Blog: When Priority Management Becomes a Game You Can't Win

As Pete shared during our session, recent research reveals the impact:

Trust: 68% of employees lack trust in senior leadership, with priority inconsistency as a primary driver (SurveyMonkey 2025).

Alignment: The "85/85 gap"—85% of leaders have confidence in their own direction, yet 85% don't believe the broader team is aligned (Mural Survey 2025).

Strategic drift–the gradual misalignment that occurs when different parts of an organization pursue competing or uncoordinated priorities, causing the organization to lose focus and veer away from its intended strategic direction–has real costs. Participants identified additional impacts, including disengagement, project delays, missed outcomes, firefighting mode, and organizational paralysis.

During our masterclass, Steve O. observed: "Priority is not plural."

We fact-checked this live and discovered something fascinating. The word "priority" comes from Latin prior, meaning "first." For roughly 500 years after the word entered English (14th century), it was used almost exclusively in the singular. When you could only do one thing at a time, there could logically be only one priority.

The plural "priorities" became common during the Industrial Revolution (1760-1840) as work complexity increased. The pluralization marks when we collectively accepted that everything could be urgent at once—though some argue this diluted the original meaning.

Jörk H. concurred: "Priority means to me a sequence," adding that when everyone insists everything is priority one, nothing actually is.

Eight Actionable Techniques

1. Make Priorities Visible

Katherine B. emphasized transparency: "Even if it's wrong, showing what they're working on helps rebuild reputation. Now that conversation can be data-driven." Public priorities create accountability.

2. Use Participatory Approaches

Charles F. observed that Amy's chips felt like participatory budgeting: "You step away and relinquish control of the decision to get a decision." Whether chips, tokens, or "Buy-a-Feature" exercises (from Luke Hohmann's Innovation Games), giving stakeholders limited resources forces real prioritization through peer negotiation.

3. Focus on "Now" and "Later or Never"

Zuzi S. suggested simplifying: "Let's do this now, get feedback, and adapt. Remove fixedness and focus on what to do now." Rather than high/medium/low, use two categories: now, and later-or-never. This diplomatic framing helps stakeholders accept their work might never happen.

4. Reinforce That Priority Is Singular

Constantly remind teams (and yourself) that priority means a sequence (1, 2, 3...), not multiple items all labeled priority one.

5. Establish Governance Councils

Eric K. described using councils for strategic domains: "We have an AI council, user experience council, data governance council. They provide a way for departments to communicate at the appropriate level." Unlike communities of practice, councils are explicitly decision-making bodies with authority.

6. Create Co-Ownership Through Shared Facilitation

Several participants replicated Amy's approach—bringing stakeholders together to make collective decisions rather than individual lobbying.

7. Assess Time Horizons and Crisis Context

Charles F. distinguished when collaborative approaches work: "When the boat is filling with water, it's not time to play poker. It's time to bail water." Pete agreed: "Crisis management is different than complexity management—recognizing what system we're in." In genuine crises, as Charles F. noted, command-and-control may be necessary. These participatory techniques work best for ongoing operational priorities, not emergencies.

8. Accept That Changing the System Takes Time

Shifting from individual lobbying to collective prioritization requires cultural change. It's not a quick fix but a fundamental transformation in how decisions are made.

From Decision-Maker to Decision-Facilitator

Amy's story reveals something essential: you don't always need to have the answer. Sometimes your role is to create better conditions for answers to emerge.

This requires a mindset shift:

This is particularly challenging without positional power. Amy had to convince higher-status stakeholders to convince each other, not her. It took courage, political savvy, and persistence.

But it worked because it addressed the root problem: priorities negotiated in dozens of separate conversations create inconsistency and confusion. By bringing everyone into one room with transparent constraints and a shared process, she transformed how decisions got made.

What You Can Do Tomorrow

If you're feeling like a ping pong ball, start here:

• Name your game – Is it arm wrestling? Clue? Whack-a-mole?
• Ask yourself – "If I could change the game, what game would I play?"
• Map hidden negotiations – Where are priorities being competed for privately?
• Experiment small – Bring two competing stakeholders together for one conversation
• Make constraints visible – Transparency about capacity is powerful
• Create scarcity – Give stakeholders limited resources to allocate
• Set expectations – Be clear about how priority decisions will be made going forward
  

The Deeper Truth

Priority management isn't a time management problem. It's a leadership problem about how decisions get made in complexity.

You can't win the priority game by being smarter or working harder. You can only change how the game is played.

Amy didn't solve prioritization. She created better conditions for prioritization to happen—transparently, collaboratively, with shared ownership.

That's adaptive leadership: recognizing that in complex environments, your role isn't always to have the answers. Sometimes it's to create conditions where better answers emerge from collective wisdom.

The tension will remain. But when that tension is shared openly, facilitated well, and navigated together, organizations become dramatically more effective. As Jörk H. observed: "Bad management regarding priorities results in very low productivity." The inverse is equally true: when priority decisions are made well—transparently, collaboratively, with clear accountability—trust increases, alignment improves, and productivity soars.