Practical priority management for business owners with deadlines
How to come up with some kind of system that get things done is not that hard, there is a lot of resources out there. What I found the hardest is to clearly identify what to do and what to ditch vs time-sensitive events vs long-term important actions.
Managing priorities as a business owner is one of the job description. So when you have new business coming during the COVID19 pandemic you have to deliver twice as much work done in less time : otherwise your business will end up bankrupt.
I came up with a neat way to organize and sort tasks in regards to their importance and time sensitivity. I am using Todoist to keep an always up to date task list. Let’s dig deeper…
Importance : Let’s talk about Business Impact instead
Instead of trying to identify if a task is important or optional, I map every task to its expected impact on the business especially if the task is not done :
- Critical : If not done, this task can affect permanently the business. For example, not dealing with long term strategy, company culture, cash management or not having data backups will have long term effects. What is not trivial in this case is the fact that the loss of a client is often not critical...
- Costly : If not done, this task will cost you. Here I mean cash-out costs (not loss of earnings) like lawyer fees, plumbing issues.
- Mandatory : This is the last (but not the least) level of importance / impact. As a business owner you want to deal with mandatory tasks, not something that can be left undone without consequences.
Time sensitivity of tasks
I found that the best way (for me) is to imagine what would be the impact on a task to be rescheduled :
Urgent : urgent as in “bleeding from the neck urgent” (thank you Louis Grenier for the mental picture). If left undone, the task can only and will aggravate : this category is only for cascading effect i.e. a mandatory and urgent task will aggravate in a critical and urgent task. For example, not dealing with issues on a contract with large financial penalties should be considered urgent.
Strict deadline : I know that in (too) many cases, deadlines can me moved. Here I am talking about strict deadline as in “Black friday deadline” or “Ready for Roland Garros Tennis Cup”. You do not control the deadline and it will cost you (cash out or loss of earning) if you miss it.
2-weeks snoozable : Can be rescheduled later in the month without impact.
Complexity
Dealing with complex tasks requires a lot of time and mental availability. Even the simple act of planning complex tasks is not trivial. I recently started to categorize complex tasks using the following :
Break-into-subtasks : When I have to setup a proof-of-concept with a potential client or when writing complex business proposals, I try to create sub-tasks as much as possible so I can delegate
Doable : The task is doable (by yourself)
Trivial : The task is simple enough that you can explain someone else on how to do it.
Wrap-up
Writing this article was a way to kill 2 birds with one stone : going back to writing and refining my current priority management framework.
