Setting priorities is one thing if you’re just trying to keep your own life in order, but what about figuring out the priorities when you work on a team? That’s exponentially more complicated. Keeping a team aligned is hard work. Let’s talk about how to get aligned on what needs to be done. Start from the top and work your way down.
1. Get Aligned on Outcomes
First, get aligned on the vision and the outcomes you’re trying to achieve as a team. What does good look like? How do you want the world to be different if you’re doing your jobs well? Are you a marketing team trying to get customers to shift to your premium brands? Are you an HR team trying to get managers to make performance management a more routine part of their approach? What change is your team trying to create?
You don’t need to answer this question every day or even every week, but it is worth asking it occasionally to make sure you’re clear on the most important outcomes of your work. If you don’t do this, it’s easy to prioritize activities and tasks based on what landed in your inbox most recently, or how scary is the person asking for it?
When you pay attention to the most important changes you’re trying to create, it helps you zoom in on what matters.
2. Define Your Objectives
Getting clear on the outcomes you’re trying to create is a huge help in prioritizing on a daily or weekly basis. Now, make that a little more specific by having each member of the team define your objectives and outputs. If you’re trying to boost your premium brands, do you need a new digital marketing campaign? Is someone going to work to find a new influencer? What are the most important things you need to deliver?
How frequently you need to have this conversation depends on how quickly things are changing, but for many teams, about once a month might be about right.
3. Coordinate Your Activities
Once you’re aligned on what you’re trying to do and the things you’ll each need to deliver, get into the nitty gritty of coordinating your activities. Maybe everyone needs to get together to align on the premium brand strategy before anyone can do their individual work. Or you need to make hand-offs between the person crafting the digital campaign and the one hiring the influencer. Get organized about where things will fit.
The idea is to make sure your priority list accomplishes two things:
- It prioritizes the activities to complete the outputs that will drive the outcomes you’re looking for.
- It prioritizes the activities you need to do to help others get their most important work done.
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In my next video, I’m going to talk about the challenge of trying to prioritize when you work in a cross-functional team—how do you prevent everyone else’s priorities from interrupting your own.