Can you have too many organizational priorities? Yup! Organizational priorities generally trickle down to management objectives and when those objectives become another full time job and/or completely take your focus off the primary job, you’ve got too many. It’s like shooting fish in a barrel. How well does that really work when you could just scoop ‘em out? And more importantly, scoop out the fish you really want rather than killing—or missing—all of them.
Here’s a story that came to my attention and spells out the point (perhaps overly so): Company A (I know, still no creative juices when it comes to these names) recently re-categorized its customers and changed their pricing (up, not down), this is often a hard sell on a good day. Their increased cost of doing business is attributed more to them, and they are more commodity than value, so it’s going be a bad day. Coupled with the fact that their next strategic program might look like a most favored nation initiative—with planned obsolescence attached to other customers (presently unknown to them), it’s going to be a big hairy day. Their communication strategy is limited face-to-face discussion and the US Mail (without proof of delivery). If that communication is misunderstood or overlooked, it is going to make the big hairy day look like the better day. And last but not least, there is a product launch and product changes to introduce. As we know with launches, there will be intense focus on the pipeline and revenues for those new products. (Arguably, the execution is equally at issue). All these things are important, but which is the greater priority?
In this example, the reality is that all these priorities primarily hit one area of the business—sales. When you have more than one strategic program that will directly affect your customers, you will likely halt selling for successive periods of time. Yes, sometimes selling gets halted or is less productive, even with the best laid plans. A couple things happen when you do this: First, your competitors start salivating because they can swoop in and sell while you are explaining, implementing, defending the plan. Second of all, if your strategic plans are more about you and less about the customer, then your customers start talking with your competitors. Too much change can be disruptive, no matter how great your ideas are.
The same disruption applies to the rest of organization, even if you stretch out the execution over multiple quarters. If your programs consecutively halt your operation, slow it down and decrease productivity, 2-3 times per year…it might be too many.
Once upon a time, I was reviewing objectives that were to be sent down through company ranks to one functional area; it was a spreadsheet with 2-3 worksheets, multiple columns and rows, lots of rows. You almost needed a pivot table to summarize what you had to do. Okay, I admit that’s a slight exaggeration, but still…that’s over complicated. When the instructions become the fourth worksheet, it’s over complicated. The best way to keep your organization focused on the priorities is keep it simple, focused but effective.
I think sometimes if we don’t get feedback, we have a false sense of what can be accomplished. Keep a pulse on your organization. Change, especially game-changing change will redirect attention for a brief period of time. That is to be expected. It requires solid communication and feedback from all levels of your company in order to deliberately plan and deliver. It can get eerily quiet on the frontline when all signs point to overload, but don’t interpret this as acceptance. It might mean you weren’t listening, so they stopped talking.
Staging the execution of multiple priorities throughout the year doesn’t make things more effective. It just means your organization may be in a stop/start mode, for consecutive periods of time. Priorities, even those that propel a company forward can become competing priorities. In theory, there is alignment; in the execution, there is chaos.
With as many multi directional tasks in the hands of the company mentioned in this article there is one thing a company must do to help smooth out the organizational frustration for its members. That important thing is a clear and concise “Company Mission Statement” that is able to tie in with all the organizational priorities at any given time.
The Company Mission Statement is so valuable to a fast paced ever evolving young organization especially. This is because priorities change so often than employees lose touch with what they are trying to accomplish in the first place. It reassures members of an organization by its ability to alleviate stress when one asks him or herself what their goals should really be, especially if the short term priorities seem too daunting.
The Company Mission Statement is a very specific to the company’s product or service and also ties in with the external environment (customers and competitors). For a business mission statement, focus should be geared toward growth and profitability more than anything else.
Since the company mentioned in the article above may be having some issues in dealing with the stress of how to manage through so many priorities it could be helpful to develop a “Vision Statement” as a tool to navigate managers through the mesh of multi tasking by personifying their organizational aspirations as leaders of the organization.