One of the things that I didn’t mention in my previous post about prioritisation is that to succeed at it you have to get comfortable with the art of saying no and ‘letting go’….because just because you/your team/your department holds the line and focuses on the priorities doesn’t mean someone won’t find a way to colour outside those lines.

This means you will be tempted to step in – to try and improve things, to put them on the straight and narrow to make the best of the situation, to just be helpful….but that leads to more split focus and to too many compromises. We have all felt the frustration of coming in late to a project and trying to perform a rescue job. What gets delivered is inevitably a compromise and rarely satisfies anyone.

So like Elsa sang – you have to ‘Let it Go’- not be distracted by what you see as the wrong thing over there but focus on the right thing, right now.

Prioritise. Commit. Persevere. 

Obviously this needs significant top cover and in my experience it is rarely provided to the extent needed but if you don’t make these trade offs and accept that some things will still slip through the net then it will be impossible to make the real impact where it matters.