It is in your organization’s nature to start work but not finish it.
A project here. A small effort there. An idea to test! Some surprise compliance work. A new technology to try. An exec’s special request. Oops, something broke! Wait, it’s time for a new initiative! …
More and more begins. Much, much less gets finished.
Allowing work to proliferate in this way splits attention, destroys focus, and slows progress to a crawl.
Oh but that’s not all! Now it’s next quarter, and there are new goals and different projects to start! New interests and obsessions take hold. The old work lingers on…
« Wait, why isn’t anything getting done again? »
There is, of course, a simple solution.
Ready?
If you want to see progress, first create focus.
To create focus, the organization must do fewer things.
To do fewer things, people must know what is important.
That means it must be clear which issue of the day is ISSUE. NUMBER. ONE.
It must therefore also be clear which issues are NOT number one.
And we must make it easy for people to PAUSE and even REJECT that work, and to judge for themselves what to do.
This is incredibly easy from a policy standpoint to do. (Yes it is.)
But most leaders won’t do it because it feels uncomfortable and uncertain and it might upset some of the stakeholders and what if you get it wrong and………..
Take a good, hard look at the progress you're hoping to make in the first place.
Why are you here?
What are you here to accomplish?
If it’s not worth a little discomfort, then it’s not worth doing at all.
There will always be too much to do.
It’s up to you to help your org cut through the noise.
Ben and David
StrategyTeaming.com