Scanning position openings and seeing the continuous stream of “…multiple projects with competing priorities…” easily gives the sense that many companies are awash with internal tug-of-war matches that do not have clear resolutions. What happened to alignment and traceability between priorities and activities? What happened to being clear about what an organization is trying to accomplish?

Prioritize Priorities

Priorities that appear to conflict do not need to be managed, they need to be prioritized. In an earlier article, I wrote about ways to deconflict priorities, and that recommendation stands. When organizational priorities appear to be at odds, it means most simply that it is not clear which priority is more important than any other. This is a clarity problem, not a conflict.

Priorities are, by their nature, hierarchical, though many organizations fail to prioritize their priorities after drafting them. For example, if your priorities are something like:

• Ensure safe operation

• Deliver products on time

• Innovate new products

There is no guidance on what priority one should diminish for the benefit of another. Do you compromise safety to achieve maximum throughput? I hope not, but it is not clear by how they are stated.

To be more helpful, these same priorities should really appear ranked as:

1. Ensure safe operation

2. Deliver products on time

3. Innovate new products

In this case, it is clear that safe operation is king, and that the company will innovate until it might diminish on time delivery, then focus delivering on time until there is a potential safety impact. It is easy to see where the organizations priorities stand when the hierarchy is clear, and it makes it much easier to see how to deal with apparent conflict: the higher priority wins. There is no competition between priorities; we do not compromise safety to deliver on time.

When an apparent conflict exists between organizational priorities, make sure the hierarchy of priorities is clear. Make sure everyone understands the priority of the priorities so that they understand how to rank projects to not appear to be in conflict.

Note: This post first appeared as a LinkedIn blog by Dr. Mann on November 4, 2019.