fbpx

Know your Priorities

Once a quarter I coral all my clients for an entire day, at which we create a 90-day plan to get them dialed in and focus on what needs to happen between now and 90 days out. We’re simply taking their long-term goals and funneling them down to focus on the next three months.

The first area of the plan is listing their three top priorities which are the big picture items to move the organization forward. Now interesting enough, years back, Inc. Magazine surveyed 600 companies, interviewed the executives, and asked them, “What percentage of your workforce do you believe are clear on your company’s top three priorities?” What percentage do you think the executives came up with? The number they came up with was 64%. They believed that was the percentage of their workforce that was clear on the organization’s top three priorities.

When Inc. Magazine went back and interviewed the employees of those 600 companies, the statistics that were reported back was a mere 2% of the employees were clear on the organization’s top priorities. That’s a big variance from 64%. Quite a large disconnect from what the executives thought the team’s awareness of the company’s priorities as opposed to what they were.

The lesson here is when you create priorities for an organization, you must over-communicate them. In each meeting you have, get clear on the mission and the priorities of what is important over the next three months, six months, and twelve months. Be sure to get your entire team aligned and focused on that. Don’t think because you are clear on what needs to happen, what the priorities are of the organization, and where the focus needs to be, don’t assume that your entire team is clear also. It’s quite clear based on this Inc. Magazine survey, that the executives were way off on what they thought their employees knew about the priorities and focus of the organization compared to what they were aware of.

Hopefully, sharing these statistics has been helpful for you to get a little bit clearer on sharing the organization’s priorities while over-communicating them to the team to align them. Because if you know them and the team doesn’t, it’s going to be pretty tough road to get those priorities fulfilled and achieved. You should be over-communicating and delegating accordingly to your team. And if you need a little assistance in this, feel free to reach out. I’m always happy to help.

COACH MICHAEL DILL is an Award-Winning Certified Business Coach, global speaker, and published author. He is a proud Action Coach Franchise partner as well as the President of Power & Ice Wealth Creation a strategic leadership company that works with business owners, leaders, teams, and entrepreneurs to both develop a systematized and structured organization while accelerating their mindset, efficiencies, and effectiveness to grow both personally and professionally to achieve extraordinary results. He brings more than 40 years of business and entrepreneurial experience in his leadership, team training, and mentoring practice. Businesscoachmichaeldill.com