Strategic Priority Setting

If your organisation says something is a priority, how do you know whether it’s actually being treated like one? In most organisations, the work labelled “strategic” is handled almost exactly the same as everything else It gets pushed into already full diaries It competes with urgent demands It sits in the same meetings as BAU And slowly, quietly, it gets absorbed back into the operational churn The research is clear: Unless leaders deliberately change how time and capacity are allocated, urgent work will reliably displace long-term priorities (Repenning & Sterman, 2001). Naming something a priority changes nothing unless the organisation treats it differently Which is why the real work for a senior team isn’t just identifying what matters, it’s creating the conditions that allow the priority to behave like a priority It begins with clarity about why this work sits above everything else: 🔹 What outcome does it meaningfully shift? 🔹 Why does it matter now? 🔹 What criteria make it more important than the other work we could be doing? Without this, “priority” becomes just another label. From there, the team needs to align on how the work will be treated differently: 🔹 Protected time rather than borrowed time 🔹 A different rhythm of review, focused on progress not updates 🔹 Senior sponsorship that actively removes obstacles If behaviours don’t shift, BAU will reclaim the work every time. However, it’s not simply about downgrading the things that aren’t priorities. Some work must continue the essential activities that keep the organisation functioning. The real discipline sits a level below the headline priorities. Once you’re clear on the priority, you have to be clear on the specific activities required to make it real This is where most strategies are quietly undermined The priority is defined at a headline level, but the actual sequence of work isn’t identified The shift happens when a senior team can distinguish between 🔹 Essential activities that must be maintained 🔹 Strategic activities that genuinely move the priority 🔹 The sequence in which the strategic activities need to happen At this level of detail, prioritisation stops being conceptual and becomes practical When teams work at this level of specificity - distinguishing essential work from strategic work, sequencing rather than stacking and being honest about capacity - it leads to richer, more demanding conversations The kind that stretch the cognitive capacity of senior teams and the functions who support them Strategic judgement actually lives: in the trade-offs, pacing & constraints. The uncomfortable detail that determines whether a priority moves or stalls These conversations can feel exposing but this is where leadership attention should be Not at the slogan level, but at the level where priorities turn into real work & real choices The priorities that once slipped quietly into the background finally begin to move because they are treated differently

Controversial take: Stop trying to do more marketing. Start eliminating the 60% of activities draining your resources. Here's the prioritisation framework I use with my clients to make every marketing dollar count: 1. For Strategic Direction: Impact/Effort Matrix Stop treating all marketing activities equally. Plot everything on this grid: → High Impact, Low Effort: Growth Accelerators (Must prioritise NOW) → High Impact, High Effort: Strategic Investments (Schedule with dedicated resources) → Low Impact, Low Effort: Quick Wins (Batch process when possible) → Low Impact, High Effort: Resource Drains (Eliminate or automate) The most successful CMOs spend 80% of their time on high-impact activities. Yet most marketing teams spread resources evenly across all quadrants. 2. For Campaign Selection: The 3C Framework Before launching any campaign, run it through these filters: → Check alignment with business goals: Does this directly support our primary objective? → Calculate potential ROI: Estimate returns using: Reach × Conversion × Value → Consider resource constraints: Rate campaigns by resources needed vs. available I've watched founders chase trendy channels with terrible ROI while ignoring proven channels simply because they weren't exciting enough. 3. For Budget Allocation: The 70/20/10 Rule Smart marketers divide their budget following this simple ratio: → 70%: Core marketing activities with proven returns → 20%: Emerging channels showing early success → 10%: Experimental initiatives with learning potential If you are just getting started, flip this model, pour all resources into experiments until you find green shoots. 4. For Daily Execution: The Eisenhower Matrix for CMOs Your time is your most valuable marketing asset. Protect it fiercely: → Urgent & Important: Campaign emergencies, key stakeholder requests aligned with objectives  → Important, Not Urgent: Strategy development, team coaching → Urgent, Not Important: Most emails, status meetings (Delegate these!) → Neither Urgent Nor Important: Vanity metrics, unfocused competitor research (Eliminate) The best marketing leaders I know spend most of their time in the "Important, Not Urgent" quadrant. The struggling ones live in "Urgent, Not Important." The startups I've seen scale fastest don't have bigger budgets or better tools. They're just ruthlessly disciplined about prioritisation. Which of these frameworks would have the biggest impact on your marketing efforts? Share below 👇 ♻️ Found this helpful? Repost to share with your network. ⚡ Want more content like this? Hit follow Maya Moufarek.

9 prioritization systems I use as a founder. Most business owners are busy; but never moving forward. I have run operations at Southwest Airlines,  led M&A deals, and built a company from scratch. Every stage taught me -  Business owners who win are not working more.  They are deciding better. Here are 9 systems that separate reactive business owners from strategic ones. STEP 1: CLARIFY WHAT MATTERS 1. Eisenhower Matrix  ↳ Sort every task by urgent vs. important ↳ Do the urgent and important right now ↳ Schedule the important but not urgent ↳ Delegate the urgent but low value ↳ Drop everything else completely 2. Pareto 80/20 ↳ Find the 20% of activities driving results ↳ Do more of those and cut the rest ↳ Most business owners spread thin across 15 tasks ↳ The top ones go all in on 3 3. Buffett 5/25 ↳ Write your top 25 goals ↳ Circle the 5 that matter most ↳ Work only on those 5 ↳ Treat the other 20 as active distractions STEP 2: EVALUATE YOUR TRADE-OFFS 4. RICE Scoring ↳ Score every project by Reach, Impact, Confidence, Effort ↳ Ship the highest RICE items first ↳ Park the low return projects until later ↳ Stop guessing which initiative matters most 5. MoSCoW Method ↳ Tag everything as Must, Should, Could, or Won't ↳ Clear the Musts first ↳ Schedule the Shoulds for next ↳ Park the Coulds and kill the Won'ts 6. ABCDE Method ↳ A is must do with real consequences ↳ B is should do with mild consequences ↳ C is nice to have with zero consequences ↳ D is delegate it to someone else ↳ E is eliminate it entirely STEP 3: ACT WITH FOCUS 7. Eat That Frog ↳ Do your hardest task first thing ↳ Block 60 to 90 minutes for it before email ↳ Momentum from one big win carries the day ↳ Procrastination dies when the hard thing is done 8. Time Blocking ↳ Schedule deep work blocks on your calendar ↳ Batch your calls and meetings together ↳ Batch your emails and admin together ↳ Guard those blocks like a board meeting 9. Batching ↳ Group similar tasks into single work sessions ↳ Do all your reviews in one sitting ↳ Do all your admin in another ↳ Fewer context switches means more output and less fatigue Here is what I have seen across hundreds of deals. The business owners who get premium exits are not working 80 hour weeks.  They built systems that made decisions for them before the pressure hit. Prioritization is not a productivity hack.  It is how you build a business someone actually wants to buy. What is one system from this list you are putting to work this week? ♻ Repost if this helped. ✅ Follow me, Kinza Azmat for posts on growing, leading, and scaling a business.

I talked to a CEO this week who was frustrated that his company under-achieved its strategic plans for the year, but most employees received high performance scores. His question: “How can that be true??” The answer: There was no intersection between his strategy execution cycle and the goals and performance cycle; those goals never created clarity, urgency or accountability for business outcomes. That’s performative -- not performance -- management.   The fix: 🗓️  Harmonize the goal-setting cycle and performance conversation cycle with the strategy execution cycle. Your company has a strategy execution cadence -- annual strategy refresh, quarterly OKRs with business reviews, quarterly earnings calls, MBRs, staff meetings – all intended to set and drive the organization’s strategic priorities. The goal and performance cycle follow from those strategic priorities. 🎯  Expect goals to change ... the world does, priorities do so effort and feedback should.  Align performance conversations and goal adjustments to follow quarterly QBRs and OKR adjustments. 🏈   Recognize that if teams can’t define and adapt their strategic priorities, individuals can’t either, so build team skills and clarity using a framework like Objectives and Key Results. (And expect both engagement and performance to jump 10-30% with newfound clarity OKRs create.)  

Responsiveness is not a strategy. One of the fastest ways for Enablement teams to lose strategic focus is treating every inbound request as mandatory work. Most requests that come into Enablement are tactical: • revise a deck • update an email cadence • run a lunch and learn • deliver a one-off training Individually, none of those requests seem unreasonable, but over time they create operational drift. Because most of them are disconnected from the company’s actual strategic priorities. And some of requests should not be fulfilled at all. One-off training sessions are a good example. Most organizations already know they rarely create lasting behavior change unless they are connected to reinforcement mechanisms, manager inspection, systems, or an intentional operating rhythm. Without that, the work often becomes activity without impact. The challenge is that once organizations build highly responsive Enablement teams, stakeholders begin expecting every request to become work. This is where teams get stuck. The capacity required to support reactive requests starts competing with the strategic initiatives leadership already aligned on. I learned pretty quickly that prioritization cannot happen through inbound requests alone. The highest-impact work should already be tied to leadership conversations, steering committees, and the company’s biggest bets. That is where prioritization should originate. Then when requests come in, the conversation becomes: • Does this align to a strategic initiative? • Does this displace something more important? • Is this worth the opportunity cost? That creates a much different operating model. I still believe teams need some capacity reserved for responsiveness. Roughly 20% of bandwidth should support business-as-usual work and quick-turn needs. But if 80% of a team’s time is not mapped to strategic business outcomes, the organization eventually becomes reactive instead of intentional. And reactive teams rarely create disproportionate impact. The strongest Enablement teams are not the ones saying yes the fastest. They are the ones most disciplined about how they invest their time.

Choosing everything is choosing nothing. Every priority you add dilutes the plan. Twenty years inside institutions with hundred-million-dollar budgets taught me this: Organizations that delivered had three priorities. Organizations that struggled had twelve. Not a resource problem. An attention problem. When everything is strategic, nothing is. Your team won't remember eight priorities. They won't explain them to stakeholders. They won't defend them when someone asks why you're not doing the ninth thing. So they perform strategy instead of executing it. Meetings. Dashboards. Reports on initiatives nobody defines. Strategy isn't what you'll do. It's what you'll stop pretending you do. The best plans had one question at the center: What are we willing to abandon? Every yes without a no is aspiration dressed as planning. What focus requires: 1) Pick one outcome that defines success for the next 18 months. 2) Eliminate every initiative that doesn't directly advance it. 3) Defend the decision when your board suggests adding one more priority. That third one is where you'll fail. Not from lack of focus. From inability to hold focus when someone with authority wants expansion. The organizations that move the needle chose a direction. Then they disappointed people who wanted them to choose differently. Focus without the willingness to disappoint is just another meeting.

I recently reviewed a strategic plan that had a familiar pattern. 5 Pillars. 4 Goals per pillar. 6 Initiatives per goal. The math? 120 'priority' initiatives. That's on top of everything you do each day. Here's the thing: we're high achievers. We don't want to say no to a good idea, especially when a Board member or a donor is behind it. But when everything is a priority, nothing is. This is how "Strategic Drift" happens. You aren't struggling because of a lack of effort. You're struggling because your leadership team's capacity is being strained by the sheer volume of motion relative to progress. Strategic plans don't usually just stop. They evaporate into the daily grind. They stall under the weight of 120 competing "must-dos." The fix? Move from a Planning Mindset to an Operating Mindset. At MoonshotOS, we help schools build a formal School Operating System. It's the bridge between your high-level strategy and your Tuesday morning reality. Three shifts: • Define Your Critical Annual Priorities: I facilitate the conversations that help leadership teams stop listing and start deciding. We take that list of 120 and distill it down to the vital few that will actually move the needle this year. • The 90-Day Rule: Once you have your annual focus, you stop looking at the 5-year horizon and start looking at the next 90 days. You might select 5, 6, or 8 projects to move simultaneously, but the deadline remains the same. Shorter horizons create the urgency needed to actually finish what you start. • Change the Meeting: If your meetings are just people reporting on how busy they are, you aren't leading, you're spectating. Use that time to unblock the work and ensure those 90-day goals stay on track. You don't necessarily need a new plan. You need a better system to run the one you have. Are you managing 120 initiatives or a focused set of 90 day goals?

The reason your nonprofit's strategic plan can't seem to ignite your team? The plan doesn’t make their daily work easier. Too many strategic plans are packed with big goals and no clear day-to-day alignment. Staff see them as "extra" rather than essential. Board members review them once and move on. Leadership assumes things are moving forward. But the plan sits on the shelf. Instead, make strategy impossible to ignore by integrating it into the daily work. • Break big goals into 90-day execution cycles. Long-term plans fail when short-term action steps are unclear. Reverse engineer what success looks like in 3 months ->1 month -> 1 week.    • Align KPIs with actual job roles. A KPI (Key Performance Indicator) is a measurable goal that tracks progress toward a strategic priority. Each person on your team should see how their work directly aligns within the plan.    • Set a Weekly Focus. Strategy execution can falter when everything is treated as urgent. One approach is to decide on a single priority area or “theme” for the week. Example: Week 1: Donor Communication; Week 2: Program Development; Week 3: Staff Training. A weekly focus doesn’t mean everything else stops, but when a battle of priorities emerges, it helps keep the team on track. • Ensure leadership models follow-through. If executives and board members only talk about the plan once a year, it won’t stick. Progress check-ins should be built into regular meetings. Ask your team what you can do to remove barriers and bring that insight to board meetings.    Strategy isn’t a document. It’s a set of decisions that guide what actually gets done. The more it connects to your daily work, the less likely it is to collect dust. What’s one thing that has helped your organization keep your strategic plan relevant and useful?

When almost anything could matter in the next disaster, many teams default to saying “yes” to every project or development opportunity that appears, because no one wants to be wrong about what ends up making the difference. Instead of trying to manage priorities every day, set a system that batch-decides focus for the next 4–6 weeks. If a capability or program isn’t being actively worked on during that sprint, consider it “closed” for new initiatives by default, and deliberately open only a small set of capabilities or projects for the sprint you are in. During the sprint, owners are accountable for finishing defined deliverables and have implied approval to not continue working on other initiatives. Project selection happens once, in a single prioritization discussion, where projects are weighed against each other—not evaluated in isolation or as one-off decisions—and deferred items have a clear return date. Batching focus this way moves prioritization out of daily anxiety and into a deliberate cadence, so the team can stop hedging and get back to executing what was actually chosen and is the true priority.

𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗬𝗼𝘂𝗿 "𝗚𝗲𝗻𝗶𝘂𝘀 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝘆" 𝗤𝘂𝗶𝗲𝘁𝗹𝘆 𝗗𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗕𝘆 𝗤𝟮 Most strategies don't die because they're bad. 𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗱𝗶𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝗰𝗮𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝘆 𝗻𝗲𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗲𝘀𝗰𝗮𝗽𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝗹𝗶𝗱𝗲 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗸. We confuse "great offsite energy" with "ability to change how work actually gets done." I've watched this happen dozens of times: an offsite in January with craft coffee, sticky notes everywhere, genuine excitement about the future. By February, the vision is inspiring, but calendars, budgets, and roadmaps look suspiciously… identical. Teams are still attending the same three-hour status meetings that everyone agrees are useless. 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝘆 𝘂𝘀𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗳𝗮𝗶𝗹𝘀 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗳𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗹𝘆, 𝗽𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲-𝘀𝗮𝗳𝗲 𝘄𝗮𝘆𝘀: 📊 𝗦𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝘆 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵𝗼𝘂𝘁 𝗿𝗲𝗯𝗮𝗹𝗮𝗻𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴 Everything stays a priority, so nothing behaves like a priority. Real example: A healthcare company added "AI-powered personalization" as a strategic pillar. But they didn't kill a single existing initiative, didn't reallocate budget, and didn't free up engineering capacity. The new "priority" got staffed with whoever had spare cycles. Spoiler: No one had spare cycles. Strategy isn't an addition. 𝗜𝘁'𝘀 𝘀𝘂𝗯𝘁𝗿𝗮𝗰𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻. If you can't name three things you're explicitly NOT doing anymore, you haven't made strategic choices. The most challenging question: 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗱𝗲𝗰𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗼𝗻 𝘄𝗼𝘂𝗹𝗱 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗺𝗮𝗸𝗲 𝗱𝗶𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗹𝘆 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝘄𝗲𝗲𝗸 because of this strategy? 𝗘𝗳𝗳𝗲𝗰𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝘆 𝗶𝘀 𝗮 𝗰𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗮𝗰𝘁 𝘀𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁, 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗮 𝗸𝗲𝘆𝗻𝗼𝘁𝗲: ✓ 𝗖𝗵𝗼𝗼𝘀𝗲 𝘁𝗵𝗿𝗲𝗲 𝗯𝗲𝘁𝘀 worth losing sleep over — and visibly kill or deprioritize things that don't serve them. ✓ 𝗔𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗻 𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲𝘀, 𝗿𝗶𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝘀, 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗱𝗮𝘀𝗵𝗯𝗼𝗮𝗿𝗱𝘀 so people feel the shift in their week. If "customer experience" is your strategy, the exec meeting should start with a customer story, not last quarter's revenue. ✓ 𝗧𝗲𝗹𝗹 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆 𝘀𝗼 𝗰𝗹𝗲𝗮𝗿𝗹𝘆 your most cynical engineer can explain it to a new hire — and more importantly, can use it to make a judgment call when you're not in the room. 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗦𝘂𝗰𝗰𝗲𝘀𝘀 𝗔𝗰𝘁𝘂𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗟𝗼𝗼𝗸𝘀 𝗟𝗶𝗸𝗲 You know strategy is working when: • Someone uses it to say NO to a client request (and leadership backs them up) • Budget conversations reference strategic priorities without prompting • Middle managers can explain the "why" behind resource allocation • 𝗣𝗲𝗼𝗽𝗹𝗲 𝘀𝘁𝗼𝗽 𝗮𝘀𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴 "𝘄𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗱𝗼𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗿𝗲𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝗻?" because the strategy already answered it If your strategy doesn't change how time, attention, and money move through the organization… …𝗶𝘁'𝘀 𝗻𝗼𝘁 𝗮 𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗲𝗴𝘆. 𝗜𝘁'𝘀 𝗷𝘂𝘀𝘁 𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘆 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗺𝗼𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮𝗹 𝘀𝗽𝗲𝗮𝗸𝗶𝗻𝗴. #Strategy #Leadership #Execution #DataStrategy #AI #DigitalTransformation #ChangeLeadership #BusinessStrategy #StrategyExecution #OrganizationalChange