How to get important things done: Today.

No business succeeds in the absence of a concentrated application of resources to the most important problems and opportunities they face.

The Pareto principle, or the 80/20 rule. 80% of your profits come from 20% of your customers, so it is logical to focus on them. 

 The time frame differs, from the daily work, to the long term strategic thinking required for commercial sustainability, but the process does not.

You need to examine the questions and issues in an open ended manner, based on objectivity, creativity, and collaboration in order to have an agreed priority list. The absence of an agreed set of priorities results in less than ideal expenditure of resources. 

There are always facts available about what has happened.

There will usually be a range of short term forecasts with a high degree of probability.

As we go longer the probabilities of certainty diminish, and in its place comes the opportunity to anticipate the situations that may emerge, or that you can create,  to your strategic and competitive benefit.

The structure of the conversations, and that is what they should be, rather than being labelled ‘meetings’, which implies formality and influence based on hierarchical position, is similar.

• What are we facing today? What needs to be done to succeed, today?
• What do the metrics tell us? When you are looking at the few key numbers, every day, you will get to see the patterns and trends emerge, as they are doing so, which gives the time to address them.
• What are the constraints, what are the questions and issues that are going to get in the way of performing, today?’

Such conversations have a daily, weekly, monthly cadence. The metrics and participants may alter in the differing conversations, but the agenda will not, and once embedded become a vital part of achieving results. However, they will deliver little if any benefit in the absence of specificity. Generality is the death knell, you must be specific, how much, which customer, what communication, by when, who is accountable, outcome expectations, and so on.

Need some assistance with this exercise, particularly in a time of crisis such as we are now?   Give me a call, or go to the StrategyAudit blog for many hundreds of tips, templates, and idea starters. Assistance at your fingertips.

Cartoon header courtesy GapingVoid.com