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By Marsha Lindquist
Is your company as successful as it could be? If not, it may be due to the failure to focus on top priorities. What are a company’s highest priorities? They are the things that really make a difference, that have the biggest impact on the results management wants to achieve — whether it’s increasing sales growth or retaining quality employees. When organizations don’t focus on their key priorities, they often experience higher operating costs and higher levels of employee dissatisfaction.
For example, if employees must waste time and energy on tasks that don’t affect the company’s overall success, they soon feel overworked and underappreciated. They may ask for additional staff or more time off. Or they may jump ship to organizations where they feel they can make more of a difference.
Here are some basic strategies for ensuring that your organization stays focused on what matters most:
1. Gather Input from all Levels
While upper management sets the overall goals for the organization, they need ongoing input from lower levels. Make sure the line employees have the opportunity to contribute their expertise to overall goal setting so that the targets are realistic. They also feel more invested in achieving the goals if they’ve had a role in creating them.
2. Be Specific
To maintain focus on the top priorities, you must make sure everyone in the organization can relate to them. Simply saying, “We need to increase our customer satisfaction rating” won’t get the job done. But being specific — “We will boost our customer satisfaction rate by 5% within three months” — will give people a real goal. To maintain the focus, limit key goals to four or five priorities.
3. Don’t Confuse Priorities and Budget
When you tie priorities to the budget, you end up with people who are more worried about numbers than about what they’re doing and how their actions impact the organization. Setting priorities means planning your actions from a strategic standpoint. In addition, keep your language simple. “Sign up twenty new clients” is easier to grasp than “Sustain customer growth and ensure a 10% growth.”
4. Keep the Lines of Communication Open
Communication must cascade all the way down and all the way up within the organization. Senior managers communicate their priorities and the overall progress to the people under them, who relay that information to the people under them, throughout the organization. Conversely, the people at the lowest levels communicate their perceptions and challenges to their managers, who take that information to their supervisors.
5. Identify Strengths and Weaknesses
When you determine your organization’s priorities and the actions that will support them, take time to evaluate basic strengths and weaknesses. Consider any challenges you may have. Where will you experience resistance to change? What will be easy? Determine who can help you overcome any weaknesses. You may need support from outside your organization, perhaps through strategic alliances or friends in other organizations.
6. Walk the Talk
Once you know your highest priorities, you need to determine the tasks that will make them happen. For example, if your priority is 8% growth this year, what specific actions will get you to that goal? Perhaps you need to grow your customer base or improve customer service satisfaction rates. When everything you do focuses on those objectives that support that 8% growth, then all actions are geared toward achieving your highest priority. If a given task doesn’t support the highest priorities, it probably isn’t necessary.
7. Evaluate Potential Opportunities
If your goal is to sign up 10 new clients, then you may need to evaluate 40 or 50 potential clients. So when you look at each opportunity, you need to consider your probability of getting that client. Do you know the client? Does he know you? What are his needs? Do you have the resources to solve his problems? For each prospect, consider the probability of success. If the probability is high, then do everything you can to sign him up.
8. Review Your Progress
Determine your organization’s highest priorities once a year. Then review your progress three or four times a year.
Priorities = Success
When you take the time to determine what’s really important to your business and then focus everyone’s efforts on meeting key goals, the results will be a better bottom line and employees who are more involved and more loyal. All it takes is a little focus!
You can learn more about strategic goal setting at these AMA seminars:
AMA On-site: Every one of AMA’s 170+ public seminars can be delivered on-site. This flexible, money-saving option allows you to train ten or more people, when and where you choose, at a low cost per participant. Click here for more information.
Author Bio: Marsha Lindquist is a business strategist, author and speaker. As CEO of The Management Link, Inc., she has worked with clients including BP Amoco, Fleishman Hillard International Comm. and Northrop Grumman. Visit her Website at www.MarshaLindquist.com.
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