Today I want to talk about managing competing priorities at work. Part of the idea of being a brand inside a brand is being the person who can see and manage things differently.
One of the things you may run into is having a bunch of people who want stuff from you at the same time. Here is what you and your team (if you manage one) are thinking; “Whoa, slow down there tiger. Let me get this right each department has an emergency and it’s the most important thing to the company? Ahh, right?”
The thing is everything they are asking you to do is the most important…to them.
Here are 3 things you can do to start gaining your sanity back (I use the word start because this may be the kind of thing that involves really changing the way your company works which means it may take time to implement). Back to the suggestions.
3 Things You Can Do To Manage Competing Priorities
1. Get Lean: Start talking about Toyota and their lean methodology. You will soon start to bring people together from various departments that are impacted by a process for what is known as a Kaizen event. The word Kaizen means good change or continuous improvement. Be the one who says, “How can we make our process better so we can save money or make more of it.” I’ve seen some amazing things happen in my former world of manufacturing once lean processing and thinking was applied.
2. Show em your work: When I visited charity: water’s office in NYC I saw the most amazing thing; an electronic dashboard (think what you would see at an airport to figure out what gate your flight was leaving from) they use it to track where they are with different water projects they were working on. Are they ahead, on schedule or behind.
What would happen if you started to show folks the work you had in the queue and the status of current work. I know, I know you already have one that your team uses that is buried behind tons of clicks on a page that no one, but your team–hopefully, remembers how to get to. Instead have that dashboard right outside your office for all stakeholders to see.
3. Call a regular meeting: Either become part of a meeting that already exist or create one where you can review priorities and what needs to be done first and why? Make sure the decision makers are there so they can all agree on what is said. Be sure to send out anything you want folks to know or review a few days in advance of the meeting so they come to the meeting ready to provide their point of view on what’s important. When they get to the meeting it shouldn’t be the first time they are seeing what they need to make decisions on. If they are like me, they like a little bit of time to process. Lastly, make sure their are minutes that show what you agreed on. Make sure your team is copied on those notes so they know the priorities as well.
Remember, you don’t have to leave your job to leave a mark, but you do have to bring stakeholders together to make decisions. Signing out, your ambassador, Mike Ambassador Bruny.
I hit you with a lot of stuff and you may have more questions or even need help. That’s what I’m here for. Send me an email at Mike@BrandInsideaBrand.com for starters.
