It has been said that the Duke of Wellington, long after his military career was over, was asked what he attributed his success to. His response was something that many current managers demonstrably seem to disagree with. He said, “I always did the business of the day on the day.”
Being able to prioritise between things that appear to be urgent and things that really are important can, and will, make a huge difference in both personal and collective organisational performance.
It is quite easy to become distracted from the task at hand when we are presented with ‘urgent’ problems. In many cases, these ‘urgent’ problems should have been dealt with previously, and because they have not been dealt with, their impact suddenly appears to rise to the top of things to do. It is also quite easy to be distracted by things that suddenly materialise that may appear to be ‘cool’ and ‘sexy.’ These distractions can keep us from focussing on what is truly important, and when this happens, the things that need to be done often are pushed aside.
The challenge is to be able to distinguish where you should spend most of your time I order to be highly effective. Whilst there are probably a myriad of ways to do this, one of the easiest – and most common sense – is to begin by making a list.
- Identify all the things that you typically do in a normal week. You don’t have to prioritise them, nor do you have to sort them in any special order; just make a list.
- Take another piece of paper and put a line vertically down the middle. On one side, list all the important things, and on the other list all the urgent things. This is where things can be a bit confusing. To identify which are which, you first need to understand the definitions of each. Important things include: planning, strategy, and learning. Urgent things include: solving others problems, many phone calls, catching up on non-important emails, non-effective meetings, and doing just about anything that doesn’t add value to your organisation. To split your activities into these two lists, you will need to look critically at all the activities that currently occupy your time, but at this point of the exercise, don’t worry if one column is longer than the other.
- Next, make two concentric circles on a third sheet of paper. Mark the inner circle as ‘influence’ and the outer circle as ‘concern.’ Now, whilst looking at the list you made that identifies the ‘important’ and ‘urgent’ activities you perform in an average week. Go down the list, and place each of these activities (from both columns) into either the inner circle (influence) or the outer circle (concern).
- Compare the two-column list and the concentric circle list. What you are looking for are activities that appear in both the ‘important’ column and the circle marked ‘influence.’ This is why.
To be highly effective, it is important to put your efforts into activities that can yield the most leverage for you and your organisation. These activities are those that are ‘important,’ and that you can have some ‘influence’ over. Activities that are not important are not worth putting effort into. Likewise, activities that may be of concern to you but you have little influence over are also a non-effective use of your time. Find out what is important, and where you can exert influence, and focus your efforts on these activities. If you are worried about the fact that you aren’t spending your time on the urgent or concern areas, you need learn to let go a bit. The objective of being a manager is being able to make the right decisions, at the right times, for the right reasons. And to do this, you need to focus on what is important and what you have influence over. This can require you to unlearn old behavioural habits as well as learn new ones.
There are major benefits to do this, both for you and for your organisation. By adopting this focus, you will demonstrate your ability to think, influence, achieve, and lead.
If you are a supervisor of others, and find that some of your people to focus their efforts on low-leverage activities, you may want to help them understand how they can make better choices by understanding what is important and where they have influence. Or, you could help them update their CV’s and then help them find employment with a company that doesn’t really care about effectiveness.
Dr. James B Rieley
+34 620 22 43 41
