How you establish the priorities of your personal workload and the workload of your team affects performance and your own career advancement. Leaders who fail to prioritize correctly will find themselves behind their peers. They risk career promotion and a team with low morale.
Your team is busy, and you are busy. Very busy. Prioritizing from the aspect of getting the work done on time will keep your team on track and your boss pleased. We continually validate our priorities are in line with the strategy, and that we are delegating appropriately. Where do you, as the leader, spend most of your time, and how do you determine what is important?
Critical Skills, Actions and Leadership Expertise Guide for Career Advancement Above Manager
The items in the list below definitely overlap regarding priority. Priorities often shift within the month several times. Monthly Close obviously become the top priority when the month ends. Your leadership ability will become apparent when you consistently work on what is important, while not getting distracted by other people’s requests. You must balance this with administrative tasks that are required but may add little value.
Follow these priorities to support your team, your boss, and your career advancement:
- Serving your team. Take care of your team, and they take care of you. Take care of your team first and then you can focus on taking care of your boss’s priorities. Communicate what is important and what will affect their work. Coach, teach, and mentor your team members to achieve excellence every day. Performance reviews and individual development plans require your attention and significant effort.
- Your boss’s priorities and the priorities of your boss’s boss. As the leader, this is where you spend a great portion of your time. Keep a top team member close to you for making sure your boss’s priorities get done.
- Monthly close. After the month closes, this is the top priority. Journal entries must be done, financial statements are completed and the analysis on the business for the month is presented to the executive team.
- Strategic projects and goals. Most likely these projects have the constant attention of the executive team.
- Special promotions that grow the business. Our job is to help grow the business always. Our analysis of promotions provides information for decision makers. Are we growing the business with these promotions?
- Compliance. You must fulfill legal requirements for finance and accounting. This is really blended into all the other priorities. Follow the law always. Ensure your team is reporting properly. If your company is publicly traded, this item is of special importance to you.
- Other people’s requirements. Other leaders around the company need data. You must determine the importance of that data before committing a person resource to it. A high level strategic project gets done immediately. These requests, if not managed properly, can misdirect your team away from more important tasks. Monitor these closely.
- Administrative tasks that need to get done, (but people only care when you don’t do them). This is required training, routine tasks that may come from HR or monthly personnel usage reports. It could be anything that gets submitted to any random office within the company. When I was serving in the Army, we had many routine reporting requirements that added little value, but if you missed a deadline, then you would immediately suffer wrath. Meet the deadline, but don’t focus too much energy on these.
“The role of leadership is to transform the complex situation into small pieces and prioritize them.” -Carlos Ghosn, auto manufacturer senior executive
Senior leaders know how to set priorities. They know how to say “no” to requests that could lead them away from what is important. Being mindful of what is important requires planning and properly directing resources.
Great leaders get the important tasks done first, know how to set priorities for their team, and assign available resources accurately. Great leaders also focus on growing a team that is empowered to make decisions and take appropriate actions.
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Where do you, as the leader, spend most of your time, and how do you determine what is important?
Please comment or email me at comment@stephenmclain.com.
Copyright 2018 – Stephen McLain
