Prioritising for success / The importance of understanding importance

A recent LinkedIn article in conjunction with behaviours I've seen in the industry set me to thinking this week. As part of our work personas we have areas of focus, things we want to improve upon, activities outside of our core roles and responsibilities which demonstrate impact internally within our organisations. These are things that we all do day to day and we prioritise our time accordingly. For myself, I broadly use Covey's time management grid quadrant (for those that don't know it, see the diagram below), though there are of course many other ways of managing ones workload/time.

How people use their time management tools will vary wildly based on their role. If I take myself as an example working as an Architect at Microsoft, a large percentage of my time is spent working with customers - this always will be (and has been) priority #1 for myself and if I may be as bold to say, much of my success has been borne from what is now fondly known as 'customer obsession' in the industry.

Though invariably, as you continue to demonstrate success and take a more senior role in any team you become the go-to individual when there are capacity/resourcing challenges within your organisation. You then start loading up projects, first one, then two, then three and then four or five - we become artists at spinning plates. However, let's be real, at this point your primary asset is being able to context switch and deal with both the urgent and also the important things before they become urgent and unless you are willing to compromise your work/life balance, you typically will have very few cycles remaining for other activities. Indeed if I take myself as an example, most things that don't originate from my customers already planned activities, will then fall into the fourth quadrant (not urgent and not important) and I'll use the little time I have left to to focus on my own self improvement/contribution to our internal communities etc. At this point life is great, I'm managing my own workload, doing a bit of learning and my work/life balance is just right (for me).

So, now let's add in an external factor - your manager and your skip manager, they also have their own Covey time quadrants but there is a by-product of this that I don't particularly see recognised out there. I call it the envelope effect. This is where some tasks are folded out of one quadrant onto another, not so easy to represent in words, so let's see it in pictorial format. First, this is what our quadrants look like before tasks are delegated:

Now let's see what happens when the envelope effect is in play:

As you can see, you now have tasks - inevitably couched as 'initiatives' or 'stretch' activities from management - which from a manager perspective are then automatically assumed to go into your important and urgent boxes. Now for those folk that are already planning their time effectively - spinning those plates and doing their own self learning - this poses a challenge. In a customer obsessed context, anything that is not directly customer related will always take a back seat and ultimately land into quadrant 2 (not urgent & important) but as time progresses, may well fall into quadrant 4 (not urgent & not important). Regardless of where it does fall in the quadrant, at this point you have a conflict:

You have nobody to delegate your tasks to, so at this point we have a conflicting set of priorities. In some situations this is fine - you might have enough bandwidth/time to accommodate these things, but where you are already stretched then there is a high probability that it will just go to the bottom of the list. Now fast forward a quarter/six months/whatever your usual 'review' period is and you find yourself in a position where these things have not been done and are now having a material impact on the individual that delegated them. They are now urgent and important and so you in turn are deemed to have 'failed'.

At this point, it's important to take a moment to reflect back a little - 'initiatives' or 'stretch' activities are invariably things that are typically important, but not urgent to the manager (or at least should be!). Though inevitably, we see activities for activities sake as the corporate game is played and the manager can demonstrate 'impact' though all the 'great' stuff their team is doing.

So, how do we avoid this? In many, many cases I've observed the following and, if addressed, would help both parties ensure a successful outcome:

The Manager

• Clearly articulate both the importance and rationale behind the need for the activity.

• Set a clear timeline for when it needs to be completed by.

• Take the time to understand what the employee is already doing (as an example, a lot of folk will be doing things that are not 'visible'). Through having a clear understanding of the workload that the employee has - and importantly is about to undertake - means you can determine if they will have the bandwidth to complete it within the desired time-frame.

• Understand how this can complement activities that the employee is undertaking, especially in architect roles where we are already context switching between multiple customers. Adding another thing to context switch to, makes things more cognitively difficult.

• Don’t confuse activity with achievement - having many folk that are 'working' on initiatives may reflect well higher up, but let's be clear this is absolutely not achievement and in some cases is hugely detrimental to your relationship with your employees.

The Employee

• Keep time 'free' - this is a really easy thing to write down, and incredibly difficult to achieve. J.D.Meyer has a great book on the subject which is well worth a read and is also discussed on his blog here: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/jmeier/2012/07/21/time-management-tips-1-add-power-hours-to-your-week/

• Do it within the boundaries of your own work life balance - some folk are happy to work out of hours on these things, some folk value family time more, some folk want to go and do sports/whatever - you get the point, just don't say yes because others seem to be doing more.

• Leading on from 2. above - feel empowered to say no, in many organisations there is a culture being perpetuated where you can't say no to initiatives/stretch activities. If you do want to say no, be very clear about why you won't be able to do it and even better, suggest something which would better fit with your ways of working/customers/whatever.

• Over communicate - make sure you are clear on how you are progressing. Highlight any obstacles that are impeding progress, treat the activity it as any of your other customer work. Write a weekly status update which will both keep you honest on how you are progressing and keep your manager informed as to how you are doing.

That's it - I hope you found this interesting!

Credits: stock.adobe.com for article image, mintools.com for the covey time management grid image and the original article and commentary therein that sparked my thinking https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-being-busy-isnt-sign-intelligence-leadership-john-hall/