3.

Standardize and score work requests

Create standardized processes to initiate projects in the same format every time.

Work management software solutions have these capabilities built in, making sure employees
aren't wasting valuable time combing through emails, voicemails, sticky notes, and meeting
minutes to figure out what's expected of them. They'll know they have one work queue to
consult, where essential details are readily accessible.

The Project Management Institute (PMI) reports that organizations with successful work
performance measures (on time, on budget, and goals met) are almost three times more
likely than organizations with poor work performance to use standardized practices
throughout the organization, and have better outcomes as a result.

Standardized requests alone aren't quite enough, though, if they don't include some indication
of importance, value, or priority. In new research findings from Business Improvements
Architects, only 32 percent of respondents said they had a process for prioritizing projects. In
the same study, 68 percent of organizations said they had no systematic approach in place to
prioritize projects or link them to corporate and strategic goals.

The solution? Implement a scorecard system that assigns strategic point values to all work,
helping everyone easily determine which projects are essential and which are more flexible.
Encourage an open dialogue as priorities shift and clash throughout the cycle of work.

4. Encourage team to make time for important but

not urgent work
Steven Covey's seven famous habits have now been in circulation for 27 years—an entire
lifetime for many of today's enterprise workers. But it never hurts to be reminded of tried-and-
true principles.

Covey suggested dividing work into four quadrants:

1. Important and Urgent

2. Important and Not Urgent

3. Not Important and Urgent

4. Not Important and Not Urgent

It's easy to find yourself spending too much time hanging out in quadrant three (Not
Important and Urgent), and without a scorecard system to help you define universal standards
of "importance," many of your team members will be.

After all, "urgent" is one quality that's easy to identify, while other qualities can be more
subjective. Make sure your priorities management system is designed to keep your team in
quadrants one and two most of the time, with extremely rare forays into quadrant four.
5. Make course corrections
Once you've absorbed strategic company objectives, created a series of complementary goals
for your own team, and figured out how to rank each incoming project in terms of value, your
work has just begun. Now you need to make sure you have a good bird's eye view of what's
going on with your team, so you can offer feedback and make adjustments along the way.

If you follow an Agile project management approach, your weekly stand-up meeting is a great

place to do this, but it doesn't always require a meeting. Cloud-based work management
solutions make it easy to offer feedback and course corrections minute by minute.

It's important to speak up when you see team members working on unimportant, not urgent
work ahead of high-value projects, but it's arguably even more crucial to offer praise and
positive reinforcement when you see:

 Team members prioritizing highest-value items first.

 Team members making time for important but not urgent work.

 Team members holding each other accountable to top priorities.

 Team members making suggestions for process improvements.

Priorities management is an ongoing

effort
Like eating and organizing, priorities management is not one of those things that can be done
"once and for all." It's an ongoing effort that requires constant vigilance.

But, you'll find that practicing alignment in both directions, standardizing and scoring work
requests, making time for important but not urgent work, and offering course corrections and
positive feedback along the way is more than worth the effort.

After all, a boat full of people all rowing in the same direction will get much farther much
faster than if everyone is focused on different destinations. It's your job to point them to the
desired port, give them the tools they need, and then stay out of their way.

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