The Leadership Playbook: The Lifeboat Exercise

You are in a lifeboat. You are sinking fast. You are surrounded by your ten biggest initiatives. They’re all important to your success, and they’re all heavy. To right the ship and save yourself, seven of your initiatives are going to have to be thrown overboard.

But first, know this. Your ten initiatives aren’t all equal. The most important initiatives weigh more than the less important ones. In fact, they weigh a little more than twice the less important ones. So. If you want to save your most important initiatives, you’ll have to abandon a lot of the lesser ones.

So let’s say you can keep only your three most important projects, goals, or initiatives.

What’s are your biggest and most important projects, goals, or initiatives? Why are these more important than other initiatives that are weighing you down?

What do you risk by continuing to act on the less important projects or initiatives? What do you give up in the way of time or results on your more important projects?

What will you have to say no to or forego to put your time, energy, and focus into those three projects? What will you have to persuade your team to believe if you are going to get them on board and kill their pet projects?

One of the keys to success as a leader is to very carefully, and very thoughtfully choose the organization’s priorities. Lots of things are important, but not everything can be a priority. The very word priority means more important than something else. If you have ten priorities, then you have no priorities.