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My Big Mama had more than a dozen children. Think about that. More than a dozen! She was a sharecropper, too. So, in addition to raising all those children, she worked, managed competing demands, and carried responsibility for getting things done. And like managers today, she had to think about more than the work itself. There were people depending on her.
Big Mama was one of my first role models, a woman who inspired awe in me. As a child, I certainly wasn't thinking, "Now there's a brilliant manager!" But she was one of my earliest case studies in human nature. I watched her carefully. And then I watched other people, some very much like her and others who couldn't have been more different. The more I observed, the more curious I became about why people do what they do.
One of the questions that has stayed with me is how people decide what deserves their attention. How does someone carrying that much responsibility, with so many potentially competing demands, decide where to focus? What deserves their highest standard of excellence? What can be good enough? What gets handed off to someone else? And what simply doesn't get done?
I still find those questions fascinating. And after more than three decades of working with managers and organizational leaders, I've come to appreciate just how much judgment they require.
Because here's the thing: most managers aren't choosing between things that matter and things that don't. They're choosing among competing demands that all have some legitimate claim on their time, energy, and resources.
And they're often doing it from that uncomfortable middle place: accountable for results, responsible for the people doing the work, and dependent on others for decisions, cooperation, or resources they don't fully control.
Everybody needs something. Everybody has a deadline. And somehow, you're supposed to figure out what comes first.
When Everything Is a Priority, Nothing Is
We've all heard that expression. It's one of those things that's easy to agree with and considerably harder to practice.
The strategic plan matters. The employee who's struggling matters. The budget matters. That request from your boss matters. And the project you've been trying to move forward for three months? That matters, too.
The problem isn't necessarily that we're spending time on things that don't matter. It's that we're trying to give everything the same level of attention, urgency, and care.
And we simply can't.
I've worked with managers who are exhausted by the end of the week but struggle to identify what they've actually moved forward. They've attended meetings, answered emails, resolved problems, responded to requests, and helped other people get unstuck.
They've been busy. They've been helpful. They've probably even been appreciated.
But have they made progress on the things that matter most?
That's a different question.
Why Is It So Hard to Choose?
Sometimes, we're responding to whoever is making the most noise. Urgency has a way of masquerading as importance.
Sometimes, we don't want to disappoint people. This is especially true for managers who built their reputations on being dependable. Saying "I can't do that right now" can feel like we're letting somebody down.
Sometimes, we haven't been given enough clarity ourselves. We're told that everything is a priority, that we need to be innovative and efficient, and that we should take care of our people while doing more with less.
Okay. But which comes first? And what are we willing to stop doing?
Those aren't unreasonable questions. They're leadership questions.
And sometimes, if we're being truthful, we avoid prioritizing because making a choice would require a difficult conversation. It's easier to add something to the list than to tell a colleague their project will have to wait.
But avoiding the choice doesn't eliminate the tradeoff. It just makes the tradeoff less visible.
Pick Your Head Up and Look Around: Five Ways to Prioritize
One of the things I say to managers all the time is, "You've got to pull your head up and look around."
It's awfully hard to be strategic when you're spending all your time putting out fires. Sometimes the most productive thing you can do is stop doing for a moment and start thinking.
Here are five practices I encourage managers to use when everything seems important.
1. Start with outcomes, not activities.
Before you reorganize your calendar or make another to-do list, ask yourself: What are we actually trying to accomplish?
Not what do we need to do. What are we trying to accomplish?
There's a difference between completing ten tasks and making meaningful progress toward an outcome.
Identify the two or three results that matter most over the next several weeks or months. What needs to be different? What would meaningful progress look like?
Use those outcomes as a reference point when new requests arrive. If something doesn't contribute to them, it may still deserve attention, but you'll have a clearer basis for deciding how much.
2. Separate urgency from importance.
The loudest request isn't necessarily the most important one. And the thing that's been sitting quietly on your list for weeks may be the very thing that deserves your attention.
For each competing demand, ask:
- What happens if we don't do this right now?
- Who will be affected?
- Is there a real deadline or simply an expectation of immediate response?
- Will delaying this create a bigger problem later?
Some things have genuine consequences if they're delayed. People may be harmed, opportunities may disappear, or commitments may be broken.
Other things are simply uncomfortable to postpone.
Learning to distinguish between the two can be enormously freeing.
3. Make the tradeoffs visible.
Every yes has a cost.
If you agree to take on another project, what moves down the list? If you add a new requirement, what can you remove? If something needs to happen faster, what additional resources or support will be necessary?
I wish more managers would make a habit of asking these questions out loud, especially when new requests come from above.
There's nothing wrong with saying, "I can absolutely make that a priority. Here's what we're currently working on. Which of these would you like me to move?" Trust me, this works. I've had team members say this to me before and it stopped me in my tracks. I didn't take it as confrontational, it was useful data, and I needed to hear it and we needed to be able to work through it together.
My colleague wasn't resistant. He was exercising responsible management.
And remember, you don't have to figure out every tradeoff alone. Bring your team into the conversation. People closest to the work often see possibilities, they see dependencies, and they see consequences that may not be obvious from where you sit.
4. Decide what deserves excellence, what can be good enough, and what someone else can own.
This is one of my favorite parts of the prioritization conversation.
Not everything deserves the same amount of effort.
Some things are worth slowing down for, gathering input, revising, and doing exceptionally well. Others simply need to be completed.
Ask yourself:
- Where will our highest standard of excellence make the greatest difference?
- What can be done well enough to meet the need without additional polishing?
- What could someone else take responsibility for?
- What could we stop doing altogether?
Managers sometimes confuse accountability with personal ownership. Just because you're responsible for an outcome doesn't mean you have to do all the work yourself.
Delegation isn't merely a way to lighten your load. It's also how other people develop judgment, confidence, and capability.
And there's no prize for spending three hours perfecting something that only needed thirty minutes of thoughtful attention.
5. Revisit priorities regularly—and communicate what changes.
Prioritization isn't a one-time exercise. Circumstances change. New information emerges. Something that mattered last month may matter less today.
Set aside a little time each week to ask: Are we still focused on the right things? What has changed? What needs to move?
And don't keep those decisions to yourself.
When managers struggle to prioritize, their teams feel it. They feel it when everything is urgent, when assignments keep changing, or when they work hard to finish something only to discover it wasn't really needed.
Your priorities become somebody else's working conditions.
So explain what matters most and why. Be clear about what is changing and what isn't. Pay attention to who is carrying the extra work, including the often-invisible work of supporting colleagues, resolving tensions, and keeping things moving.
People don't have to agree with every decision to appreciate understanding how it was made.
Choose on Purpose
I don't think the goal is to get to the bottom of the to-do list. I'm not even sure that's possible.
And I don't think prioritization is simply about doing less. Sometimes we're capable of more than we realize. Sometimes we need to stretch. Other times, we need to recognize that the demands exceed the capacity available and make different choices.
The challenge is knowing the difference.
That's why prioritization is such an important leadership practice. It requires clarity about what we're trying to accomplish, judgment about where to invest our effort, and the willingness to have conversations about what can wait, change, or go undone.
So here's what I'd encourage you to try this week.
Pull your head up and look around. Identify the outcomes that matter most. Take a fresh look at everything competing for your attention, and make a few deliberate choices about what deserves excellence, what can be good enough, what can be delegated, and what can be dropped.
And if you're managing people, bring them into the conversation.
Because prioritization isn't just about deciding what gets done. It's about creating the conditions for people to do what matters most—and do it well.
This week, try one thing: write down the three outcomes that would make this season a success, and test your next request against them before you say yes. Notice what shifts.
