Week 4 - Focus on The WHATs
Lesson 13 Four Tools to Determine What’s Important
Dwight Eisenhower the 34th President of the United States once said
“What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.”
We find ourselves in a sea of busy. Brian Tracey in his book Eat that Frog tells us that most roles are running at 110 – 130% of their capacity. Data shows that managers
In the last 2 weeks, spent 0% of their time focusing on their top 5 priorities
Spend 23 hours in meetings per week
Have on average 150 tasks on their “to do” list, and 42% of them will never get done
The average office worker receives 121 e-mails and will spend 28% of their working day in e-mail (often the reply will involve their manager). The study by McKinsey also found that they will attend 2-3 meetings per day or 60+ meetings per month.
Narrowing our focus increases both accountability and engagement. When a team moves from having a dozen “we really hope” goals to one “no matter what” goal, the effect on morale is dramatic. Research shows that if you have 11-20 priorities 0 will get achieved. If you have between 4-10 priorities 1-2 will be completed. If you have between 2-3 priorities, 2-3 will get achieved. What’s happening here is we are leveraging focus on the Rule of 3 to create clarity. Often when I get people to narrow their priorities down, this can cause a level of discomfort. Remember priorities are a point in time. They are now. Not forever.
Optional Read the article Get More Done With the Rule of 3
Optional Watch the videos explaining the concepts The Rule of 3 for Presentations and Messaging and The Rule of 3
So how do we focus? There are four tools that can help us
Ease versus impact
Urgent versus important
80/20 Pareto principle
Aligning with our purpose/vision/values
Optional Watch the video Stephen Covey Put First Things First Big Rocks
Tool 1
Plotting all your tasks on a grid of Ease (ability to address) versus Impact. The further to the right and the higher up the task, the more likely you should do it now!
Tool 2
Made famous by Steven Covey, The Eisenhower Matrix, also referred to as Urgent-Important Matrix, helps you decide on and prioritize tasks by urgency and importance, sorting out less urgent and important tasks which you should either delegate or not do at all. Ignore the urgent it can impact you today. Ignore the important it can impact you tomorrow. For more on this approach watch this video
Tool 3
Follow the Pareto Principle. Figure out the most important things on your to do list that will give you the greatest level of results, and then based on this spend 80% of your time available here. For more see the video explaining the concept
Tool 4
Focusing on what is important to us, what we value, what our purpose is, where we hope to head (our vision). One simple way to do this is think about a decision you have to make and if you have a list of values, place a tick next to each one that aligns with the decision. The more ticks, the more this indicates the decision is a good one to take. Don’t have a list of values? Leverage the Brings/Needs Report and the column I Need on Page 9 of your White Workbook.
Optional Activity If you haven’t already as part of the Setting Expectations Module, to understand and be able to describe more about what you value, check out this Quick Course
Activity
Refer to your Check-In Template and the prioritisation tools on Pages 14 and 15 of your Black Workbook
Choose one of the prioritisation tools
Take your task list from the priorities and emerging issues section of your Check-In Template and run it through this filter
Ease versus impact
Urgent versus important
80/20 Pareto principle
Mission/vision/values OR the Brings Needs Report on Page 9 of your White Workbook and the column I Need
Identify the top 3 priorities you will focus on
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