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A large part of leading and managing design work entails determining or defining priorities – the relative importance of objectives, tasks, principles or other things that drive what we work on and how we make decisions. Every aspect of a design project has priorities, some determined explicitly by the people working on it and others implied only by what’s reflected in the final product. Whether we’re weighing features or business goals or types of content or user needs, you can’t successfully design anything if everything is the same level of importance. For the most part, however, I ask this question to understand what a person on my team thinks they need to be working on. In this case, “priorities” refers to their tasks and activities. Successfully delivering a complex product demands that everyone know and understand their part in the process, and that likewise depends on their knowing what to focus on.
This question is almost always directed to someone on my team, someone who is responsible for doing work on a project. Generally, I’m responsible for ensuring they have tasks to do, and that they know what those tasks are. While I can tell them what their priorities are, asking them to say their priorities out loud allows me to confirm that they’ve internalized them the best they can. They’re also making sort of a social contract, a commitment to working on something, one that is perhaps stronger than simply saying “yes, I understand what my priorities are.”
You can ask anyone about their priorities, about what’s important to them with respect to their time or this project. But arriving at strategic priorities is different from defining a person’s tactical priorities. That is, if I were curious about a stakeholder’s priorities relative to a project I’m not sure asking them directly is the best way at getting at them. Nor is asking them about “their priorities”. Perhaps more nuanced: I can ask about someone’s priorities, but often what someone says is important to them strategically is not what’s actually important to them.
One day I’d really like someone on my team to ask me this question. I don’t think any team member should shy away from putting their manager or lead on the “hot seat” to articulate their current priorities. As a lead, my response to this question may not be about tasks, but instead about the management of the project – concerns with client relationships, engagement with stakeholders, our ability to meet deadlines given difficult circumstances, etc.
They’ll tell you what they’re supposed to be working on. Perhaps they’ll list some specific tasks or outline the scope of what they’re supposed to think about. You’re listening to make sure that what they think they should be doing is actually what they should be doing. By saying it out loud, they give you a sense of whether they understand the scope and intent, giving you a chance to course-correct.
Sometimes, they cast their net too wide, thinking they need to do more than they’re supposed to, and you now have a chance to further prioritize. To do this I like characterizing some of their tasks as “must do” and “stretch goals.”
Other times, when they say it out loud you realize that the scale is too large or too small given the time allotted. This is another good reason to ask them to
Finally, they may have no idea what their priorities are.
It’s natural to ask this question at the end of a planning session, a sort of epilogue to validate that you’re on the same page. If they don’t know what they’re meant to work on – what their priorities are – at the end of a planning session that is, to say the least, a cue to revamp your planning sessions. But, it may be that the planning session covered a lot of ground and it was difficult for them to discern among all the input what is most important to them. This may be especially true for people who struggle to organize their work, or see the bigger picture.
But I also ask this question at the beginning of planning sessions. This offers me insight into what their ongoing understanding of the project and where we are in it. In this case, they might be exactly right – you’re nearly perfectly aligned in what they should be doing. By laying out their understanding of their priorities at the beginning of a planning session, I’ve got something to react to. I can direct them to rearrange their priorities, remove something, add something.
With priorities defined, a relatively clear picture of tasks to perform and aspects to focus on, my immediate follow-up is “Do you have what you need?”
Do you know what your priorities are for the next week?
What do you think you should be focused on at the moment?