Managing work priorities
LEADING SELF
You plan, prioritise and organise work to deliver on short, medium and long-term objectives across the breadth of your role.
Managing work priorities looks like keeping a to-do list of tasks and prioritising the most important/urgent tasks so you get everything done on time.
When you are managing work priorities, you…
Plan and organise your work
Invest your time with purpose
Understand when ‘enough is enough’
Quick tips
Keep a to-do list and spend a few minutes updating it at the beginning of each day.
Include both work and personal activities in one calendar to avoid scheduling conflicts.
Spend a few minutes before you leave to organise your work for the next day.
Whenever possible, act on an item the first time you hear about it or read it.
Establish time limits for meetings and discussions.
Prepare yourself for meetings and presentations.
Practice this behaviour
Here are some ways you can practice this behaviour:
Manage a cross-area project with defined timeframes and competing deliverables.
Operate as chair of a governance body, overseeing a significant project that has tight timeframes.
Work with your team to build a set of heuristics for determining what’s critical to your business area – and what isn’t.
Learn how to use planning software for managing your use of time, planning projects and tracking progress toward milestones and goals.
Ask your leader for a project management role in an upcoming strategic planning process.
What can hold you back
Here are some things that could get in the way of developing this behaviour:
Not spending time on planning and organising your work. Even if it doesn’t feel like ‘real work’, it’s important. Especially when you’re under pressure, it’s important to prioritise your work
You find it hard to prioritise and make decisions because you are aiming for perfection rather than delivering work when it is good enough.
Doing the work that’s most comfortable, easiest to complete or most enjoyable. This is called ‘completion bias’. Instead, discipline yourself to do the work that’s most critical to achieving objectives.
Related learning
Related programmes
