How to prioritize tasks when managing a team

Challenges of prioritizing and managing time

If prioritization were easy, every company in the world would be operating at maximum efficiency. 

But many challenges can pop up when trying to set priorities for your teams. 

Overlapping priorities

The first issue you might encounter is simultaneous projects that all pull from the same company resources, like tools, equipment and employees.

It stands to reason that if your team members are all giving 20% of their efforts to 5 different projects, nothing is getting their 100% focus. Quality dips as a result. Or, nothing even gets done.

Unexpected obstacles

Then, of course, you have those unplanned occurrences that can throw everyone for a loop. When the unexpected happens, something like a power outage, an unplanned employee absence, or even a global pandemic, it can send your projects reeling. 

Unrealistic expectations

Another very common issue managers looking to prioritize tasks face centers around expectations. If you’re expecting your employees to go above and beyond to deliver projects in a short amount of time, you’ll find yourself disappointed and they’ll find themselves burnt out.

When trying to prioritize your team’s time effectively, you have to be realistic. 

5 steps to effectively prioritize tasks

By following these five helpful steps, you’ll be able to better prioritize your team’s tasks.

1. Define clear objectives and goals

Uncertainty is the enemy of productivity. If everyone is working without clear benchmarks and goals, they may all be working toward something different. 

Make sure that your team understands their goals and is crystal clear on what’s expected from them in general and for each new project or task.

This means discussing goals regularly. According to Hypercontext’s State of High Performing Teams in Tech report, 54% of people who are confident in their company’s ability to hit their goals discuss them weekly. 

2. Organize a task list for team members

Beyond verbally communicating goals to your team members, it’s helpful to set up a task list for every project so the entire team can access it at any time. This helps keep everyone aligned and accountable for their role. 

Try using a collaborative project management tool for this, like Todoist or Trello. Everyone, from entry-level employees to team leads, should be able to see their assigned tasks and know which take priority. This can usually be done in a project management platform by assigning a visual aid like a red flag to any task that takes precedence over others.

3. Identify what’s urgent and what’s important

Sometimes it feels like everything is important. 

But, there’s a difference between importance and urgency. 

While urgent tasks are obviously urgent for a reason, it’s essential to not lose sight of your important tasks.

Understanding what’s urgent and what’s not helps create a schedule that allows you to complete urgent tasks right away, but also make time for other important projects — ensuring urgent tasks gets done in a timely manner and important, less urgent, tasks don’t fall off your radar. 

Here’s how it works:

1. Do First: Where you place your most urgent tasks to do on the same day. 
2. Schedule: Includes items of importance that you need to schedule out for the future. 
3. Delegate: Includes urgent tasks that you can delegate to others within your organization. 
4. Don’t Do: As the name implies, this is where you put tasks that are neither urgent nor important, and ultimately don’t need to be done (but maybe you want to get done). This could be something like starting a football pool in the office or taking lunch orders. 

4. Differentiate tasks with similar priorities

Even once you’ve identified your “do first” tasks, “delegate” tasks, and so on, competing priorities will inevitably pop-up throughout the day. Or, maybe you simply have too many “do-first” tasks.

For instance, it might be high priority for your sales team to conduct outreach to your list of leads. But, with more than one list, it’s important to differentiate them so high priority leads more likely to convert quickly are given priority over cold leads. 

5. Be flexible and adaptable

Life is always going to throw unexpected curveballs at your team. Be realistic about what’s achievable and what’s not, and then be willing to adapt. You have to have contingency plans in place to hold onto your prioritization efforts even when things go awry.