In December and January all around the world, we all are engaged in talk of “New Year’s Resolutions” and goal setting/plan making for the year. For some it’s personal for others it is professional and for a third group it’s both. Resolutions and plans lead to priorities. Grand pronouncements are made and celebrated. It’s akin to an annual right of passage. Then a funny thing happens: reality.
See everyone has goals and plans and intentions. Or nearly everyone. And they can proclaim them publicly and privately as much as they’d like. That is all normal and healthy, to a large degree. Those proclamations then translate to priorities. And this is where life (and business) gets interesting…and real.
Everyone has priorities, whether we put them in a list after making a proclamation or not. Many of us think we know our priorities. But what most of us don’t do is actually look to see if how we spend our resources (most importantly, our time) is aligned to those priorities.
For argument’s sake, let’s you and I assume we own a business together. We have 100 employees. 65 in operations (making our products, packaging them, etc.), 20 in support staff (logistics, accounting, HR, etc.), 10 in sales, and 5 in leadership (or as I often call it: overhead). As an organization, we come out with our main priority for 2023:
Increase sales by 23%! 23% in 23! (catchy, right?)
It’s an audacious, aspirational goal. We’ll get the company together for a company lunch/meeting and share the priority. Everyone is energized and excited! We’ll talk about how we’ll double down on marketing and we’ll test new pricing and we’ll look into new markets, domestic and international, and so on. Furthermore, let’s assume we do every last one of those things on the list! Every single idea is chased down. Sounds amazing right? Well, the effort for that priority will fall on no more than 15% of the staff (the 10 in sales and the 5 in leadership).
The other 85% of our organization will go back to doing what they were doing the day before because that is what needs to be done to keep the lights on. Maybe every one of those 85 people will have an idea and share it to increase sales. Maybe there will be some ideas around how we can make our products faster so we can ship more and thus be able to increase sales. Again – Awesome! But is increasing sales their actual priority?
But when you look at the broader perspective of our organization, is our main focus to increase sales by 23% when 85% of the team will be devoting less than 1% of their time to it? Or is our real priority making and shipping products while keeping the organization and cash flowing – because that is where we are expending 80%+ of our resources, effort, and time? There isn’t a right or wrong answer here…and there is no harm in trying to grow sales. The point Id like you to consider is that at the end of the day, where we spend our time (and resources) is truly what we prioritize.
While this example may be strained in your mind (and even mine a little), put it in terms of your personal life. If one of my priorities for 2023 is to learn a new language and I devote 10 minutes a day to an app on my phone learning that language versus the 3 hours a night I spend watching sports (or the Science channel or the news or whatever guilty pleasure I have that day), is learning that language really a priority?
If you begrudgingly thought “no, it’s really not a priority” that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t do it! It doesn’t diminish the fact that I am spending 10 minutes a day or over an hour a week learning a new skill. That is awesome! Heck by the end of the year, I could be beginner level fluent…which is leaps and bounds ahead of “pray they speak English” which is my current strategy. But for me to make a big proclamation about learning a language being a priority seems disingenuous. Where we spend our time really tells us our priorities – both in ways we are happy about and ways we’d probably like to consider a little more closely (that 3 hours watching sports a night wasn’t super fun to type but it wasn’t wrong either).
So maybe in my personal life, my priority is to relax outside of work, decompress, and enjoy my favorite team’s games while occasionally learning a new skill along the way. That is completely OK (says me), since it’s my life, my time, and my priorities. And you can make the exact same determination for yourself – which also frees you from the guilt of looking back and thinking “but my priority was to learn a language and I can barely ask where the bathroom is” after six months.
If you take this back to our company above, should we not try to increase our sales? Of course we should go for all the sales we can handle! That should probably be the priority of the Sales team. Our organization should likely have a more holistic priority – maybe:
Increase our profit by 30%!
Then, the other 85% of the company can actively participate in the goal – finding ways to make, package, and ship our products more cost effectively, reducing our HR costs, improving our cash flow, lowering our materials costs, and so on. All 100 people will be able to take time in their existing role to focus on our priority…meaning our time and resources will be focused across the board on a shared priority.
View from the Middle 