Priorities? They’re a sacrifice
Many companies refer to a list of important things – to which they keep adding further priorities – as ‘priorities’. But a priority is, above all, what justifies removing, suspending, postponing or cancelling something else; it is not simply one more thing to do. Because if everything is a priority, nothing really is. This misunderstanding often stems from a confusion: we treat objectives and priorities as if they were the same thing. An objective tells us where we want to go. A priority tells us what we choose to give precedence to. And a priority without sacrifice simply adds pressure, asking people to do more, faster, within the same constraints.
Why do companies add priorities? Usually to speed up change. But the more fronts that open up, the more the system slows down. Speed does not come from multiplying initiatives. It comes from the clarity of the trade-offs that allow energy to be concentrated. If there are too many priorities, accountability does not increase. Defences go up. People learn to respond to everything, to avoid exposing themselves too much, to report cautious progress, and to do enough on many fronts without being able to do what really matters properly.
Setting priorities, therefore, is an act of governance. And governing means creating the conditions to ensure that priorities have a genuine opportunity to be realised: time, attention, resources, decision-making power and criteria for trade-offs.
It is not enough to ask ourselves, ‘What are our objectives?’ or ‘What are our priorities?’. We must also ask ourselves, ‘What are we prepared to give up, slow down or put on hold so that a priority can become a reality?’.
This question is crucial both when priorities are set at the top and when they are identified by managers and teams because, in either case, a priority implies a trade-off. And this trade-off must be communicated with the same clarity with which strategies, objectives and priorities are communicated. Stating what takes precedence without explaining what may be left behind – and why – leaves people with the most difficult task: interpreting what has been left unsaid.
