Are you:
Suffering with initiative overload?
Struggling to find time to do everything you need to do?
Frustrated that your team do not seem to be on the same page as you?
Reviewing your annual strategic plan and identifying that you overplanned?
Currently planning your priorities for the coming year, but are struggling to fit everything in?
Then I'm talking to you!
The idea of prioritizing the most important things was a key element in the philosophy of the late Stephen Covey and ran throughout his outstanding book, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.”
Whilst this advice seems simplistic, it is actually very difficult to achieve in practice. Even when we remind ourselves of this advice, we quickly can get bogged down in additional 'urgent' tasks.
I recently coached a leader who was establishing a new organisation. He was full of passion for his project, and entirely wrapped up in setting up and running the new business.
He had a really clear vision for what he wanted to achieve, and was able to sell the concept of his business to stakeholders really well.
The difficulty was that his staff were not fully onboard. Whilst they were carrying out day to day tasks reasonably well, they didn't really understand the steps that they needed to take to work towards fully achieving the vision.
When I asked the leader to reflect deeply on the reasons for this challenge, he identified that he had overloaded his team with information and initiatives, so that they could no longer see the wood for the trees. Quite simply, he wasn't keeping the 'main thing the main thing' and consequently his key ideas were being lost in the huge amounts of information that he was sharing.
As a result of this coaching session, the leader decided to tear up his strategic plan and to try to distill the main ideas that he wants to communicate with his team. He also abandoned his professional development plan to focus on his main principles rather than continuing to cram lots of different topics.
If you would like some help identifying your main things, and how you will achieve these, please get in touch!
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