Lots of prior­i­ties and so little time…what’s a global leader to do? We recently discussed how a global leader should go about setting and commu­ni­cating prior­i­ties so it seems coun­ter­in­tu­itive that there’d be conflict within those prior­i­ties. In an ideal world, you shouldn’t need to know how to handle a conflict of prior­i­ties because there shouldn’t be conflict.

Never­the­less, organ­i­sa­tions have this funny habit of having lots of different ‘prior­i­ties’ that are often beyond your control but are a part of your role. You may not have set these prior­i­ties but they become part of your objec­tives to manage and deliver on. Often they run along­side each other, competing for your atten­tion and the resources at your disposal.

Conversely, you could be a victim of your own priority setting; perhaps since you set those prior­i­ties, the time­lines have changed or the whole industry land­scape has shifted. Now the work is piling up and you are wondering how you’re going to decide which prior­i­ties deserve your focus first.

So how does a global leader handle a conflict of prior­i­ties? Here are five tips you can use to discern where to get started.

1. Renew the Priority Hier­archy

By its very nature, a priority is a task that has been deemed more impor­tant than others. That means that if there’s a priority, there’s a hier­archy. Often conflict between prior­i­ties goes hand in hand with not being able to clearly see the hier­archy of impor­tance.

We’ve all had to sit through that inter­view ques­tion, where the recruiters ask about our ability to manage conflicting prior­i­ties. Duti­fully but mistak­enly, you may have been tempted to say “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,”. But as a global leader, you’re aware that there are only so many hours in a day and limited capital. So the first step is to not take no for an answer; if it’s a priority it must by nature fall into an order of impor­tance.

Global leaders have to find what that order is and shuffle accord­ingly. The chal­lenge is that the order can change depending on the circum­stances, so global leaders need to be constantly aware of the context in which they operate. If the sheer force of will does not reveal a defi­nite order of impor­tance, the following tips should do the trick.

2. Assess ‘Whim­sical Prior­i­ties’

If you’ve got lots of prior­i­ties that seem to be competing with one another, cast a crit­ical eye over the list. Which of those prior­i­ties have an air of ambi­guity and a lack of defi­n­i­tion? It is highly likely that, when pressed, you will find prior­i­ties that have presented them­selves as urgent but in actual fact only have very loose ties to the core company objec­tives when compared with the absolute non-nego­tiable objec­tives.

Upon reflec­tion, the reason for this priority is actu­ally quite unclear; it’s the equiv­a­lent of a mouse with a mega­phone. The priority is screaming at you, but when you take another look you realise it’s just hot air; there’s no substance, there’s no objec­tive or value system that under­pins it other than the notion that some­thing is “a cool idea”.

It might have come about during a meeting; you had a discus­sion and someone comes up with this bright idea. Every­body gets really excited about it in the heat of the moment. Respon­si­bility gets passed to you and you add it to the list of prior­i­ties. Then it’s time to start the process of completing this priority project. You realise very quickly, there is no concrete action plan driving this priority forward. Add the lack of direc­tion to a hazy time­line and you are in for a whole lot of stress.

As a global leader, do your­self a favor and have the courage to high­light these ‘prior­i­ties’ and maybe move them lower down the hier­archy or get rid of them alto­gether. It’s likely to disap­pear off the radar and it takes you away from the things that are genuinely impor­tant to the vision.

3. Check that your prior­i­ties are prop­erly resourced

Where your trea­sure is, your heart will be there also. 

If you are strug­gling to deal with conflicting prior­i­ties, Dr Philip Mann, a specialist in employee engage­ment, recom­mends that you look at what prior­i­ties your orga­ni­za­tion has allo­cated adequate resources to. 

As an example, Samsung Elec­tronics has a marketing budget of around $2.4 billion. Amazon goes even further and spends nearly $3.4 billion on adver­tising. It’s not far-fetched to make an infer­ence that marketing and adver­tising is a core objec­tive and priority for both of these compa­nies. If they’re spending that amount on adver­tising it’s clear that they value projects of this nature and have made provi­sion for those projects to be thor­oughly resourced.

If your prior­i­ties list has got you clutching at straws when it comes to the resources needed to make it happen, it’s time to reflect. If the organ­i­sa­tion is serious they will ensure that you have the tools and capital at your disposal to make it happen. 

As a side note, if you believe that the priority aligns with the company objec­tive and will posi­tively impact the reach of the organ­i­sa­tion, global leaders cannot be afraid to ask for what they need to deliver great results. The point is that we are assessing which prior­i­ties are deserving of your focus; if resources are scarce, either a boost of capital is needed or it must be allowed to fall down in the pecking order.

4. Assess the priority’s impact

As a global leader, your focus is about having a posi­tive impact. Some prior­i­ties will serve this goal better than others. For example, you may have committed to upgrading all the office snacks. But you are also committed to deliv­ering a programme that will dramat­i­cally reduce the company’s carbon foot­print whilst increasing engage­ment from the local commu­ni­ties that are linked in with the organ­i­sa­tion.

One is nice-to-have; there are more than a few of us that eat a little too much. Reducing the carbon foot­print and inte­grating the commu­nity into local projects, however, will have a profound impact on how the outside world views the organ­i­sa­tion and it helps towards reducing the destruc­tive impact humanity is having on the planet. When assessed in this way, it becomes apparent which prior­i­ties have the most impactful conse­quences. 

Whilst we all love a good office cake, or carrot sticks and hummus if you’re health-conscious, when compared with doing your bit to address climate change which is good for the planet, company image and people’s overall well­being…

…there’s a clear winner here.

If you’ve decided to make that call to moth­ball some­thing, be sure to commu­ni­cate that to your team; if you’re going to not provide cake in the offices, give the team some warning that you’ve decided that reducing the carbon foot­print is far more impor­tant.

5. Decide if it really is a conflicting priority

…or is it a conflicting objec­tive? There are defi­nitely times in life where you get every­thing you want. But more often than not, you have to make a choice about what is more impor­tant. If you’ve got clashes, double-check why there is compe­ti­tion. A really common example of this is a project to change the way employees across the world submit expenses. You’ve been given an allo­cated time­frame to complete this changeover, but for reasons beyond your control, things have been delayed. 

You’ve got a choice here; do you push ahead with completing within the allotted time­frame or do you overrun but give your­self a better oppor­tu­nity to nego­tiate the building of a better system?

The answer to that ques­tion is tucked away in your organ­i­sa­tional values. Some organ­i­sa­tions value just ‘getting some­thing out the door and tweaking it as you go’. That whole prin­ciple of ‘Minimum Viable Product’ is more impor­tant, so in that case, you’d release a working version of the expense system with a view to review it and modify it as feed­back comes in.

In contrast, your company might value the idea of releasing a high-quality expenses system for employees to use the first time round. It’s part of the company ethos to take your time and get it right. The right call here may be to move the time­line and focus on quality. 

Ulti­mately the impor­tant prin­ciple for global leaders is this; ascer­tain what priority is most impor­tant by intro­ducing an ulti­matum mentality. You’ve reached a conun­drum and you can only choose one of two options. In this case, it’s dead­line vs quality. You can’t have both on this occa­sion, so in keeping with our earlier point about all prior­i­ties needing to fall into a hier­archy, some­thing will have to give. The company values will help to solidify what the correct choice should be.

The Power of Radical Convic­tion

To conclude, handling a conflict of prior­i­ties is less about trying to just ‘fit every­thing in’. Instead, it is more about having an almost radical convic­tion to uphold the core objec­tives of the organ­i­sa­tion you serve. With so many different things going on and a constantly changing land­scape, it can be easy to get distracted and have a list of prior­i­ties that may not serve the mission as well as they should be. 

Get rid of the stress by getting a fresh perspec­tive of what you feel is going to be the most bene­fi­cial to the company. 

Perhaps plan­ning the global office snacks can be dele­gated after all.

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