Strategic Planning | One Priority List

The cliche ‘if everything is a priority, nothing is‘ couldn’t describe a more damaging situation than when it occurs pervasively throughout an organization. All too often, organizations and their divisions, departments, and workgroups work from priority lists that have neither been reconciled nor aligned. Subsequently, employees pursue either those items of greatest interest to them or to their supervisors; fragmenting the effort applied to the achievement mission goals.

Implementing the concept of a single priority list eliminates the divisiveness that can exist between an organization’s various business units and their efforts toward achieving mission goals. A key outcome of the strategic planning process, priority lists from across the organization should be reconciled and consolidated into those few items that support, in the most value-adding way, the accomplishment of mission goals. This one priority list is then codified in the form of the organization’s business plan. All other priority lists, whether business unit business plans or initiative and task lists, should directly correlate to and support execution of this master plan; being fully aligned with it and existing to translate the organization’s business plan into actionable work to be performed by members of the organization.