Leaders Understand That Activity
Is Not Necessarily Accomplishment
Leaders never advance to a point where they no longer need to prioritize. It’s something that good leaders keep doing, whether they’re leading a billion-dollar corporation, running a small business, pastoring a church, coaching a team, or leading a small group. I think good leaders intuitively know that to be true. However, not every leader practices the discipline of prioritizing. Why? I believe there are a few reasons.
First, when we are busy, we naturally believe that we are achieving. But busyness does not equal productivity. Activity is not necessarily accomplishment. Second, prioritizing requires leaders to continually think ahead, to know what’s important, to know what’s next, to see how everything relates to the overall vision. That’s hard work. Third, prioritizing causes us to do things that are at the least uncomfortable and sometimes downright painful.
TIME TO RETHINK PRIORITIES
I know the pain of reprioritizing from personal experience. In 1996, I was living in San Diego, which is one of my favorite places on the planet. San Diego is a gorgeous city, with one of the best climates in the world. If you live in San Diego, you can be on the beach in minutes or on the ski slopes in hours. The city has culture, professional sporting teams, and fine restaurants. It’s a place where you can play golf year-round. Why would I ever want to leave a place like that? I expected to live there the rest of my life. It was very comfortable. But leadership has nothing to do with comfort and everything to do with progress.
Back then I spent a lot of time on airplanes. Living in San Diego, I spent entire days traveling to airline hubs like Dallas, Chicago, and Atlanta just to make connections. Most of my speaking and consulting work was east of the Mississippi River, and the travel was taking a toll. I knew in my gut that I needed to make changes. So I asked Linda, my assistant, to figure out exactly how much time I was spending traveling. What I learned shocked me. In the previous year, I had spent the equivalent of twenty-seven full days traveling back and forth—just between San Diego and Dallas to make flight connections. It made me realize that I needed to sit down and reevaluate my priorities.
“A leader is the one who climbs the tallest tree, surveys the entire situation, and yells, ‘Wrong jungle!’”
—STEPHEN COVEY
If I was going to live consistently with the priorities I had established for myself, I was going to have to move myself and my companies to one of the hub cities. Author Stephen Covey says, “A leader is the one who climbs the tallest tree, surveys the entire situation, and yells, ‘Wrong jungle!’” I felt a little like that when I realized what we were about to do.
After a lot of research, we settled on Atlanta. It was a major airline hub. From there I would be able to reach 80 percent of the people in the United States within two hours by plane. And the area is beautiful, offering excel-lent cultural, recreational, and entertainment opportunities to my employees. I knew people could live well there. It would not be an easy move, but it was a necessary one.
It’s been ten years since we made the move. You may ask, “Was it worth it?” My answer is an emphatic yes. Atlanta is a business-friendly area. The cost of living is very reasonable compared to other large cities. And most important for me and for the consultants who work for my company, travel has become so much easier. Most of the time I can travel, speak, and return home the same day. As a result, my productivity has skyrocketed. Can you imagine getting twenty-seven days of your life back every year? In the ten years since the move, I’ve gained 270 days. A normal work year for most people is 250 days. It’s like I’ve had an extra year added to the most productive time of my life! And there’s nothing like being at home with my wife at the end of a day of traveling instead of being in a hotel room.
THE THREE RS
Leaders can’t afford to just think inside the box. Sometimes they need to reinvent the box—or blow it up. Executive and author Max Depree says, “The first responsibility of a leader is to define reality.” That requires the Law of Priorities. When you’re the leader, everything is on the table.
Every year I spend about two weeks in December reevaluating my priorities. I review the previous year’s schedule. I look at my upcoming commitments. I evaluate my family life. I think about my goals. I look at the big picture of what I’m doing to make sure the way I’m living lines up with my values and priorities.
“There are many things that will catch my eye, but there are only a few things that will catch my heart.”
—TIM REDMOND
One of the guiding principles I use during this process is the Pareto Principle. I’ve often taught it to people at leadership conferences over the years, and I also explain it in depth in my book Developing the Leader Within You. The idea is this: if you focus your attention on the activities that rank in the top 20 percent in terms of importance, you will have an 80 percent return on your effort. For example, if you have ten employees, you should give 80 percent of your time and attention to the best two. If you have one hundred customers, the top twenty will provide you with 80 percent of your business, so focus on them. If your to-do list has ten items on it, the two most important ones will give you an 80 percent return on your time. If you haven’t already observed this phenomenon, test it and you’ll see that it really plays out that way. One year as I went through this process, I realized that I had to totally refocus and restructure one of my organizations.
The other guidelines I use whenever I evaluate my priorities are the three Rs. No, not reading, writing, and ’rithmetic. My three Rs are requirement, return, and reward. I believe that to be effective, leaders must order their lives according to these three questions:
1.WHAT IS REQUIRED?
We’re all accountable to somebody for the work we do—an employer, a board of directors, stockholders, the government, and so on. We also have responsibility for the important people in our lives, such as spouse, children, and parents. For that reason, any list of priorities must begin with what is required of us.
The question I ask myself is, What must I do that nobody can or should do for me? As I have gotten older, that list has gotten shorter and shorter. If I’m doing something that’s not necessary, I should eliminate it. If I’m doing something that’s necessary but not required of me personally, I need to delegate it.
2.WHAT GIVES THE GREATEST RETURN?
As a leader, you should spend most of your time working in your areas of greatest strength. Marcus Buckingham and Donald O. Clifton have done extensive research on this subject, which you can read about in their book Now, Discover Your Strengths. People are more productive and more con-tent when their work is within their natural gifting and strengths. Ideally, leaders should get out of their comfort zone but stay in their strength zone.
Leaders should get out of their comfort zone but stay in their strength zone.
What’s the practical application for this? Here’s my rule of thumb. If something I’m doing can be done 80 percent as well by someone else, I delegate it. If you have a responsibility that someone else could do according to that standard—or that could potentially meet that standard—then develop and train a person to handle it. Just because you can do something does not mean that you should do it. Remember, leaders understand that activity is not necessarily accomplishment. That’s the Law of Priorities.
3.WHAT BRINGS THE GREATEST REWARD?
This final question relates to personal satisfaction. Tim Redmond, president of Redmond Leadership Institute, observed, “There are many things that will catch my eye, but there are only a few things that will catch my heart.”
Life is too short not to do some things you love. I love teaching Leadership. I love writing and speaking. I love spending time with my wife, children, and grandchildren. I love playing golf. No matter what else I do, I will make time for those things. They are the fire lighters in my life. They energize me and keep me passionate. And passion provides the fuel in a person’s life to keep him going.
REORDERING PRIORITIES
A few years ago when I went through this process of reprioritizing, I revisited the way I was spending my time. Back when I wrote the first edition of this book, I determined to spend my work time according to the following guideline:
| AREA | TIME ALLOTTED |
| 1. Leadership | 19 percent |
| 2. Communicating | 38 percent |
| 3. Creating | 31 percent |
| 4. Networking | 12 percent |
These four areas represent my greatest strengths. They are the most rewarding aspects of my career. And for many years my responsibilities to my companies were aligned with them. However, as I was recently reviewing these areas, I realized that I was not maintaining the balance I desired. I was spending too much time in hands-on leadership at one of my companies, and it was taking away from higher priorities. Once again, I had to recognize that activity is not necessarily accomplishment. I knew I was in for another difficult business decision. If I was going to continue to be effective in fulfilling my vision, I would have to change and work according to the Law of Priorities. I made the decision to sell one of my companies. It wasn’t easy, but it was the right thing for me to do.
REFOCUSING ON A WORLDWIDE SCALE
It is the responsibility of leaders to make tough decisions based on priori-ties. That can sometimes make them unpopular. Back in 1981 when Jack Welch became chairman and CEO of General Electric, it was a good company. It had a ninety-year history, the company stock traded at $4 per share, and the company was worth about $12 billion, eleventh best on the stock market. It was a huge, diverse company that included 350 strategic businesses. But Welch believed the company could become better. What was his strategy? He used the Law of Priorities.
Within a few months of taking over the company, he began what he called the hardware revolution. It changed the entire profile and focus of the company. Welch said,
To the hundreds of businesses and product lines that made up the company we applied a single criterion: can they be number 1 or number 2 at what-ever they do in the world marketplace? Of the 348 businesses or product lines that could not, we closed some and divested others. Their sale brought in almost $10 billion. We invested $18 billion in the ones that remained and further strengthened them with $17 billion worth of acquisitions.
What remained [in 1989], aside from a few relatively small supporting operations, are fourteen world-class businesses . . . all well positioned for the ’90s . . . each one either first or second in the world market in which it participates.1
I know Welch is out of favor in some circles, and recently, his methods have been criticized. But his leadership was right for his time and situation. He reprioritized GE, and his strong leadership and focus paid incredible dividends. During his tenure, GE’s stock experienced a two-to-one split four times. And it traded at more than $80 per share when he retired. The company was ranked as the nation’s most admired company, according to Fortune, and it continues to be one of the most valuable companies in the world. That came about because of Welch’s ability to use the Law of Priorities in his leadership. He never mistook activity for accomplishment. He knew that the greatest success comes only when you focus your people on what really matters.
PRIORITIES WERE THE NAME OF HIS GAME
Examine the lives of all effective leaders, and you will see them putting priorities into action. Every time Norman Schwarzkopf assumed a new command, he didn’t just rely on his leadership intuition; he also reexamined the unit’s priorities. Lance Armstrong was able to win seven Tour de France championships because his priorities guided his training regimen. When explorer Roald Amundsen succeeded in taking his team to the South Pole and back, it was due, in part, to his ability to set right priorities.
Successful leaders live according to the Law of Priorities. They recognize that activity is not necessarily accomplishment. But the best leaders seem to be able to get the Law of Priorities to work for them by satisfying multiple priorities with each activity. This actually enables them to increase their focus while reducing their number of actions.
A leader who was a master at that was one of my idols: John Wooden, the former head basketball coach of the UCLA Bruins. He is called the Wizard of Westwood because the amazing feats he accomplished in the world of college sports were so incredible that they seemed to be magical.
Evidence of Wooden’s ability to make the Law of Priorities work for him could be seen in the way he approached basketball practice. Wooden claimed that he learned some of his methods from watching Frank Leahy, the great former Notre Dame head football coach. He said, “I often went to his [Leahy’s] practices and observed how he broke them up into periods. Then I would go home and analyze why he did things certain ways. As a player, I realized there was a great deal of time wasted. Leahy’s concepts rein-forced my ideas and helped in the ultimate development of what I do now.”
EVERYTHING HAD A PURPOSE BASED ON PRIORITIES
People who have served in the military say that they often have to hurry up and wait. That seems to be true in sports, too. Coaches ask their players to work their hearts out one minute and then to stand around doing nothing the next. But that’s not the way Wooden worked. He orchestrated every moment of practice and planned each activity with specific purposes in mind. He employed economy of motion. Here’s how he worked:
Every year, Wooden determined a list of overall priorities for the team, based on observations from the previous season. Those items might include objectives such as “Build confidence in Drollinger and Irgovich,” or “Use three on two continuity drill at least three times a week.” Usually, he had about a dozen or so items that he wanted to work on throughout the sea-son. But Wooden also reviewed his agenda for his teams every day. Each morning, he and an assistant meticulously planned the day’s practice. They usually spent two hours strategizing for a practice that might not even last that long. He drew ideas from notes jotted on three-by-five cards that he always carried with him. He planned every drill, minute by minute, and recorded the information in a notebook prior to practice. Wooden once boasted that if you asked what his team was doing on a specific date at three o’clock in 1963, he could tell you precisely what drill his team was running. Like all good leaders, Wooden did the work of thinking ahead for his team.
Wooden always maintained his focus, and he found ways for his players to do the same thing. His special talent was for addressing several priority areas at once. For example, to help players work on their free throws—something that many of them found tedious—Wooden instituted a free-throw shooting policy during scrimmages that would encourage them to concentrate and improve instead of just marking the time. The sooner a sidelined player made a set number of free throws, the sooner he could get back into action. And Wooden continually changed the number of shots required of the guards, forwards, and centers so that team members rotated in and out at different rates. That way everyone, regardless of position or starting status, got experience playing together, a critical priority for Wooden’s development of total teamwork.
The most remarkable aspect about John Wooden—and the most telling about his ability to focus on his priorities—is that he never scouted opposing teams. Instead, he focused on getting his players to reach their potential. And he addressed those things through practice and personal interaction with the players. It was never his goal to win championships or even to beat the other team. His desire was to get each person to play to his potential and to put the best possible team on the floor. And of course, Wooden’s results were incredible. In more than forty years of coaching, he had only one losing season—his first. And he led his UCLA teams to four undefeated seasons and a record ten NCAA championships.2 No other college team has ever come close. Wooden was a great leader. He just might be the finest person to coach in any sport. Why? Because every day he lived by the Law of Priorities. We should strive to do the same.
Applying
THE LAW OF PRIORITIES
To Your Life
1. Are you prepared to really shake up your life and get out of your comfort zone in order to live and work according to your priorities? Is there something in your life that is working so poorly that you intuitively know it will require a major revision in how you do things? What is that some-thing? Describe how it is not working. Describe why it is not working. Can you think outside the box (or create a new box) to solve the issue and realign your priorities? Ignoring a major alignment problem in your priorities is like lining up a golf shot incorrectly. The farther you hit the ball, the more off course it will be; the longer you live out of alignment, the greater the chance you will miss achieving your vision.
2. If you have never done so before, take the time to write out your answers to the three R questions (Be sure to include family and other responsibilities, not just career.):
What is required of me?
What gives the greatest return?
What brings the greatest reward ?
Once you have answered those three questions, create a list of the things you are doing that don’t fit solidly into one of the three Rs. You need to delegate or eliminate these things.
3. Successful people live according to the Law of Priorities. Successful leaders help their organization, department, or team live according to the Law of Priorities. As the leader, have you taken responsibility for prioritizing and thinking ahead for your area of responsibility? Have you carved out specific time on a regular basis to revisit priorities for that area? If not, you need to start doing so immediately. As a leader, it’s not enough for you to be successful. You need to help your people be successful.