Honor Your Core Priorities
Difficult choices can reflect competing priorities. Clarify the values and goals that should guide the decision, then make room for them by reducing lower-priority work.
THE IDEA
Honor Your Core Priorities
- Quieting short-term emotion won’t always make a decision easy.
- Even when Kim Ramirez’s initial excitement faded, she still agonized for weeks.
- Agonizing decisions are often a sign of a conflict among your core priorities.
- Core priorities: long-term emotional values, goals, aspirations. What kind of person do you want to be? What kind of organization do you want to build?
- The goal is not to eliminate emotion. It’s to honor the emotions that count.
- By identifying and enshrining your core priorities, you make it easier to resolve present and future dilemmas.
- At Interplast, recurring, nagging debates were settled when executives determined that the patient was the ultimate “customer.”
- “Wayne’s Rules” allowed Dell’s field consultants to make decisions correctly and consistently.
- Establishing your core priorities is, unfortunately, not the same as binding yourself to them.
- MIT study: The managers in the reported study had done no work on their core priorities in the previous week.
- To carve out space to pursue our core priorities, we must go on the offense against lesser priorities.
- On the USS Benfold, the crew actively fought the List B items like repainting (e.g., by using stainless-steel bolts that wouldn’t leave rust stains).
- Jim Collins’s “stop-doing list”: What will you give up so that you have more time to spend on your priorities?
- Bregman’s hourly beep: Am I doing what I most need to be doing right now?
When to use it
When faced with a difficult career decision, identify your core priorities to guide your choice and reduce agonizing.
In a business setting, define the ultimate 'customer' or core value to resolve recurring conflicts between departments.
Use a 'stop-doing list' to eliminate tasks that don't align with your core priorities, similar to Jim Collins' approach.
Set a regular alarm or reminder to ask yourself if you are working on your most important goals, as with Bregman's hourly beep.
FROM THEORY TO EVERYDAY LIFE
In practice
Kim Ramirez's Dilemma
The account notes that Kim Ramirez continued to agonize over a decision for weeks after her initial excitement faded. The point is that letting an immediate emotion subside does not always resolve a conflict among priorities.
Interplast's Core Priority
At Interplast, recurring debates were settled when executives determined that the patient was the ultimate 'customer'.
Wayne's Rules at Dell
Wayne's Rules allowed Dell's field consultants to make decisions correctly and consistently.
MIT Study on Core Priorities
The account cites an MIT study in which the managers had done no work on their core priorities during the previous week. Stating a priority had not, by itself, protected time for it.
USS Benfold's Attack on Lesser Priorities
On the USS Benfold, the crew actively fought List B items like repainting by using stainless-steel bolts that wouldn't leave rust stains.
Jim Collins's Stop-Doing List
Jim Collins's 'stop-doing list' asks: What will you give up so that you have more time to spend on your priorities?
Bregman's Hourly Beep
Bregman's hourly beep prompts: Am I doing what I most need to be doing right now?
A MOMENT TO REFLECT
Put it to work.
What are your core priorities in your personal or professional life? How do they show up in your daily decisions?
Which lesser priorities can you put on a 'stop-doing list' to free up time for what truly matters?
How can you use a regular check-in (like Bregman's hourly beep) to ensure you are honoring your core priorities?
CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION
Source texts
- Decisive How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work (Chip Heath)