Prioritization is a Matter of Perspective
Your “Need” to Prioritize is a Symptom
You feel like you need to prioritize.
That is a cry for help. And prioritization isn’t the help you need.
At that point, any act of prioritizing is a small band-aid on a very large wound. You can, and probably should, still do it, but it will give you only momentary relief.
Politics, silos, poor workflow, not understanding customer needs, low morale, conflicting projects, over-commitment, overload, bottlenecks, lack of respect, and so much more can be among your root causes for your “prioritization crisis.”
I’ve visited many clients who asked for prioritization and were at first annoyed when I sleuthed out the underlying cause and suggested we work on it. Over the years, this led to a longish list of perspectives which you see above (and in the list of units below). All-in-all nine different contexts with three different perspectives … 27 different ways to look at your upcoming work and sleuth out what is really stopping you.
See the Prioritization Class | Hell, just chat with us about it on Tidio.
The 9 Contexts are simple questions we rarely if ever ask before figuring out what to do next, but strangely not only guide our priority, but will show us where our culture is failing us.:
1. Who Am I Working With? The collaborative or uncooperative structure of your company directly impacts unreasonable demands on other groups.
2. Who Needs This Work? The people waiting for your product need it in a usable form and the appropriate time.
3. Can the Work Be Completed? You would not believe how often people start work that simply cannot be completed.
4. When Do We Need to Start? Your “importance” is not someone else’s urgency.
5. What Do My Peers Need? When your team is working or when you need something from another silo, maybe your current task is not the most important use of your time.
6. What Blocks Success? Clean up your room, kid. Defects, technical debt, unsafe working conditions, massive re-work are likely part of your cry for prioritization.
7. What Happens When We Understand Our Work? We can build systems that naturally prioritize and really remove this repetitive psychological stress disorder we’ve created.
8. Who am I and Why am I here? Role definition (not job descriptions) define what you can do, not the minimum of what you are expected to do.
9. Operational Imperatives: When regulations, managerial dictates, weird client demands, etc., make you work in a way you don’t feel professionally comfortable with … what do you do?
All nine of these situations directly impact what work you “choose” to do now. Understanding and being honest about them creates an immediate pathway. They need to be explored in detail, so don’t go making a Prioritization Canvas. Do the real work.
In the Modus Institute Prioritization for Teams class, we go through direct visualization for all 9 of these, three visualizations each. It’s certainly our most intense class. I never expected it to go that deep. I originally planned out 8 little lessons that spread to 15 as we kept remembering what we did with different clients and situations.
Just released: The Modus Institute Subscription: All our classes, plus subscription-only content, as they are created.
About Jim Benson
Jim Benson is the creator and co-author (with Tonianne DeMaria) of the best seller: Personal Kanban. His other books include Why Limit WIP, Why Plans Fail, and Beyond Agile. He is a winner of the Shingo Award for Excellence in Lean Thinking and the Brickell Key Award. He and Tonianne teach online at Modus Institute and consult regularly, helping clients in all verticals create working systems. He regularly keynotes conferences, focusing on making work rewarding and humane.
