With a few days left of the fiscal year, not much of what you do now will have a significant bearing on the outcome of FY18 (unless you’re running really close to the wire) but identifying and documenting the most urgent & important priorities for next year will have an acute impact on the outcome of FY19.
After the pressure that comes with closing off the year, it's tempting to get distracted and enjoy the sense of accomplishment that comes with ticking tactical tasks off your list. However, if you are familiar with Stephen Covey, you will be aware of his Big Rock analogy from The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. For those who are unfamiliar, Stephen likens your time to a glass jar and your priorities and tasks as big rocks, gravel and sand. If you put the sand and gravel in first, you won’t fit all the big rocks in. The purpose of the analogy is to illustrate that if you’re serious about achieving your goals, you need to tackle your priorities first. SO, what’s the best way to identify and rank your big rocks for FY19?
How many do I need?
In our experience, successful business owners and leaders typically have approximately eight urgent & important rocks. More than eight, and it’s common that a few business outcomes have sneaked in such as “achieve profit target for the year”. Significantly less than eight would suggest that you are not being specific enough or are unclear of the obstacles you need to overcome.
In our experience, successful business owners and leaders typically have approximately eight urgent & important rocks.
How can I be more specific?
Sometimes when you’re busy being in the business, it’s hard to work on the business. This can lead to generic or non-specific goals. The following questions are designed to help you closely pinpoint the big rocks that will lead you to an incredible FY19. By way of illustration, I’ve offered some suggested answers
How will you increase your equity value in FY19? We need to invest energy time and resources in <x> to increase our value by <y>.
How are you breaking the link between headcount and profit? To incentivise a greater focus on repeatability and IP services.
As a leader how important is your own personal growth in FY19? In FY19, I will attend <x> leadership forums with a goal of <y>.
What will your new prospects demand in FY19 and how will you respond? To find a partner to develop and deliver a repeatable cloud-based offering.
If your people are your differentiator, how are you investing in them? To identify the teams’ personal motivators and create a tailored development program.
I've drafted my priorities now what?
Once drafted, leverage our Priority Tool which will guide you through a series of steps to rank your business priorities. The tool will also offer you inspiration based on the most popular priorities that we have encountered in our work so far. Once you’ve completed the exercise, simply put in your email address and we’ll send you the output in a format that’s perfect for holding yourself accountable throughout the year
Leverage our Priority Tool which will guide you through a series of steps to rank your business priorities.
Getting Personal
The Priority Tool also allows you to capture and review your personal motivators – and those of your team. This has proved to be an extremely valuable exercise for many of our clients as it helps them to work more effectively as a team – and as a business. When you understand that one person favours opportunity tomorrow over money today, and another wants the support of the business to give back to the community, it’s far easier to appropriately motivate and reward them.
Want to find out more?
The Priority Tool is just one of the ways in which we give business leaders the tools they need to achieve some incredible goals. To find out more about how we can make sure your FY19 rocks, get in touch.get in touch.