In last week's dilemma "Priorities in a Vise Grip", Cliff was faced with how to manage competing priorities between two senior leaders. The solution?
If you are in a project management role in business today, you need strong skills in communicating a "business case" for constant re-prioritization. Few departments can effectively juggle all of their commitments well, and leaders typically have not built sufficient buy-in at their level across the organization for key projects. Thus, the "shell game" of juggling priorities is commonplace. If you don't learn how to force leaders to choose between reality and fantasy, and paint a picture of the consequences to your boss of saying "yes" and "not now" to his wish list, the entire team will soon be ineffective at all of it.
Check out our NEW tool this week: Football and Prioritization.
This Week's Dilemma: Who Has Time?
This week, heard outside Cleo's office:
"Did you see the WSJ article this morning? It says our CEO's top concern is our company's lack of ability to deliver effective innovation. He thinks we can't respond fast enough to the changes and pressures we're facing!"
"That's nonsense . We came up with 3 winning ideas for driving product development just last week in our staff meeting!"
"Right. But who has any time to make them happen?"
What would a leader do? Post your ideas in the Comments section of our blog. (Your wisdom could make someone else's day!)
Struggling with this dilemma in your organization? Everything urgent and important, always? Change accelerating? People on project overload? We offer proven and effective solutions for re-claiming your sanity.
Comments