This is Fine: A Survival Guide to Prioritizing When Everything is on Fire
Sure, I'll have that to you by EOD
Fires are everywhere, and everything is a priority. The dumpster fire is your new home - a single tear runs down your cheek when you see your backlog.
First, if this is you, I'm sorry, I've been there. There is often a lot to juggle for cross-functional roles like Product and Product Marketing. You work across teams that all have different priorities, timelines, and goals.
You probably have OKRs, project management tools, and recurring team meetings, all with the hope you just need to push through to the next quarter.
Everyone has plenty of ideas for improvements, but how do you prioritize those on top of everything else?
Digging Out
As you survey your dumpster fire kingdom, first focus on improvements to help carve out some much needed time to get your head above water.
Find Quick Wins and Delegate
Look for quick wins that you can check off to lighten the load. Not only does this help you feel like progress is being made, but if it unblocks another project or person, even a small task can have a big impact.
The 30-Minute Rule: If a task takes less than 30 minutes and can unblock a teammate, prioritize it. This has a compounding interest in your team's workflow and fosters a culture of support and efficiency.
If You Can, Delegate: If you find yourself consistently being a bottleneck, it's a signal to delegate more if possible. Trust your teammates to make the best decisions.
Define What Not to Do
Teams spend a lot of time focusing on what needs to be done and should spend more time discussing what they will not focus on.
Say No: In a sea of tasks, knowing what to say 'no' to is as important as knowing what to say 'yes' to. However, this requires everyone on your team to understand your team's capacity and priorities.
Transparent Sacrifices: Openly communicate the tasks or projects you choose to deprioritize. When everyone in your company or team understands what you are not focusing on and why, it will be easier to say no to projects that could derail your progress.
Pick Three Daily Priorities
Ideally, you have some project management systems in place - if not, run, don't walk to your closest project management tool - even if it is just for tracking your personal tasks (I use Notion for all my tasks).
Once you have that in place, every morning or the night before, pick 3 tasks you plan to focus on for that day. I know everything feels like a priority, but sacrifices must be made.
Focusing on Three Key Tasks: Each day, identify three main priorities. This focused approach helps in maintaining direction amid chaos and gives you some sense of progress and accomplishment.
Staying Committed to Your Priorities: Unless there's an absolute emergency, stick to these three tasks. This discipline helps in maintaining productivity and preventing burnout. Remember, when your team has defined what not to prioritize, it becomes easier to say no and commit to these three focus items.
Embrace the Cross-Functional Dance
Cross-functional roles like Product and Product Marketing will always have to juggle some tasks. It's just the nature of those roles. So you'll need to stay flexible and embrace the give and take.
Agility in Action: These roles inherently involve a continuous cross-functional dance. Staying adaptable is critical. It's about being proactive, anticipating needs, and being ready to pivot quickly.
Complexity as the Norm: Navigating the needs of different teams with varying goals and priorities is a daily occurrence. Embrace this as part of your role and use it to your advantage.
Fixing the Future
Alas, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. You've started to make incremental progress digging out from under your backlog. Now it's time to future proof your priorities.
Align Customer Value and Company Goals
Every project on every team should serve a company goal or seek to improve customer value. Remember to differentiate between what is nice to have vs what is need to have.
Customer-Centric Prioritization: Look at every task through the lens of customer value. If a task doesn't directly enhance customer satisfaction or experience, it might need to be reprioritized.
Goal Alignment: Align your tasks with the company's broader objectives. Ensure that every effort contributes meaningfully to these goals. This might require more significant company effort in managing and aligning goals across teams.
Set Expectations from the Start
Similar to defining what you will not do, set clear expectations from the start of a project. What is the success state of the project? What will this project inform? Are there different phases of a project? When clearly defined, it's easier to keep the project management within its original scope.
Clear and Early Communication: Set the right expectations at the beginning of any project or task. This upfront clarity can prevent misunderstandings and unrealistic demands or feedback later on.
Learning from Experience: Use past experiences to refine your communication strategies. What worked well? What could have been better? Continuously adapt based on these insights.
Leverage the Pareto Principle
Use the Pareto Principle, which implies that 80% of outcomes often come from just 20% of all efforts. By identifying high-impact tasks, you can focus on what truly matters and move the needle with minimal resources.
Identifying High-Impact Tasks: Utilize the 80/20 rule to identify tasks with the most impact with the least resources. An example is choosing low lift tasks that unblock a large project or another team.
Resource Optimization: Channel your resources for high-impact tasks with focused time and energy. When teams use optimized project management strategies by saying no, setting clear exceptions, and focusing on the need to have tasks, this creates efficient, meaningful progress.
Build Systems and Automate
Automate and put systems in place to reduce redundant work. Building efficient workflow and systems will have a compounding effect on your productivity.
Automation Tools: Implement tools like Notion or Ignition for managing releases, Reclaim for managing your calendars, or Make for automating tasks across hundreds of tools. These tools can automate routine updates, communications, and task tracking, freeing up time for more strategic work and keeping everyone in the loop.
Building Systems: Develop systems and processes that remove ambiguity and streamline operations for the team. This could mean creating standardized templates, setting up automated workflows, or establishing regular check-in routines.
Set Achievable Deadlines
I'm a big believer in radical transparency, which also applies to setting and communicating timelines. When everyone is honest about setting achievable deadlines and understands the factors considered, it's easier to stay on the same page.
Realistic Timelines: When setting deadlines, consider the complexity of tasks and the dependencies within your team and others. It's better to underpromise and overdeliver.
Open Communication: Keep the lines of communication open with your team. Regularly update them on progress, challenges, and priority changes - even when things go wrong. This ensures everyone is aligned and moving in the same direction.
Embrace Iterative Progress
Perfect doesn't exist, and everyone is still learning. So, in a best case scenario, whatever you are working on will be iterative and constantly adapting.
Adopting Flexible Practices: Focus on staying flexible and responsive. This includes breaking down tasks into smaller chunks, regular retrospectives, and constant feedback loops.
Iterative Progress: Approach large, complex tasks in an iterative manner. Nothing will ever be perfect, and it is better to focus on projects iteratively with the goal of incremental progress. This allows for adjustments and refinements based on feedback and changing circumstances.
Take Care of Yourself & Your Team
You never know what's going on behind the other person's keyboard. Chances are, if you feel busy and burned out, they do, too. All the approaches listed here will help you prioritize your projects but, more importantly, create a more balanced workload for you and your team.
Well-being as a Priority: To build strong team cultures, leadership must acknowledge that we are all just humans and that mental and physical health are the priority. This means advocating for breaks, promoting a healthy work-life balance, and approaching feedback and communication with empathy and understanding.
Celebrating Achievements: Give credit where credit is due, and regularly acknowledge and celebrate individual and team achievements. A nice call out in Slack can make someone's day and go a long way toward improving team morale. And remember, praise in public and criticize in private. Calling out your teammate in a public Slack channel is a surefire way to burn a bridge.
I know prioritizing can be difficult any time of the year and even more so during the end-of-year period, but you've got this.