Multiple, new projects + Limited talent with special skills + Worker shortage = Priority Management Urgency.
With our ongoing surveying of Organizational Challenges (contact me to participate in the 15-minute survey), Priority Management ranks #2 out of the 28 categories polled with an incredible 94.1% of current respondents siting two scenarios that are creating challenges for them:
1) Project teams that launched into action in the past without an adequate plan on how to prioritize resources have created problems and now the company wants to plan a project in a different way to avoid creating problems. Companies realize that a different approach should be considered because the past way of doing things did not ensure success.
2) The same employees are on multiple projects at the same time and need help in prioritizing how to spread their time and talent.
Looking across the talent pool of people who will be on projects, certain individuals are getting pulled into too many directions and need guidance from “the powers that be” to define priorities. If not, burnout is a very real outcome possibility.
Enter the Conversation Framework PRIORITIZE – Priority Management Activity. Designed to guide a group of people through a process of taking a “laundry list” of things to do and assign the tasks to the available resources, based on skills. Having this view of who does what, visually, and with the perspective how overloaded a person might be or where skills gaps exist, BEFORE launching into the project is priceless information and help create a better roadmap for project success. The same activity could be used to review the myriad of open projects and who is involved in each one to spot overload for individual contributors.
Conversation Frameworks – Guiding the Power and Ideas from Within.