zidle

Recommended for you

How to Start Your Private Peer Coaching Group

Introduction Purpose of This Information The following information and resources are focused on the most important guidelines and materials for you to develop a basic, practical, and successful PCG. The information is intended for anyone, although it helps if you have at least some basic experience in working with groups. All aspects of this offering …

Leadership Skills

What Makes for An Effective Leader?

© Copyright Sandra Larson, Minneapolis, MN. Sandra Larson, previous executive director of MAP for Nonprofits, was once asked to write her thoughts on what makes an effective leader. Her thoughts are shared here to gel other leaders to articulate their own thoughts on what makes them a good leader. Also consider Related Library Topics Passion …

Leadership Skills

How to Design Leadership Training Development Programs

Written by Carter McNamara, MBA, Ph.D., Authenticity Consulting, LLC. Copyright; Authenticity Consulting, LLC (Note that there are separate topics about How to Design Your Management Development Program and How to Design Your Supervisor Development Program. Those two topics are very similar to this topic about leadership training programs, but with a different focus.) Sections of …

Leadership Skills

What is the One Best Model of Group Coaching?

Group and team coaching are fast becoming a major approach in helping more organizations and individuals to benefit from the power of coaching. There are numerous benefits, including that it can spread core coaching more quickly, be less expensive than one-on-one coaching, provide more diverse perspectives in coaching, and share support and accountabilities to get …

Leadership Skills

Avoiding Confusion in Learning and Development Conversations

It’s fascinating how two people can be talking about groups and individuals in almost any form of learning and development, but be talking about very different things. You can sense their confusion and frustration. Here’s a handy tip that we all used in a three-day, peer coaching group workshop in the Kansas Leadership Center, and …

Leadership Skills

Reflections on the Question: “Is it Group or Team Coaching?”

I started my first coaching groups in 1983 and since then, have worked with 100s of groups and taught hundreds of others how do design and coach/facilitate the groups. I’ve also read much of the literature about group and team coaching. Here are some of my lessons learned — sometimes painfully. 1. The most important …

Leadership Skills

Single-Project and Multi-Project Formats of Action Learning

In the early 1980s, I started facilitating Action Learning where all set members were working on the same problem or project (single-project Action Learning, or SPAL). My bias in Action Learning has always been to cultivate self-facilitated groups, somewhat in the spirit of Reginald Revans’ preferences for those kinds of sets, too. However, at least …

Leadership Skills

The Applications of Group Coaching - Part 2

In Part 1, we described group coaching, starting with a description of coaching and then group coaching. We also listed many powerful applications of group coaching. Basic Considerations in Designing Group Coaching It is very important to customize the design of group coaching to the specific way that you want to use it. There are …

Leadership Skills

6 Steps to Resolving a Level 1 Disagreement

A disagreement arises in a meeting you are facilitating. This is an inevitable scenario in many types of meetings where a group needs to come to critical decisions - such as strategic planning or issue resolution sessions. How do you - the person in the room responsible for building consensus - resolve it without breaking group dynamics or creating a tense environment of division? It's a tough job, but you can (and need to) do it. Here's one way to resolve the disagreement.

Leadership Skills

Empowering Action Learners and Coaches: Free Online Resources

(The aim of this blog has always been to provide highly practical guidelines, tools and techniques for all types of Action Learners and coaches. Here are links to some of the world’s largest collections of free, well-organized resources for practitioners in both fields.) The Action Learning framework and the field of personal and professional coaching …

Leadership Skills

Action Learning Certification: Exploring Independent Standards

The field of personal and professional coaching has a widely respected and accepted, independent certifying body called the International Coach Federation. It is independent in that it does not concurrently promote its own model of coaching — it does not engage in that kind of conflict of interest. There seems to be a mistaken impression …

Leadership Skills

Effective Recording Techniques: Capturing Information

As a meeting facilitator, you must employ several techniques for recording information in a session to make it a manageable process. When you are gathering input, ideas, and issues from your group at warp speed, it will inevitably be challenging and tedious. Here are a few methods to make the process easier.

Leadership Skills

What March Madness teaches us about facilitation

Here we go. It's now down to the Final Four in this year's NCAA March Madness. As I analyze the four remaining teams and highlights of their seasons (and take a look at my butchered bracket!), I think about how March Madness and - more importantly - the game of basketball really does embody what we know about facilitation. Let's consider that thought for these reasons.

Leadership Skills

What kind of a Tough Leader are you?

Alan Frohman Articles, books and experience identify at least two types of tough leaders. Each is demanding, but in very different ways. The first type is described in these terms: Critical Judgmental Lacks compassion Micromanaging Disrespectful They rarely view themselves that way. But that is how their people describe them. They see themselves as being …

Leadership Skills

6 Things You’ll Hear in an Unprepared Meeting

Many times, we, as facilitators, are not prepared (or ill prepared) for meetings, and that leads to some horrific results – including those feelings you experienced while watching a fellow facilitator suffer through a meeting. What are some things you'll hear in an unprepared meeting? Look out for these words. And, don't let this happen to you.

Leadership Skills

Get the latest Business News

Priority Management: Keep the Main Things the Main Thing

YES or NO!

Management Success Tip