The underrated skill of re-prioritising

It’s taken a pandemic to bring to the fore a key organisational skill that seems to be challenging many of us: the ability to prioritise, and then re-prioritise… in perpetuity.

Over the last decade (at least), we’ve been bemoaning the need to do more with less. And now, we’re trying to manage shifting between different modes of working, ever changing border closures, changing restrictions and uncertainty about whether or not your people can access schools or childcare. Oh yeah, and then there’s the work of delivering whatever it is that your organisation is set-up to deliver.

Priorities are changing at a constant and rapid rate. The need to reprioritize regularly (if not daily) is one of the key competencies that individuals and organisations need.

The project management ‘triangle’ (or the triple constraint) is the perfect tool for reprioritising. Project managers all know that there are three key elements to any project: scope, time and resources.

As your context and needs change, running all your work through this lens helps you work out what needs to change to work out your new priorities.

When schools close, borders close or restrictions add additional work – something has to give. Will you negotiate a longer deadline with a client (time)? Will you take an employee off a nice-to-have piece of work and move them to responding to the impacts of border closures (resources)? Will you deliver a reduced service rather than a gold-plate one (scope)?

The challenge with repriotising is that it is rarely an individual task. Most of these decisions need to be made as a group, if not as an organization. Build in regular processes and conversations (stand-ups, huddles, software like Trello or Asana) with the right people in the room to revisit priorities and communicate the outcomes.

And finally, partner the skill in reprioritize with the skill of contingency planning. At this stage of the pandemic, most of the impact to organisations that were previously shocking is now predictable. Have standard ways of operating for no restrictions, light restrictions and heavy restrictions. Communicate those to your people as guiding principles. People understand that plans may need to change as context does but having some level of certainty can provide clarity and comfort which allows your people to prioritise and reprioritize as the tides shift and change.