The irony of this newsletter topic definitely isn’t lost on us this month.
Just this week I found myself completely paralysed by competing priorities and trying to work out where I should actually be spending my time.
Was it writing this newsletter, which is already two weeks late? Was it keeping momentum going on the book, which seems to consume every available minute right now? Was it creating content for an online course? Or one of the many other things popping up?
It got me to the point of writing everything down and stack ranking what I thought the real priorities actually were ahead of our team offsite this week.
Because whatever we do individually in our day-to-day roles should contribute to the team’s objectives. And as we all know, if you’ve got more than one top priority, it probably isn’t getting done in a meaningful timeframe.
In our 2022 Tech Leader Survey, competing priorities came out as the number one challenge. Not capability, talent or even strategy, but prioritisation.
And a few years on, after working with many GTM leadership teams and speaking with leaders across the industry, we can safely say, this one hasn’t gone away.
Trying to do too many things at once
The result is that we end up stuck in whack-a-mole mode and before long the team is spread across too many things at once, without enough time or focus for any of them to properly be delivered.
The challenge isn’t just agreeing the priority. It’s agreeing the priority and then giving it enough time to actually succeed.
That sounds obvious, but once multiple functions get involved (marketing, sales, SEs, customer success, etc) people naturally start engaging with priorities at different times and in different ways.
If leadership isn’t fully aligned from the start, each function will operate to its own version of what matters most, and those dreaded silos start to appear.
If priorities are changing every month, they’re probably not strategic priorities at all and the team is just reacting. The impact of this is huge (and frustrating).
We heard someone describe this recently as strategic whiplash, and it’s a phrase that has stuck with us because it captures the feeling so well. When we noodled more on it, we realised there are really two versions of this happening inside teams.
If there isn’t enough clarity, teams experience daily whiplash, constantly reacting to whatever feels most urgent that day.
If there isn’t alignment, you get strategic whiplash, where priorities shift at the top and ripple through everything else.
Either way, it’s going to slow momentum as people become more cautious about where they invest their energy, and will start to ask: “What’s the point?”
The result? Execution slows down.
Freeing up time to focus
We had an interesting conversation recently on the Get Amplified podcast with Stu Pike, VP & COO at ServiceNow APAC. Stu talked about how sales leaders need to manage the one thing they can’t create more of: Time.
Listen here: Sales Leaders Manage the One Thing We Can’t Create More Of: TIME – Stu Pike at ServiceNow
Stu talked about how friction is one of the biggest things slowing teams down. Stuff gets lost between demand gen, sales, solutions, customer success. Deals start to drag and discovery gets repeated, there is unclear ownership, and too many internal processes.
All small things on their own, but together they slow momentum and pull teams away from what actually matters. And before you know it, you’re talking more about the internal process than the customer’s problem. That’s usually when trust starts to wobble a bit too.
The more friction there is between functions, the harder it becomes to stay aligned on priorities, which is why simplifying the GTM motion and freeing up time matters so much.
What you can do differently
The leaders who handle this well don’t just agree a priority and move on. They give it time to progress, and they stay consistent with what they will and won’t do, right now.
Harvey Smith is a great example of a leader who empowers the team to stay focused on what matters.
He tells us,
If you’ve got 27 priorities, you haven’t got any priorities.”
But what really stood out in the Get Amplified conversation with him is how he brings the team into that. He encourages people to push back on anything that doesn’t align, to the point where it became known as “Harvey says no.”
It sounds simple, but it works! Because now the team has permission to protect their focus, rather than feeling like they have to respond to everything.
We gave a cheer when Harvey explained that when things get busy, his instinct isn’t to add more in. It’s to take things away.
Listen here: Leading Like a Team Coach
What helps teams stay aligned
At Amplified Group, we’ve found the teams that handle this best usually have four things working well together: purpose, trust, clarity, and simplicity.
When a team is genuinely aligned behind a common purpose, they move faster and make better decisions about what actually matters.
When trust is high, people feel safe to challenge, ask for help, and speak up when priorities are drifting, which means teams are far more likely to stay committed to the plan instead of pulling in different directions.
Clarity removes confusion. Everyone understands what needs to happen, what good looks like, and who owns what, which creates accountability and stops energy being wasted second-guessing priorities.
And simplicity is where speed really kicks in. Complexity slows teams down, so the more friction you remove, the easier it becomes to execute consistently.
Together, these four pillars become the operating system for how a team works. They’re measurable too (just ask us how!), so you can spot where momentum is drifting and make small adjustments before teams fall back into whack-a-mole mode again.
One impactful exercise
Something we’re encouraging leadership teams to do right now is to take the time, sit down together and properly stack rank the priorities.
Not just agree what’s important but actually decide what comes first. When you strip it back, there are three key things to address:
- Agree the priority
- Give it enough time, but agree a deadline
- Agree what you will de-prioritise
Start with a real constraint, whether that’s a revenue target, a fixed resource, or a 90-day window, because without a constraint, everything expands.
And then force the trade-offs by asking,
If we could only do one of these right now to move the needle, which would it be?”
From there, you commit to the order, make it visible, get everyone’s energy behind it, and stick with it long enough to see it through.
Btw, if everything is still a priority at the end of the conversation, you probably haven’t finished the conversation. Remember it’s not a no, just not now.
The takeaway
Competing priorities might look like a business problem, but more often they’re a team problem in disguise.
If we don’t pause to discuss them, they drain energy, kill momentum, and make everything feel harder than it should.
The teams that execute at speed are clear on what matters, aligned around it, and consistent enough to see it through.
If your team feels like it should be making more progress, now’s probably a good moment to take a proper look at what’s really going on.
🚀 Find out what’s really going on: Take your Team Speed Indicator
We hope this one resonated with you. And if not, we’d genuinely love to hear why or what you’re doing differently to combat competing priorities.
We’re always looking for the next topic to explore, so if there’s something you’d like us to cover, just drop us a note.
From Lindsey and the Amplified Team
A Bit About Us
We are an award winning team coaching company dedicated to accelerating organisational performance. We partner with leaders to navigate complex change and operational challenges to unlock the full potential of their teams. Despite the ever-increasing use of technology, organisations are powered by people.
Your GTM speed is determined by how you work together. We are passionate about the difference we can make in partnership with our clients.
