Get Your Priorities Straight: The Hierarchy of Purpose

Prioritizing is usually seen as an individual skill that some are good at, others not so much. We prioritize whenever we think about how we will spend our time today, this week, this month — or this year. But the fact is, prioritizing is also a key organizational capability. Indeed, how and why organizations prioritize their activities is vital to their success. Yet, surprisingly, this is one of the least understood and most neglected areas of organizational life.

The word priority appears in the English language as early as the 14th century. The Merriam Webster dictionary defines it as, ‘what matters most.’ In organizational terms, prioritization sets the agenda in terms of what really matters, which is reflected in how resources are allocated — especially the scarcest resources: Time and money.

Based on 20-plus years of executive experience with large corporations including and , I have found that one of the main reasons companies fail in this area is that they lack a clear sense of what is truly