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Emotional Control – and Two Fights.

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Years ago during my policing career, two colleagues arrested a criminal who had a reputation for violence. On arrival at the Custody Unit car park, and just outside the Unit entrance doors, the officers alighted and invited the detainee to get out of the car. (It was before the use of vans was routine.) He declined their invitation.

Using ‘minimum force’ I used a technique I had learned in training, I put the blunt end of a pen against his earlobe and putting the two between my fingers, squeezed. He got out, at which point my two colleagues pinned him against the wall and tried to cover all his limbs and torso at the same time. I observed two things – one, he was trapped, and two, he wasn’t actually resisting any more.

“Flipping heck Dave, help us!” yelled one of my mates.

“He’s not resisting anymore.” I calmly responded. And he wasn’t. he meekly accepted his fate once the two sweating coppers eased off and the rest of the process went easily.

For 24 hours the two colleagues thought ill of me. The following day, they apologised. The emotion of the moment had taken over.

Another day, same unit. A well known and truly violent prisoner, with a history for acting up in the Unit, was asked to remove his clothes for forensic examination. Predictably, off he went. Yelling, demanding, threatening. It was going to take the world to get his kit off.

“Oy, ******,” I shouted. “WHAT?” he replied.

“Has behaving like that ever actually worked for you?” I asked.

A moment passed and he started undressing.

I’m no saint. I lost my temper now and then. Which doesn’t make today’s lesson less impactive, it merely reinforces it.

When emotions are high, when stresses are present, when losing your temper and abandoning all emotional control is ooohhhh so easy,

Don’t.

There are two reasons for this. First of all, it makes you feel good afterwards. Your keeping control is emotionally satisfying.

But second, it means you keep control and are able to deal with the event better. While I’m not proposing you will ever need this advice, my experience has always been than in a fight it’s the one who loses control that loses. I was attacked many times during my career but I always (somehow!) managed to keep my cool – even when a criminal bit into my leg and I let him stay there because it meant he wasn’t running off – and I literally tied them up in an effective controlling hold because they had lost control and I hadn’t.

You may not be involved in fisticuffs, but the same advice applies to those verbal confrontations we all, occasionally, find ourselves starting or trying to finish. Maintaining emotional control is key to resolution, and it is a truly empowering characteristic that those who wish to be principled leaders should seek to adopt.

All it takes is a moment to decide – who’s in charge here? Me or my emotions.

Choose ‘me’.

Seven Habits – Day 17 – Habit 7 and Conclusion

17 Friday Jul 2020

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Habit 7 is the Habit of Renewal, hence the epithet ‘Sharpen the Saw’. It is a metaphor for ensuring you’re sharp enough to keep working, rather then getting and staying blunt through poor and excessive focus on the P of th P/PC Balance discussed in week 1. How do we sharpen ourselves then?

Most importantly, we need to do so in all four human dimensions.

Physical. You achieve and maintain a healthy weight so that you aren’t dulled by excess. You eat wisely. You exercise to help the body act optimally and for as long as needed (endurance, strength and flexibility). You get enough sleep and try not to poison the body – the only tool through which you channel everything about you.

Mental. You read in your field, and more broadly where possible, so as to improve your intellectual capacity to apply different ideas, and to be creative. You make sure that you aren’t made redundant during what Covey later called the ‘professional half-life’ of about two years, that period being the point at which, untrained, your competence halves.

Social-Emotional. You maintain and improve relationships, both with others and yourself. Your self-esteem is important, provided it doesn’t grow into a huge ego. This is arguably the easiest part of you to renew because you are doing it constantly as you live your life around other people.

Spiritual. You discover your personal values and reflect on how to live in their accord. You ensure you find meaning. Even if that isn’t in work, you seek out and discover that which fills your heart – passions, hobbies and above all, service to others.

Renewal is in Quadrant B/2 – it is important but never urgent, so you have to act upon it. You have to plan your weeks so that you get the renewal done – with the exception of the social dimension that happens all around and all the time, the rest of it is down to you to arrange.

Try to synergise. Train at work, using work’s resources (physical, mental, social). Exercise with friends and family (physical, social, spiritual). Go on a nature walk and reflect upon your mission (social-emotional, physical, spiritual). The possibilities are many, and all serve you and your ability to live a principled, productive lifestyle.

Renew – stay relevant, happy, productive and ‘on purpose’.

That’s the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People down from 340+ pages to about 14. I have really edited down a synergistic, whole-life approach to the life you design because you want what’s in it.

Now I really encourage you to go get a copy and read for yourself the wisdom that Stephen Covey himself edited down from 200 years of what he called ‘the wisdom literature’. You would see that it isn’t just a list of to-dos, as many books can be. There is an intellectually compelling completeness to what Covey wrote. You start with learning about a Paradigm and then realise that you’re reading a book where you end up noticing that how you see each Habit affects how/if you apply it. You realise that everything you do well is in your Circle of Influence if you want it to be there – or it stays outside that Circle and just bothers your conscience. And you realise that you have the capacity to act, because you are aware that you can. If you want.

Be careful, though. Through reading and applying this material you might just get what you want. I did.

Good luck.

Seven Habits – Day 16 – Habit 6 – Synergise

16 Thursday Jul 2020

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Once you’ve learned to listen and understand better, you can synergise. What is that? Habit 6 – Synergise – is based on the principle of Creative Co-operation. How so?

Synergy recognises a natural truth that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts which, put another way, means that the relationship between the parts is one of the parts, and an important one at that. In nature, you know that one plank can bear a great weight, but two planks properly placed together can support well in excess of twice the weight of the one. Synergy.

Nature is full of examples of synergy – two people can add up to two in a partnership, but  they can create a few more people if they breed! Synergy is in parenting, team games, the classroom – all examples of where the relationship between the participants is great and can magnificently improve the creativity of the sum of its parts.

But sometimes, it needs courage. When two people disagree, even agreeably, then it takes courage and confidence, plus a little consideration, to seek to introduce a synergistic potential to the debate. It requires one party to say, “How would you like to seek a third alternative that is better than the one either of us can come up with?” It takes courage to agree to that, and it takes courage to say, “Let’s hear you, first.”

The two then start a mutually respectful, “I think”, “Ah, but how about” back and forth until the 3rd, better alternative is found.

Synergy is better than compromise = where 1+1 = 1½. Compromise is for when there is a lack of trust between the parties involved. It’s the best that ‘enemies’ can come up with if they have equal power.

That courage and consideration mentioned earlier is in your Circle of Influence. It requires seeing (paradigm) the other party as an equal, worthy of deep respect. It also requires seeing that there can be an alternative – imagination, which is one of your human endowments addressed n the first few posts.

And sometimes, particularly in these days of polarity in debate, the bravest of us all can start the process of reconciliation and solution by saying, “Good, you see things differently. Tell me more.”

As Covey opined, when two people agree totally, one of them is unnecessary. Creative co-operation requires different viewpoints if it is to work, but it also means recognition that one may be superior to another, and that there may be other ways that have yet to be explored.

Synergy is the fruit of Think Win/Win (root) and Seeking First to Understand (the shoot).

As we come to the last Habit – Sharpen the Saw, you will come to realise that the 7 Habits themselves are an example of synergy – all the Habits have great value in and of themselves but when they are applied together in our daily lives they can identify, create and work for outstanding and effective results.

Habit 7 – the Principle of Renewal, is an essential, foundational Habit that serves and supports execution of the other six.

But can it also be ‘stand alone’? We shall see.

Seven Habits – Day 12 – Habit 3 – First Things First

12 Sunday Jul 2020

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As Habit 2 is the habit of personal leadership, Habit 3 is the habit of personal management. The crux is that leadership is doing the right thing, management is doing things right. It is the ‘art of control’ and Habit 3 – time management – is the art of controlling events. How do you execute with leadership and vision in mind?

Time management addresses two measures – urgency (time critical) and importance (mission critical). In the 21st century, due to the immediacy of personalised communication and broadband, many of us have adopted an urgency mentality – it pops up, it must be read/assessed/done NOW! And that is all done regardless of (a) its level of importance and (b) whether it should ever actually be done at all. Habit 3 invites (demands?) that you use the ‘independent will’ in your Stimulus-Response Gap to make an assessment as to where, in a matrix, the task lies. The matrix looks like this:

I won’t insult you with a detailed explanation but as you can see, the most important things lie ‘above the line’, and this is the point at which you must decide where your task lies. If it’s below the line, it can wait. If it’s above, do it. If it’s above and to the left, do it now!

The best place to be is ‘Quadrant B’ and it’s where you do the preparation: planning, proper recreation, envisioning, etc. It’s where you ‘think’ so that ‘stuff’ like emergencies either don’t occur, (thus shooting you unprepared into Quadrant A), or are anticipated, meaning QA isn’t so uncontrolled. But you can’t prepare in QB unless you have done the work in Habit 2 to assess your mission, which requires work in Habit 1 to help you recognise you are responsible, that what you intend is in your Circle of Influence or Centre of Focus, and that you are seeing things as they should be (paradigm).

You see, now, how the Habits and basics all gel?

The way to plan is to find a tool into which you can place your TANC – tasks, appointments, notes and contacts (although the need for the latter has been electronically usurped since the book was written in 1989). You manage your time by keeping a one-stop shop for this stuff. Then, when you make an appointment, you record a note about how/why it was made, write down the appointment, and plan any preparation for that appointment in the task list so that it’s all done in QB before the QA appointment takes place.

There is a whole lot more in the book about time management but this page really boils it down.

Covey wrote a whole book in 1994 about interpersonal time management, i.e. on Habits 2 and 3, which I recommend. It’s called First Things First.

Tomorrow, delegation.

Seven Habits – Day 11 – What’s at Your Centre?

11 Saturday Jul 2020

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Where do you centre your life? I bet most people would answer ‘Family’ but my experience suggests that work always comes first if you have a job. My reason – the hours my colleagues spent earning overtime. We used to have a joke that Daddy spent so much time earning overtime to feed his (family’s) lifestyle that the kids would ask, “Who’s that man in your bed, mummy?” The kids would have all the gadgets, but never what they wanted. Attention from Dad. (BTW, that’s just as applicable to Mum, nowadays.) What’s going on?

Centres. Stephen Covey suggested we have a tendency to see things (paradigms) through the lens of our most important (to us) Centre. This Centre was the focus of our Security, Guidance, Wisdom and Power. The Centre gave us Security because it was a reliable source of our identity, self-esteem and strength. When asked about yourself, we all tend to mention our job, first. Guidance means that the work provides us with direction – for example, if you are Church-centred your religion’s demands dictate your mission. Wisdom – your experiences as provided (for example) by your friends dictates how you think. And Power – your ability to act is based on your ‘centring’ around having a lot of money and resources. The Centres I have used in the examples are work, church, friends and money. There are other examples: pleasure, possessions, enemies, spouse and family.

They may consciously – including the enemy – provide a way of looking at ‘life’ which heavily influences your decision making. If alternatives arise, your preferred Centre dictates which action you take. For example, if asked to work overtime, a money-centred person would work, as would a work-centred person. But a family person might decline if there was a family event planned. Note: alternative Centres may provide the same decision, but the motive for that decision will be Centre-based.

Covey suggested we look at things through Principles and ask, “What is the right thing to do?” instead. You might make the same decision, but this time you will do so not because of your emotional tie to a ‘thing’, but as a result of a more objective assessment.

Understanding this concept is part of defining your personal mission statement, as is another psycho-biological idea, that of left-brain v right-brain thinking. Left brain is logic, Right brain is creative. Using the two in tandem means you can create a PMS that is both imaginative and realistic. A logical thinker might just do what is possible, but a right brain approach might change what is possible. The right decides what/why, the left decides how.

In truth, this part of the book is valuable as a theoretical explanation and foundation for those of us who like a bit of depth, but the power of Habit 2 thinking lies firmly in the experience of sitting down, imagining what you would like to do with your life (the legacy you would like to leave), and the values and behaviours that will help that happen. Discovering the what, how and why of your life.

Such an approach – use of a PMS and principles-over-centres thinking – results in a life that serves the individual, their loved ones and those other relationships we all have. It causes us to try harder to consider the needs of everyone involved instead of just ourselves.

While Habit One is about self-awareness, Habit Two is about creative imagination and conscience. These are three of the elements we use in the Stimulus-Response Gap when thinking about and deciding how to respond to an event.

Tomorrow we start on Habit Three, the Independent Will that we apply to that Gap.

Seven Habits – Day 10 – Habit Two. Begin with the End in Mind.

10 Friday Jul 2020

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We read over the past few days how we have the ability to choose our response to any event that happens to us. So how do we address the biggest event of all? Through Habit Two – Begin with the End in Mind.

On first sight of that term, you’d be forgiven for thinking that we do that any time we plan a project, be it going to the shops, applying for a job or planning a holiday, for example. My response would be that you’d be surprised how little effort many people put into even those projects. And rarely to the biggest project of all.

Have you ever gone shopping, then got home and realised you forgot to get something you planned, or more likely forgot to plan to buy something you needed. Beginning with the End in Mind is often something to which only lip-service is paid. But I digress.

Beginning with the End in Mind, remember, is a Habit of highly effective people. Not just a tenet, it’s a way of life. And this is where it can have the most impact – life. As one writer put it – we spend more time planning our holidays than we do planning our lives.

The most impactive and profound exercising of Habit Two occurs when what you have in mind as beginning – is the rest of your life.

All things are created twice – there is a mental creation, which gives rise to the physical creation. A building is planned in meticulous detail before ground is broken, so why not your whole life. Your physical, mental, social and spiritual lives can all be planned, selected – chosen. Beginning with the End in Mind is leadership – self-leadership. It is deciding how you will live the rest of your life. It is establishing a vision for the legacy you will leave, and then making it happen. It is using the four endowments discussed earlier – self-awareness, creative imagination, independent will and conscience – to decide how you will achieve what you want to achieve.

When you exercise Habit Two, you approach as many experiences as possible with a plan – what is the objective of what I am about to do? Conversations will have new purpose, relationships will be more rewarding, projects will have a higher success rate – if you know what the objective is before you even start. Including your life.

Viktor Frankl is famed for suggesting, from his experiences in concentration camps, that having a purpose beyond ones self is a sound basis for living a long and happy life. He called his theories ‘Logotherapy’ from logos – meaning. A man or woman with a purpose is a hard thing to oppose!

What we choose – or fail to choose – to do in the face of this knowledge predetermines our sense of personal self-esteem and our levels of success. If we know what we are for, and set about it, every success is a victory, every setback just means we change direction, just as an aircraft does on a flight. It gets buffeted by winds but always gets back on course, arriving at its intended destination despite all that buffeting.

Covey promoted the creation of a personal mission statement, a document created by an individual in which they stated in clear terms what they wanted to achieve (vision) and how they would behave in order to achieve that (values). I have found that having such a document can be extremely empowering – particularly when, having stated therein that I wish to be fit and healthy, I don’t want to exercise. I read it – I exercise. I reinforce my own desire towards a particular ‘end’ when I state, in advance, what the end actually is. Like writing this series of articles to convince others to read a book that can change their lives.

Tomorrow – what is at the centre of your life?

Seven Habits – Day 8 – Life’s Circles

08 Wednesday Jul 2020

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Having concluded after yesterday’s entry that we have the capacity to choose our response in any given situation by using our self-awareness, creative imagination, independent will and conscience, the first and arguably most important choice to make about effectiveness is to ask ourselves “Where do I focus my thoughts and activities?” Covey’s first suggestion is that we look at life through two circles. They are the Circle of Concern and the Circle of Influence.

The Circle of Concern is all-encompassing. It contains anything and everything that is part of our lives. It includes social, political, environmental, psychological and any other ‘concerns’ that you know about. Right now that includes BLM, Cancel Culture, Brexit, green issues, ISIS, Donald Trump and any thing that makes you pause, think, worry, bemoan, support, decry – anywhere you might spend emotional effort.

The Circle of Influence is within that broader Circle and contains the things you can do something about. Which means for most of us it excludes a lot of the aforementioned list. We can be concerned about Donald Trump but unless we are US citizens and have a vote we can pontificate and worry all we like – won’t change a thing. However, within this Circle of Influence is your ability and willingness to do all the effective things – have greater relationships, use your initiative to solve problems, do an excellent job, act with patience, plan your work and your life.

Here is where you can ask, “What can I do about (this)?” and decide upon an actionable response. This is where you ask yourself whether the problem you are addressing is even solvable.

There are three kinds of problems. Direct Control, where you are able to affect any outcome because it is well within your Circle of Influence; Indirect Control, where you probably need others to assist with the challenge, can delegate or in respect of which you can seek help. If you like, things on the outer edge of your Circle of Influence. And No Control, where you can’t do anything about something in your Circle of Concern, where your proactive response is to smile and get on with something else.

You can’t really affect the size of the outer circle – it just ‘is’. But by focusing on the inner circle you can actually expand your influence – get better at your job and get promoted, become an authority on your profession, lead its development. By focusing on things outside your influence you waste valuable time and the inner circle effectively shrinks while you tweet mercilessly about a President you can’t vote in or out, or get emotionally upset about a statue that no-one cared about and that you walked past daily, and in blissful ignorance, until someone you never met pointed it out as racist.

Effective people ‘live’ in the Circle of Influence. They extend emotional and physical effort only towards the things that matter to them. They don’t get upset or even engage in debate about that which is of no consequence to them, and they don’t get caught up in the ‘if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem’ dichotomous thinking that surrounds our world of 2020.

I have a line of thought that says, “I may not be an environmental activist but I’m glad there are people out there to whom I can delegate responsibility for saving the planet.” The same goes for many other protests, campaigns, etc. As long as they are peaceful and well-argued, we should encourage debate and appropriate activism. But don’t expect everyone to feel as strongly as you do about things that aren’t as important to them as they are to you.

It’s synergistic. While you are arguing for your cause, they are serving you by arguing for theirs, for working in an industry that serves you. They are in their Circle of Influence so that you can be in yours.

Tomorrow we go even deeper into proactivity.

The hardest 100% Pass Mark you’ll ever achieve.*

22 Wednesday Jan 2020

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In his book ‘The Success Principles’, coach Jack Canfield wrote about a principle he called ‘99% is a Bitch, 100% is a Breeze’. The idea was that once you make a self-growth (denial or discipline) decision you act on it 100% of the time. This is because acting in accordance with your decision 100% is easier than doing so for 99% of the time for a simple reason that is both philosophical, and surprisingly logical.

With 100% there is no need to apply any further mental or emotional effort to the decision and its subsequent consequence. There is no reconsideration, doubt, angst or time wasted. With 99% you have to reconsider that decision every time you have to decide whether or not you should apply your standards/discipline/denial/values/principles ‘this time’.

For example, if I decide I will write 500 words a day (like Ernest Hemingway, apparently), then if I am taking the 100% route, that’s it– I will write 500 words a day, come what may. I’ll make sure I have my laptop with me, or I will write longhand on paper and transcribe it tomorrow, along with the 500 words for that day, too. If I go ‘99%’, then I have to decide, each day, if I am going to bother. That’s when the easy excuse will be ‘I have to go shopping, instead’. Or ‘I don’t have a pen’. Or ‘my laptop’s battery is a bit low and I’ll never make it’. Or ‘just one packet of crisps/pie/cigarette won’t hurt’.

(As I it here considering if/when/how/where to ride my bike I feel that pain.)

The same applies to not doing something (self-denial). If I decide that I will no longer eat chocolate eclairs, then application of the 100% principle means just that – never.

You can set your own rules for applying this principle. You can, if you wish, go ‘never’ – or you can include justified exceptions to ‘never’. You can decide not to eat chocolate eclairs ever again, or you can add an exception – but it must be a specific exception, and it must be observed. In the case of the eclairs you may elect to eat one on a new moon, your birthday, the 1st of the month, or whatever exclusionary rule suits you provided that it does not excuse you. That’s the material distinction. If you have a rule it must be specific and it must not undermine the original intention, nor can it allow for or provide excuses for non-compliance. 99% or less doesn’t cut it.

99% doesn’t work because it allows for mistakes, errors and, most of all, excuses. 100% not only disallows excuse or failure but it also demands creativity, imagination and discipline. If you ‘cannot’ execute on your disciplined objective for some external reason, the 100% rule demands of you that you find a way to overcome that temporary barrier/obstruction. Wayne Dyer, famed writer on metaphysics and life philosophies, overcame a ‘cannot go for a daily run’ when flying by running up and down an aircraft’s aisles. (BTW – not recommended!)

This concept, when fully applied 100% (see what I did there?), covers the appropriate application of both self-discipline AND self-denial. The only caveat I have to add here is this – don’t commit to 100% compliance until you are absolutely certain that you want to. This is because without that commitment you will make excuses the first time you are required to make decision whether to comply or not. And as soon as you make the decision not to comply that ‘one time’, you are already on the path to failure and guilt. It’s already 99%, or even less. And the next time that decision arises it will be even harder to make the right choice and the downward spiral speeds up. Momentum works both ways.

My final piece of advice? If you want to try the 100% Rule – only commit when you are truly ready. If necessary, prepare your environment (fridge and kitchen cupboards?) before you commit.

Then go for it.

 

(*An excerpt from The Three Resolutions book.)

 

“As Emerson said about Trump…….”

06 Monday Jan 2020

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Time management. It’s a term that seems niche, but the more I read and write about it, the broader the definition becomes. To get the subject of this post, I will restrict the definition to one of ‘maximising the use of time on the things that matter.’

And go straight into the weekend’s events in Iraq. I am not talking about the assassination of the Iranian general, though. I am talking about the social media storm which followed.

As soon as possible after the incident was reported, social media posts began ringing around saying ‘Trump did this’ and ‘Trump did that’. Emotions ran high, depending on which side of the political divide you sat. The Left said the man was a war-mongering despot committing us to World War 3, a helpful conclusion designed to keep us all calm, I am sure. The Right commended Trump for taking positive action – an unusual term for killing someone.

But here’s the thing. Most posts I read, read like the posters assumed that Trump woke up one day and decided to top this fella. Never mind that the Left forgot that their narrative (an oft-used media term) was that Trump is an idiot, so couldn’t even spell or pronounce the general’s name. And would probably have put the H in the wrong place in Baghdad. Like I just did.

I try not to waste time espousing opinions on things I know next to nothing about. It wastes time engaging in arguments which I can’t win because I am unarmed. Yet there is a whole world out there of people who engage in this regularly, thus wasting time which could be better spent in the Circle of Influence.

One thing I do know, based on watching The West Wing (and the documentaries which I then had to watch because they were so informative), is that decisions like this involve a whole bunch of experts. And time. Yes, the President makes the final decision, but not until he has been briefed by the military, intelligence experts and various diplomats. Such advice includes the why to do it and the how to do it. The Why, in this case, appears to be based on the General’s involvement in a lot of outside-the-combat-zone terrorist activity. The How, we know.

But there would have been a whole lot of ‘What If’s’ considered about the aftermath. And considering that the US has apparently been surveilling this man for some years, we can reasonably assume that there would have been a lot of information available that led to the decision.

All of which means that while the ‘proper’ media seems to be trying to address it sensibly (partisanship aside), the time spent by all too many of us on Social Media debating the issue based on a belief that he just had an idea one morning and made a phone call, has been ill-informed, un-authoritative and emotional. Which does not reflect the best use of anyone’s time.

Social Media has its uses. It has its limitations. But above all, it has an all-encompassing ability to divert us from what is truly important.

I use it to entertain and, occasionally, brag. I do not use it to display pictures of undrunk pints and uneaten dinners. (I lie – I did, once, show a picture of a partially incomplete meal from a San Francisco fish restaurant because it was the first meal that had ever beaten me.)

It is a great place to start a debate, but if you are going to do that, at least make sure that your opening comments are based on a reasonable level of understanding. Consider your post and ask, “Is this all as it seems?” If you can’t answer that, do the research. You’ll be better informed, which is a great use of time.

And you may save the time you would have spent sending a post that would have made you appear stupid.

Ralph Waldo Emerson once opined, “What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.” Which may be more about character but the message remains clear.

Be in no doubt. Posting ill-informed opinion says a lot about you.

Does it REALLY matter? If so – how much?

05 Thursday Dec 2019

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Do you know what ‘priorities’ are?

In most organisations, ‘priorities’ consists of a long list of important ‘stuff’. The bigger the organisation, the longer the list. What’s more, the higher the number of individual departments in the aforementioned corporate monolith, the more varied and even greater the priority number.

Each department, if it is like the public sector, will have its priorities met by the activities of other departments and, more often than not, front-line staff.

Think about that.

Department A will set priorities, as will departments B and C. All three departments’ activities will be conducted by their staff. Department A’s priorities may not be B’s (etc), but without a doubt Dept A will state that ‘X must be done by the end of the day and returns submitted by 5pm by staff in Departments B and C.’  Meanwhile, Department B expects the same of staff in Departments A and C, which means all three departments will be working hard at complying with three sets of priorities, and I’ll bet a week’s wages that they all have to be complied with ‘by 5pm’ so even though NOTHING WILL BE DONE WITH THEM until the end of the next week.

But by setting that 5pm today deadline, they expect that any late returns won’t be too late. In other words, an artificial deadline is set so they save time – at the expense of the other people running around after them.

Ring a bell?

Did you know that ‘priority’ means:

“the fact or condition of being regarded or treated as more important.”

Synonyms include: “prime concern, first concern, most important consideration, most pressing matter, (etc).”

Notice that each of those terms implies that NOTHING is more important than the ‘priority’.

Make a note, staple it to your forehead and wear it as you walk into to the C-Suite.

If you have too many priorities, you have NO priorities.

I suggest that, in acknowledgement that some organisations do have more than one ‘service responsibility’, the number of priorities should at least be reduced to a couple, instead of hundreds; that the departments in the entity be told when ‘their’ priority is not a priority at all; and that staff be so briefed so that they can act on THE priorities that remain.

This is not to suggest that all work is not important. But there are degrees to which (for example) the assembly of statistics (and their circulation to the disinterested) by an administration department is far less important than the activity of the front-line employee actually delivering the service that your organisation was created to deliver.

And, might I say, constantly berating said employee for not blindly prioritising the said admin department’s number crunching really has to stop.

I say this because, from a time management perspective, creating false priorities warps the decision-making of the employee to the degree that mistakes are made in failed efforts to comply with too many masters.

You make better decisions when you have to make fewer decisions.

And having to many priorities undermines quality decision-making.