How to Set Priorities as a Leader

Every task that comes to me is urgent and important. Sound familiar? This is a challenge many of us face daily. Early in my career, prioritization was relatively straightforward—my manager told me what to focus on. But as I grew, the game changed. Suddenly, I was managing a flood of requests, far more than I could handle, and the signals from others weren’t helpful. Everything was “important.” Everything was “urgent.” Often, it was both. To handle this effectively, I realized I needed to develop an internal prioritization compass. It wasn’t easy, but it was transformative. Here are 6 strategies to help you build your own: 1/ Be crystal clear on key goals Start by understanding your organization’s goals—at the company, department, and team levels. Attend organizational forums, departmental reviews, or leadership updates to stay informed. When in doubt, use your 1:1s with leaders to ask: What does success look like? 2/ Deeply understand KPIs Metrics guide decision-making, but not all metrics are equally valuable. Take the time to understand your team's or function's key performance indicators (KPIs). Know what they measure, what they mean, and how to assess their impact. 3/ Be assertive to protect priorities Not every task deserves your attention. Practice saying “no” or deferring requests that don’t align with key goals or metrics. Assertiveness is not about being inflexible—it’s about protecting your capacity to focus on what truly matters. 4/ Set and reset expectations Priorities change, and that’s okay. What’s not okay is working on misaligned tasks. Keep open communication with your manager and stakeholders about evolving priorities. When new demands arise, clarify and reset expectations. 5/ Use 1:1s to align with your manager Leverage your 1:1s as a strategic tool. Share your current priorities, validate them against your manager’s expectations, and discuss any conflicts or challenges. 6/ Clarify the escalation process When priorities conflict, don’t let disagreements linger. If you can’t agree quickly, escalate the issue to your manager. This avoids unnecessary churn, ensures trust remains intact, and keeps momentum focused on results. PS: You won’t always get it right—and that’s okay. Treat each misstep as an opportunity to refine your compass. What’s one tip you’ve used to prioritize when everything feels urgent? --- Follow me, tap the (🔔) Omar Halabieh for daily Leadership and Career posts.

The jar is always full. The only question is what you fill it with first. You know the story. A professor fills a jar with big rocks (golf balls in the video), then pebbles, then sand. Everything fits. But if you start with sand, the big rocks never fit. Stephen Covey made it famous. I revisit this regularly with founders, CEOs, and leaders I coach. They know their priorities: family, health, relationships, thinking time, team development, company strategy. They list them in 30 seconds. And yet none of those priorities are in their calendar. Instead, their calendar fills with other people’s urgencies: back-to-back meetings, reactive emails, weekly fires, investor calls, endless board packs. Time is limited. Energy even more so. Being clear on what matters and knowing your priorities isn’t enough. You must protect time for them. This is the trap. We treat priorities as values to feel good about. We should treat them as appointments to keep. → Block the one-to-one with your partner. → Block the hour to think strategy without distractions. → Block time with your kids, phone off. → Block training, walks, sleep. → Block time for yourself to refill your energy. → Block development talks with your top team members who are one promotion away. If it is not in the calendar, it is not a priority. It is a wish. The leaders I see building lives and businesses they actually want are not the ones with the cleanest values list. They are the ones who put the big rocks in first, every week, and let the pebbles and sand fill the rest. Here are four questions to answer on paper: 1. What are your big rocks right now? Up to seven. The things you’ll regret neglecting in six months. 2. What are you actually doing about each? Be honest. What you do, not what you intend. 3. What did you do about them last week? Check your calendar. If a rock had no time, it wasn’t a rock that week. 4. What will you do about them next week? Open your calendar now. Block time. Name the rock. Defend it like a board meeting. The gap between the answers to questions one and three shows the life you live versus the life you want. Question four is where you start closing that gap. The jar is always full. At the end of your life, you will not be asked what you intended to put in it. You will be asked what you did. 💾 Save this for when your actions no longer match your priorities. ♻️ Repost to help others live a fulfilling life ➕ Follow Florence Divet ☀️ for leadership and growth tips. 📩 For more like this, subscribe to: https://lnkd.in/e4zwNANS

You can't just decide what matters. You also must decide what doesn't. The most consequential strategic choices rarely involve one clear right or wrong option. Strategic leaders have to choose among a multitude of legitimate priorities that make incompatible demands on the organization. For example, ➔ Growth may compete with stability. ➔ Speed may compromise quality. ➔ Customer responsiveness may exceed operational capacity. ➔ Short-term performance may weaken long-term capability. 👉 This is where strategic judgment gets tested. A CEO may declare customer experience the top priority but the CFO pushes aggressive cost reductions while the COO is pushing for faster throughput. Each priority is defensible. But when the executive team fails to make priority decisions, employees are left to reconcile the contradictions in their daily work. 💡 Be clear. Your employees won't simply execute the strategy you announce. They will execute the interpretations you reinforce through budgets, incentives, deadlines and behavior. You have seen this happen. Leaders launch a major transformation without pausing or stopping existing work. The strategy calls for change, but the operating realities tell employees to keep everything moving. This is a leadership failure. Employees experience overload, delays, rework, fatigue and declining quality. When executives avoid tradeoffs, it's employees who absorb the consequences. They are left to decide what gets delayed, what receives less attention, where quality will be compromised and which stakeholder needs will go unmet. Strategic leaders apply strategic thinking to determine what the organization should stop doing, keep doing and start doing. We evaluate which activities create meaningful stakeholder value, which consume resources without improving outcomes and which new priorities deserve investment. We must also determine whose interests will be protected, where value may be reduced and who will be asked to absorb the difference. 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝘆 𝗰𝗮𝗻'𝘁 𝗯𝗲 𝗲𝘅𝗲𝗰𝘂𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘂𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗹 𝗶𝘁'𝘀 𝘃𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲. As strategic leaders, we must translate priorities into clearly defined outcomes and make overt decisions about resource allocation. When strategy is visible, people better understand what is protected and funded. They are clear about what's being deprioritized to make room for new priorities. 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲’𝘀 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗟𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗵𝗶𝗽 𝗖𝗵𝗮𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗻𝗴𝗲 ➔ Take your top three strategic priorities to the next executive meeting. Identify the incompatible demands. ➔ Then make just one explicit tradeoff during this meeting. ➔ Decide what must stop, what should continue and what must start for success to occur. ➔ Identify where resources will move, who will absorb the consequences and what organizational realities leadership must confront. Fail to make these choices and you won't have a clear strategy. You'll have competing expectations that inhibit strategy execution.

As CPO, I went where my calendar dictated. Then I’m sneaking glances at my email and Slack, and growing more stressed at more work accruing elsewhere. I was reactive. Each meeting spawned more follow-up meetings because I wasn't well prepared, or the right people were not present. To truly spend most of my time on my top priorities: 1️⃣ Make a top-down view of time spent that reflects your P0/P1’s. What initiatives, decisions, or strategies are they responsible for driving? 2️⃣ Divide your list into three sections: P0’s (only I can do), P1 (critical priorities that I cannot miss), and P2 (important to get done). 3️⃣ Assign a percentage of your time to each section: If your time spent reflects your priorities, this is what it should look like in aggregate. 4️⃣ Ruthlessly clean your next month of meetings. Delegate where you are not critical. Combine similar conversations. Shorten or reduce meeting frequency. Delete…and ask for forgiveness — because you’ll end up asking for it anyway on the day when you are triple-booked. Remember, if you are struggling with time management, the first step is not to open your calendar to ad hoc edit, but to map out your true priorities to set a strong foundation for your adjustments. 

Leaders: Not Everything Is an Emergency One of the biggest pitfalls in leadership that I see are VPs and directors treating every task like it’s urgent.  When everything becomes urgent ASAP today, teams experience burnout, confusion and end up spinning their wheels because this constant scrambling drives poor decision making (done being better than perfect) as well as an inability to plan because the team is always reacting. The reality is that not everything can be, or should be, urgent. Labeling every task as “urgent” doesn’t just lead to stress.... it also causes people (leaders included) to lose sight of what really drives results.  Here’s a better approach to ensuring team alignment and prioritization on what matters most: Distinguish Between Urgent and Important: Urgent tasks often have a clear, immediate deadline tied to an external factor....a client deliverable is due tomorrow OR a last-minute market shift requires immediate action. Important tasks, on the other hand, are those that advance long-term goals and priorities, like improving a sales process or strategizing for entering a new market.  Before marking something as “urgent” ask yourself: Does this task align with a short-term deadline or is it more valuable to allow time for depth and quality? Empower Prioritization: Leaders who communicate true priorities create a culture of clarity and purpose.  For example, if the primary goal for Q4 is closing deals, a leader should direct the team to prioritize sales outreach over lower-impact tasks like preparing detailed internal reports.  This teaches the team to recognize what’s core to success, what drives the mission forward and how to distinguish valuable tasks from those that are less critical. Give your Team Realistic Deadlines: A team that feels constantly rushed won’t feel supported; they’ll feel pressured. Give people room to do their best work and they will bring you better solutions, fresh perspectives and lasting results.   When teams feel trusted to meet realistic goals, they deliver work that is not only on time but also impactful.  Encourage an open dialogue around deadlines so the team members feel comfortable seeking clarification or asking for additional time, when needed. A true leader knows urgency has its place, but so does strategic patience. When you create a culture where priorities are clear and urgency is meaningful, you encourage your team to stay focused, motivated and committed to high-impact work. Next time you feel the need to sound the “urgency” bells..... ask if Is it time-sensitive or do I need my team to be focused on their top tasks with no interruption for the best results?  That will let you know if immediate action is needed or if the team can create more impact with thoughtful planning and execution. PS -> What tips do you have to prioritize a team's task list and ensure the right things get done to move the business forward? Drop your recs in the comments below

Prioritization: The Hardest Leadership Skill No One Teaches You If there’s one thing that separates great teams from struggling ones, it’s how well they prioritize. I’ve seen too many companies get stuck in a cycle of reacting to the loudest voice in the room, trying to do too much at once, or defaulting to “we’ll do it all.” The result? Slow execution, misalignment, and wasted effort. The best leaders I’ve worked with approach prioritization with discipline and clarity. They: • Start with impact. Not all work is equal. Priorities should be based on what will drive the biggest business or customer outcome, not just what sounds exciting. • Force real trade-offs. Saying “yes” to everything is just saying “no” in slow motion. Great teams make deliberate choices about what not to do. • Align execution with strategy. Priorities should ladder up to a clear, shared vision. If the work doesn’t tie to the bigger picture, why are you doing it? • Don’t let urgency replace importance. It’s easy to get caught in firefighting mode. But great leaders make sure the urgent doesn’t always crowd out the important. Prioritization isn’t just a decision-making process—it’s a leadership skill. The strongest teams aren’t just good at doing the work. They’re good at deciding what work is worth doing. How do you ensure the most important work actually gets done? #leadership #prioritization #productmanagement #technology #execution

Change is constant.  Change is inevitable. Time, however, is fixed.   No matter your title, ambition, or workload, you still get 24 hours a day.   The leaders who consistently deliver results and drive meaningful impact aren’t doing more with their time.  They’re doing what matters most—deliberately.   Time isn’t just a resource. It’s life. And it defines leadership. Over the years, I’ve learned this the hard way. And one thing I’ve become exceptionally disciplined at as a people manager and leader is time management. Here are 6 core time decisions, drawn from my experience, that you can implement to manage your time more wisely—so you too can lead with clarity, deliver impact, and still protect your energy: 1️⃣ Treat time as a strategic asset You can earn more money.  You can’t earn more time. Make decisions as if every minute matters—because it does.  Use deadlines as focus tools, act with urgency, and avoid stretching unnecessarily. 2️⃣ Determine what truly deserves a “yes” Every “yes” is a trade-off. Say yes to everything, and you’re quietly saying “no” to your priorities. Be radically clear on your goals and identify 4–5 true priorities—and say no to the noise with intention, not guilt. Clarity creates focus. Focus creates impact.   3️⃣ Design the week before it starts Don’t let the calendar happen to you—shape it. Plan your week on Sunday evening or Monday morning. Protect time for what matters most and leave margin for the unexpected. Leadership without planning is reaction—not intention. 4️⃣ Triage ruthlessly instead of reacting Not everything or everyone deserves attention. Ask yourself: • Is this urgent and important? → Do it now • Important but not urgent? → Schedule it • Urgent but not important? → Delegate it • Neither? → Eliminate it immediately Discernment is a leadership advantage. 5️⃣ Protect deep work and focus Start each day with your most important “rock”. This is the work that actually moves your career or business forward. Protect 2–3 focused hours, eliminate distractions, and guard your attention aggressively. Focus isn’t a preference—it’s a strategic asset. And these hours compound more than you realize.    6️⃣ Reduce decision fatigue with smart systems Don’t waste energy constantly choosing. Use repeatable systems—intentional agendas, lists, routines, defaults—to preserve mental bandwidth for high-impact decisions. Energy is finite. Design accordingly. If you forget everything else, remember these non-negotiables:  ✔️ Start the day by writing down your top 3 priorities ✔️ End the day by reviewing where your time really went—and what drove results vs. drained energy ✔️ Revisit your goals monthly to ensure alignment—not drift Because at the end of the day, your life is what you repeatedly make time for. What’s one time-management habit that’s made the most significant difference for you?

We all know the temptation of setting too many goals at once. On paper, it feels productive as a burst of ambition or an eagerness to do everything. But in practice, it almost always leads to frustration. Instead of steady progress, we scatter our energy across competing priorities, and nothing moves forward in the way we hoped. So how do we decide what really deserves our focus? The first step is to make sure our goals align with the bigger picture. If you’re part of an organization, that means asking your boss what they view as your most important contribution this year. Not only does it ensure your efforts are relevant, but it also helps you build political capital by showing you’re invested in what matters to them. And if you’re the leader, the responsibility shifts: you need to work backwards from your company’s long-term vision. If you know where you want the business to be in three years, the goals you set today should act as stepping stones toward that future. Once you’ve identified what’s strategically important, sequencing becomes essential. Think of it as a “goal timeline.” Years back, I knew I wanted to create my own online courses. But I realized I couldn’t start there. I didn’t yet have the right skills, the right audience, or even clarity on what people wanted to learn from me. So instead, I spent three years building those foundations: learning the process by creating courses for others, growing my email list, and piloting ideas. Only then did I launch my first course. That patience and sequencing made all the difference. It also helps to identify a “keystone goal.” A goal that makes other ambitions easier to achieve. For me, writing for high-profile publications not only supported my consulting business, it also opened doors for speaking engagements and book sales. By focusing on one keystone, multiple other goals fell into place. And finally, once you’ve chosen your focus, you have to stick with it. I often see clients second-guess themselves because they notice peers succeeding with completely different strategies. It’s easy to get distracted. The antidote is what I call “willful myopia”: committing to a goal for at least six months. That consistency gives your work the runway it needs to bear fruit. The truth is, in our culture, there’s always pressure to do more, and to do it faster. But lasting success often comes from doing less, with greater intention. By carefully choosing the right goal and giving it the focus it deserves, you create the conditions for meaningful, long-term results.

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗻𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗲𝗻 𝗿𝗲𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗹𝘆 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗺𝗼𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗮𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼𝗼 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝘆 𝘁𝗼 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘀 (𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗵𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝘀𝗼𝗹𝘃𝗲 𝗶𝘁) Many C-level executives I meet are drowning in the wrong priorities. You get promoted. Congratulations! But suddenly you're facing ⚡ 47 "urgent" decisions, ⚡ 23 "strategic" projects, ⚡ and everyone needs your time "just for 10 minutes." 😱 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺? You're still thinking like your old job. I saw this when a colleague got promoted to VP. • Brilliant leader. • But six months in, she was working 70-hour weeks and her team was frustrated. • Revenue was flat.    She asked me for help. The issue wasn't her capability. It was her priority filter: • She was still solving individual problems (like her old role) instead of building systems that prevented those problems. • She was in the weeds of processes instead of asking 𝐴𝑟𝑒 𝑤𝑒 𝑑𝑜𝑖𝑛𝑔 𝑡ℎ𝑒 𝑟𝑖𝑔ℎ𝑡 𝑝𝑟𝑜𝑐𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑒𝑠? 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗼𝗹𝘂𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻: We created a simple 𝟯𝘅𝟯 𝗣𝗿𝗶𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗠𝗮𝘁𝗿𝗶𝘅. Nine boxes that helped her see the "big picture" on one page for the first time since her promotion. On one axis: Self → Team → Organisation On the other: Operations → Process → Strategy 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝘀𝘂𝗹𝘁? Within 90 days: • Her working hours dropped to 50 per week • Team engagement scores jumped 23% • Revenue grew 12% that quarter • Most importantly: she stopped firefighting and started to focus on preventing fires 𝗛𝗲𝗿𝗲'𝘀 𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘀𝗵𝗲 𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗲𝗱: ✅ 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗿𝘁 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗯𝗼𝘁𝘁𝗼𝗺-𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗯𝗼𝘅 𝗳𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁 (Organisation + Strategy). If you're not clear on where the business is going, everything else is just busy work. ✅ 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗼𝗹𝗱 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗴𝘁𝗵𝘀 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗯𝗲𝗰𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝘆𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗻𝗲𝘄 𝘄𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀𝗲𝘀. The skills that got you promoted might be exactly what's holding you back now. ✅ 𝗔𝘀𝗸 "𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗮𝗺 𝗜 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗼𝗻𝗹𝘆 𝗽𝗲𝗿𝘀𝗼𝗻 𝘄𝗵𝗼 𝗰𝗮𝗻 𝗱𝗼?" Everything else should be delegated, automated, or eliminated. ✅ 𝗧𝗶��𝗲 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘄𝗿𝗼𝗻𝗴 𝗯𝗼𝘅 𝗺𝘂𝗹𝘁𝗶𝗽𝗹𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗹𝗲𝗺𝘀. Spend your Tuesday solving individual operational issues, and you'll be doing it again next Tuesday. The biggest myth in leadership? That being promoted means doing more things. 𝗧𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗿𝘂𝘁𝗵? It means doing different things. And knowing which box they belong in. 👉 𝗜𝗳 𝘆𝗼𝘂'𝗿𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘂𝗴𝗴𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝗽𝗿𝗶𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗮𝗳𝘁𝗲𝗿 𝗮 𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗺𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻, 𝗽𝗹𝗲𝗮𝘀𝗲 𝗿𝗲𝗽𝗼𝘀𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀. Sometimes the best clarity comes from one shared framework. ▶ Please 𝗳𝗼𝗹𝗹𝗼𝘄 𝗺𝗲 for practical learning on continuous improvement from real life. 📄 Join my 𝗳𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗵𝗹𝘆 𝗻𝗲𝘄𝘀𝗹𝗲𝘁𝘁𝗲𝗿 to help you improve by 1% each day, every day: https://lnkd.in/d3Zmay-H

If you’ve ever been told by leadership that ‘everything is a priority,’ you know how frustrating it is. PMMs (and honestly, many leaders) are already juggling way too much. And being told everything is a priority just adds to the overwhelm. So why do leaders still say it? From my experience, it's likely: ❌ They don’t fully understand the trade-offs. If they don’t know what you do or the downstream cost of not doing something, then of course, everything sounds critical. ❌ They’re under pressure themselves. Investors, execs, competitors, or even a board deck can turn into “do it all, now.” So what do you do when you’re told everything is important? Here are a few tips to help you step up as the driver of clarity: ✅ Share your POV. The most effective method is to create the solution yourself. Don’t just ask “what should I do first?” Run a Priority Action Matrix across every project, show the trade-offs, and then present what you believe should be the priority. I linked this matrix in the comments. ✅ Reframe the “no” into "not now". Instead of saying no to stuff, present them as things that can be done at a later date, to indicate you are not just dismissing them. ✅ Anchor to KPIs and the big lever. Every quarter, pick one growth lever to focus on (that leadership cares the most about). Then ladder 1–3 initiatives into it, and tie them directly to company KPIs (pipeline, adoption, retention). Presenting this as a strategy, not a laundry list, will completely change the conversation. You can also access my quarterly goal-setting process in the comments. ✅ Show the data. This is extremely important to show why you simply cannot just add more things to your place. Build a simple capacity model that shows hours available vs. demands. Once you put numbers against the workload, the conversation shifts from opinion to facts. And here’s the tough truth: if you’ve tried all of this, where you have provided clarity, sequencing, frameworks, trade-offs, yet leadership still expects the impossible? That’s no longer a prioritization problem. That’s a values problem. And you get to decide if this is the company you want to be at. Of all the coaching lessons I share, this might be the most crucial for PMMs: learning to both set strategy AND advocate for it effectively. It requires practice and courage to master both skills. What's helped you most when it comes to prioritization? #productmarketing #coaching #strategy