Harvard Business Review

There's a big difference between having a top priority and being ready to act on it.

Most of the "top priorities" of your organization have been roaming around for quite a while. They appeared a few years ago as potential risks or opportunities and grew up to become problems, and then top priorities, because, even though they were easy to discuss, they weren't easy to resolve.

Consider the company that needs to coordinate its channels for any time/anywhere sales and service. One of the company's top priorities is to develop a consolidated view of what customers are buying, from whom, and how often. After multiple starts and stops on CRM-type initiatives, the company realizes that its field channel won't participate because it has different priorities.

After all, field sales' bonuses are declining due to competition from their online channel, for which they provide pre- and post-sales support, and they're more interested in protecting their bonuses than they are in providing additional information to create a CRM system that will only perpetuate their decline.

Typically, governance includes prioritization, or defining what should be accomplished. And given the volume of initiatives to evaluate, prioritization processes are biased towards initiatives that sound ready-to-go.

The problem with this approach is that it never explicitly addresses sequencing, or how the priorities should be tackled to ensure progress on priorities. 

Prioritization and sequencing work like this: Identify top priorities, then, resist the temptation to fund them. Instead, ask the "five whys" and fund the initiative that is standing in the way of progress. For example, the example company above would ask these five whys:

The question that can't be answered, about the incentives, is the logjam. The company should immediately put that first in the sequence and remove the problem to make progress on this top priority.

Refinements to the incentive program can be tied to developing a consolidated view on customer buying behavior - thus providing field sales a reason to participate and align with corporate priorities.

I've seen many cases where everyone assumes that five whys-type root-cause analysis has been done and the outcomes are reflected in the submitted business cases.But more often than not, no such analysis has been done.

If you are submitting initiatives, resist the temptation to push through them through without considering the "five whys". Answering these questions will increase the likelihood of success and prevent a lot of false starts. If you are a decision maker, introduce sequencing into the governance process for your top priorities. Delay funding until the five-why analysis has been done and reflected into the recommended sequence.

If you aren't satisfied that your organization understands how to approach a top priority, don't be afraid to focus resources elsewhere. Remember, top priorities are particularly difficult to tackle. After all, if they were easy, they wouldn't still be hanging around, would they?

Take a moment and share how your organization ensures the success of its top priorities.

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