3C Prioritization

Where are you spending too much time or not enough?

Story

A client took the role clarity worksheet and filled in primary roles. The worksheet looks something like this:

You get the idea.

This is one of the early activities when working through our Self-Leadership and Performance Leadership programs.

The client then filled in “Current Time Spend” and “Desired Time Spend” as percentages. There’s only one rule: the total for the whole column must equal exactly 100%.

And he found there was a gap between where time is being spent (Current) and where it should be spent (Desired). He needed to take time away from something and divert time and attention to something else.

No matter how many leaders we do this with, there has not yet been a situation where the two columns exactly match. No one has said, “Yep. Now that I map out my roles and where I’m spending my time, I can see that I’ve perfectly prioritized where my time should go so there are NO ADJUSTMENTS NECESSARY!”

It just doesn’t happen.

There is always at least one role or responsibility that leaders need to deprioritize and at least one they need to invest more time in. And we don’t tell them which it is. They know what they need to do.

But actually doing it might not be so easy.

Priority Drift

Before we talk about solutions, it’s interesting to note a few common reasons why time gets spent in the “wrong” place. It’s usually down to competing priorities. Or perhaps a better term is “priority drift.” In other words, slowly over time, without anyone really noticing, time got diverted into less important (but perhaps more urgent) areas of focus.

Every leader we work with wishes they had more time. But they also recognize the need to not work 168 hours / week. So the fact is: there isn’t more time. There just isn’t. However, what you can do is shift time and energy from one place to another. This requires subtraction and then addition.

Usually time gets spent in the “wrong” place for a few common reasons (see if any of these resonate with you):

1. Difficulty saying “no”
2. Losing track of the main goal(s)
3. Really loving some types of work
4. Really hating not loving some type of work
5. Desire to be seen/avoid being seen
6. Not able to let go
7. Low trust in others
8. Low trust in self
9. Too busy to stop and reprioritize
10. (You could add a few more)

Notice we’re just focusing on internal factors for now: things mostly in your own control.

There is a whole other list of external factors, which are mostly out of your control:

• People walking into the office
• A new regulation gets announced
• Someone calls in sick
• A demanding boss
• (You could 300 more)

The reason we’re focusing on internal factors is: purposeful adaptivity starts by looking at yourself and what you can control.

3Cs of Purposeful Adaptivity

The difference between a normal leader and an “adaptive leader” is purposeful adaptivity. All leaders are adaptive. You wouldn’t have gotten to your current position (or kept it) without being able to adapt to some degree.

But how much is instinct and how much is purposeful? That’s a tough question to answer, but probably a whole lot is instinct, intuition, and “reading the situation.” You’ve been successful because you just seem to know what to do in a whole lot of situations. And when new challenges arise, you rise to meet them.

Moving to your next level (whatever that means for you), however, will mean you need to go beyond yourself. You need to reach a new level of adaptivity that isn’t instinctual. Why? Because you’ve already reached your “natural” level of adaptability.

The next step is to exercise purposeful adaptivity in your daily life. That means you need an easy-to-remember, easy-to-understand focus. We call it the 3Cs:

While they are useful in most situations, let’s look at how they help leaders with the issue of prioritization.

When you see the gap between where you ARE spending your time and where you SHOULD be spending your time, there will be an immediate tendency to make a quick change to deal with the problem. You might want to cancel a bunch of meetings, block time, call someone into your office and delegate a task, or even have a difficult conversation with someone you’ve been putting off. You may be tempted to make some sort of announcement to people that you’ll be less available for something so you can focus more on something else.

On the other hand, you may react by feeling somewhat helpless. “How can I possibly shift this stuff?” It may feel especially hard to adjust the thing that needs it most.

The above reactions may be within your normal leadership capacity. So how do you go beyond yourself and do something you might never have done before? How do you adapt and stretch yourself?

Here’s how the Purposeful Adaptive 3Cs can help with the issue of prioritization:

Curiosity

• How are things getting prioritized currently? What’s driving the prioritization?
• What might I be missing?
• Who else could I get input from about my priorities before acting?
• (insert your Curiosity question about prioritization here)

Courage

• Where do I need to be more courageous when cutting/adding time?
• What am I afraid will happen if I really prioritize the way I need to?
• How will prioritizing “cost” me?
• What’s the worst thing for me about changing my priorities?
• (insert your Courage question about prioritization here)

Care

• How will others benefit from adjusting my priorities?
• How can I frame diverting time away from someone as care?
• How well is self-care getting prioritized?
• (insert your Care question about prioritization here)

See how these are questions that might not have been asked in the normal surface-level reactions? These are examples of applying the 3Cs to the issue of prioritization, which will become your purposeful adaptive edge.

What ever happened…

Remember every leader who has tried to reprioritize where they spend their time? How did they do?

The short answer is: the ones who simply worked with the surface issues (such as scheduling in the diary, or making firmer in/out of office hours, or even delegating tasks), got good short-term results. Hurray! They did it!

But the ones who made more sustainable, long-term changes are the ones who looked at prioritization through a 3C lens. They’re the ones who found deeper “root cause” issues that caused priority shift in the first place and got a more adaptive result.

In effect, leaders who prioritize the 3Cs are the ones who end up prioritizing better consistently. That means something different to each leader. It can mean

• A 3C poster on the wall in the office as a constant reminder
• A recurring task in the diary: “Be Courageous, Curious, Caring today”
• Adding the 3Cs to meeting agendas
• Mentally labeling each conversation with a 3C goal (“I’m about to have a courageous conversation.”)
• Announcing to colleagues and teammates which of the 3Cs is a priority for this season
• (and more!)

What might it mean to you?  

Next Steps?

Feel free to take the image at the top of this article and print it, share it, save it, etc.

Also, if you’d like to talk about an Adaptive Leader Journey for your team where we do a deep dive into the 3Cs and establish a rhythm for integrating them into daily practice, feel free to book a free 20-minute call with one of our coaches to discuss how we can support you at making your next big breakthrough.

Looking forward to talking to you soon!