How to Prioritize What Matters Most

An essential skill for every entrepreneur: Separating “signal” from “noise”. Here’s what that means (and how to master this skill): * “Signal” is the driver towards growth. The things that truly *matter*. “Noise” refers to progress-killing distractions. The things that throw you off track. Learning how to separate the two can save time, energy and money. But it poses a unique set of challenges. * When you’re building a company, many obstacles demand your attention. The “noise” gets louder the more you grow. To be successful, it’s crucial you: • Identify the noise • Listen to the needs of your teams • Prioritize signals that amplify your goals Here’s how I approach this: * 1. Define Your North Star What’s the key driver for growth in your business? • Sales • Organic reach • Partnerships • Something else? This is your North Star metric. The first step is determining the most important factor that aligns with your goals. * 2. Prioritize Goals & Tasks These should map up to the North Star metric(s) you identified. Evaluate each task's significance and weed out work that doesn’t directly advance your goals (the “noise”). Tasks that directly impact your progress are “signals”. * 3. Organize Teams It takes more than technical skills to get you to your North Star. It takes a well-rounded team. Teams should be grouped based on soft skills like: • communication • problem-solving • leadership Collaborative, skilled teams will make your signal stronger. * 4. Practice “Juice vs Squeeze” Internally we use a concept that’s a huge help in decision-making. I call it “juice versus squeeze.” It helps you prioritize so you can be more effective overall. * Say you’re at a fork in the road and need to choose Path A or Path B. Either path could be worth devoting resources to, but you can’t do everything. You must choose. So, how do you decide? Consider the “juice” vs. “squeeze”. * Analyze how much effort it will take to go down each path. Then, choose the one that will get you to the end result faster. The goal is to find out what works in the least amount of time possible. Here’s why I love this: Juice vs. squeeze will help you identify the true “signals” while eliminating low-leverage work. You’ll make progress faster, drastically reduce distractions and avoid wasting energy. Applying this approach will get the most out of your time and resources. * 5. Evaluate and Refine This is a continuous process. It’s crucial to always reassess: • Are new tasks prioritized? • Is there unnecessary noise? • Has the signal changed? Regularly reevaluate your goals and priorities. * You can always improve at separating “signal” from “noise.” A quick checklist to start: ✔ Define Your North Star ✔ Prioritize Goals & Tasks ✔ Organize Teams ✔ Practice “Juice vs Squeeze” ✔ Evaluate and Refine This isn’t everything, but it’s one approach that’s helped us along the way.

Do you and your team struggle with competing priorities? Regardless of your role, business leader or practitioner, over the years I've learned that no matter the company, industry, start-up or enterprise, we have too many strategic initiatives and it gets in the way of focus and progress. 😤 What creates distraction from what we truly need to accomplish is: ✅ New TRENDS, TERMS, and TECH TOYS! ✅ There's more work than resources & funding. This creates DRIFT ✅ As things drift, we experience a lag with closure, resulting in FATIGUE ✅ As fatigue sets in, we forget our original PURPOSE and we digress. The cycle then repeats and it feels like an endless loop of projects without proper closure and celebrations. While this won't solve everything, it'll be a good start. It's worked for me in the past: ✍ Create a list of all the things that's requiring your time or the teams time ✍ Tag them as H (high value), M (medium value), L (low value) [you choose how you define value. For me I've used loose rules like "Is it aligned with our priorities and the companies mission? Keep it simple] ✍ Anything of H & M keep, anything tagged as L think about how to offload. [It may require a talk with your boss to say these lower value activities are distracting the team from the high-value activities, is there a way to delegate to de-prioritize? OR. It may require a discussion about constrained resources and budget, and how to best prioritize efforts so you can apply resources accordingly] ✍ Always prioritize resources and funding to the H's, and whatever is left over to the M's. [When asked about progress on the M's, you say the team is doing the best it can with the workload of the higher priority times. If things need to progress faster, its a good idea to discuss capacity & funding] ✍ When someone asks you to do something else, DO NOT immediately say 'YES'. [You say "I know the work is important and it needs to get done, I want to help. let me assess the teams capacity & bandwidth so I can get back to you with realistic timeframes to make sure its acceptable for you", or. something like that] ✍ Watch out for your own issues with over committing. Be reasonable about what you can and cannot accomplish in a 50-70 hour week. [Sorry I can't help those who have a 40 hour work weeks, never had that 😢] More to come ... sign up for my upcoming Newsletter! https://lnkd.in/ejvkkuGi (I'm a practitioner turned C-Suite exec 4x's over and one of the first Chief Data & Chief AI Officers appointed back in 2016. I have a lot of scrapped knees & bruised elbows to share). 

Monday Momentum: The "Rule of Threes" is a principle that suggests things that come in threes are inherently more satisfying, effective, and memorable than other numbers of things. This principle is often used in various fields, including business, marketing, and communication. For many years we started each week on Monday with an executive meeting. Each person came prepared to articulate their 3 priorities for the week. I found this an excellent habit, as did the team. It allowed each team member to get an insight into what others were focused on; it created opportunity for clarity, questions, and collaboration; it focused the week. You can also chunk the concept down to your personal daily goals. I.E. What are the 3 top things each of you will accomplish today? Here are practical examples of applying the Rule of Threes in eight business categories: ( Yes I know, it should be three...) 1. Communication and Presentation: When giving a presentation on a new product, structure the content around three main features: innovation, usability, and affordability. 2. Product or Service Offerings: If you run a restaurant, focus your menu on three main categories: appetizers, entrees, and desserts. This simplifies choices for customers. 3. Strategic Planning: In your annual strategic plan, highlight three key priorities for the upcoming year, such as market expansion, product diversification, and cost optimization. 4. Marketing Campaigns: Design a marketing campaign for a software product with three main benefits: user-friendly interface, advanced features, and excellent customer support. 5. Team Building: When forming project teams, consider creating smaller groups of three team members each. This facilitates efficient collaboration and idea sharing. 6. Problem-Solving: Faced with a business challenge, propose three potential solutions: improve internal processes, enhance customer engagement, or explore new market opportunities. 7. Customer Service: Train customer service representatives to focus on three key aspects: prompt response times, empathetic communication, and effective issue resolution. 8. Financial Management: In financial planning, prioritize three financial goals: achieving a specific revenue growth percentage, implementing cost-saving measures, and maximizing overall profitability. While the Rule of Threes is a guideline, it's important to note that it might not be applicable in all situations. The key is to use it where it enhances clarity and simplicity rather than forcing it into every aspect of business operations. When sharing your threes be Clear, Concise, and Compelling! Have a momentum filled week of threes. Sean 

I've wasted too much time on the wrong partners 🙈 Like a VC, partnerships people need allocate their resources to build a balanced partner portfolio. The best way I've found to visualise this process is Boston Consulting Group's "Growth Share Matrix". I always show this slide in strategy meetings and split our partners into four buckets: ❓Question Marks High growth opportunities, but our company hasn't captured significant value from these partners... yet. The goal here is to quickly validate these opportunities and turn them into "Stars"... or discard as "Pets". ⭐️ Stars The perfect mix of a fast growing partner and your ability to capture a large share of their customer base. These partners have lots of future potential so pour resources into them. Once growth stalls, turn them into "Cash Cows". 💰 Cash Cows These partners have a lot of shared customers, but their growth stalled. Your job here is to milk these "cash cows" and re-invest profits into "Stars" and "Question marks". 🐶 Pets Slow growth and/or customer churn will sooner or later turn most "Question Marks" and "Cash Cows" turn into "Pets". They're called this way because these partners are often kept around as pet projects. There is no current or future potential, so you should divest or reposition. Why does prioritisation matter? Because your job is to grow every quarter. Junior people often waste a lot of time on question marks and dogs because they don't know better. Experienced partner leaders often invest in cash cows and forget to plant seeds. They don't develop the business further and are caught with their pants down once the milk runs out. Consistency is key. You need a process to validate, invest, milk, and discard opportunities in your portfolio. #partnerships #businessdevelopment #partnerprograms

Do less but better. Stay 100% focused on what matters most. Focus is your best competitive advantage. Why? Too many brands go way too wide early on. By focusing, you will outpace them. Focus is a virtuous cycle. Here's what I've learned first hand building GRIN: We started with a complete focus in one area. To become THE solution for ecommerce brands. → Marketing team targeted ecommerce brands effectively → Sales team learned ecommerce customers' pain points → Success team gained deep understanding of ecommerce → Product team received feedback from one customer type, improving the use-case faster The results of 100% focus? Growth rate increased, reviews improved, and we got momentum. That focus has allowed us to scale up way beyond ecommerce now. GRIN is the now overall leader and ecommerce leader for influencer marketing, with the best brands, product, and team. Focus is a competitive advantage in company building. Without it, you will never win. 📌 Three important reminders for you: 1. What is one area you can triple down on to drive results? 2. What can you focus on day-to-day to accelerate performance? 3. What items on your calendar were set by other people and don’t map to your priorities? Can you decline those meetings? I’ll bet you can - and you should.

A MATTER OF FOCUS While most leaders would claim to focus intently on the most critical initiatives, the reality often falls short of this ideal. Many leadership teams struggle to trim down the list of strategic initiatives to the 3-5 most transformative ideas or opportunities. The fear of overlooking something important or the inertia behind ongoing projects is simply too powerful. Consequently, most teams end up spreading their limited resources across too many projects, leading to lackluster results. An old boss once advised me, "You have to place your bets, not hedge them." The recent pandemic forced most of us to ruthlessly prioritize our agendas as a means of survival, prompting us to eliminate lower-priority work and invest all our resources into what was most critical. This approach led to enormous progress on transformative projects for my team. The question remains: why don't we adopt this focused approach consistently? I firmly believe that narrowing down the list to a select few key initiatives and wholeheartedly investing in them is the most effective strategy. By bravely cutting projects with lower returns that could distract the organization, we can achieve greater success (less is truly more). Do you believe your team is as focused as it needs to be? Are you demonstrating courageous leadership by "placing your bets" on the biggest ideas. Chris #focus #leadership #leader