Strategic Prioritization and Goal Setting: Keys to Success in Your Leadership Role
Insights from Evolve Career
As you step into your new leadership position, effectively managing your workload and aligning priorities with key stakeholders are crucial for achieving success. To ensure clarity on what needs to be accomplished, it is essential to conduct a thorough assessment of work priorities and establish alignment between your superiors and other stakeholders who rely on your services or the services of your team. Here are the steps you can take to identify work priorities and align them with organizational goals:
1. Identify and Gather Work:
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Gather current project lists
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Review your job description and those of your direct reports
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Ask each team member to list their responsibilities and/or projects
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Gather input from key stakeholders (via listening tour); clarify what's required for each item and the timing of the deliverables
Eliminate duplication and consolidate common themes
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2. Do a Preliminary Prioritization:
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Do you have enough information to understand the priorities? If not, what additional information will be helpful?
Is there an accelerated priority to the work that's due in the next 3 months?
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3. Identify the Strategic Goals of the Company:
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Review any information you received during your on-boarding; if your company is publicly traded, you can review the annual report
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Request a list of the company goals from your manager
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What other resources do you need to understand the company goals?
​4. Revisit the Prioritization:
Consider how your priorities are aligned with the organization's priorities
Are there contributions you could make to the company's goals?
Is there low-value work that is being done that could be eliminated to make room for more high-value contributions?
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5. Validation and Communication:
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Validate the prioritization with your manager or board of directors to ensure alignment. Once validated, effectively communicate the priorities to your team, ensuring a clear understanding among all members.
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How will you know if you understand your priorities? You will:
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Confirm that you do not have ten #1
Align with your manager or board of directors that you have the correct priorities
Know if your work is aligned with the corporate priorities
Defining Metrics for Success
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As you consider priorities, what will be your measures of success? Some say, “what gets measured gets done.” If you’re setting stretch goals, you’ll want to identify adequate performance on a goal versus a stretch goal.  It’s to your advantage to establish formal metrics and define when they’ll be measured, regardless of the process in your organization. 
So, how can you define metrics for success? Here are some ideas: 
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​ 1. Identify Existing Metrics:
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Identify the formal metrics defined for your role, the department, and the company that you influence.  
Use bonus or incentive plan information to identify target metrics. 
Review the business case for projects or on-going programs you or your team are responsible for delivering which may have targets for cost-savings, revenue production, or customer engagement. 
Gather metrics from the team that they have been (or will be) tracking. 
Consider if it would be helpful to have interim metrics and/or milestones on large projects. 
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​2. SMART Goals:
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Ensure that the metrics are clear. good goals are specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely (SMART)
Specific: A highly well-defined, clear goal. Rather than being overly broad, such as increasing revenue or guest satisfaction, the goal should be very specific. For example, “we will increase total revenue for the XYZ division by 5% by the end of next year (vs this year).” 
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Measurable: Identify the specific metric you will measure and its indication of progress. 
Achievable: The goal should be realistic and attainable. 
Relevant: The goal should be germane to the people who are responsible for achieving it. For example, sales people can have a revenue target that they can impact; however, if a person’s role can’t impact the metric, people will be frustrated.  
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3. Measurement Frequency and Availability
Determine when the metrics will be measured (annually, quarterly, monthly, weekly, daily).  
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Identify if the metrics are available in a timely and efficient manner (i.e. level of effort to get the appropriate metrics at the frequency desired). If it takes too much time or manpower, it may not be a good use of resources.
​Confirm that there is enough time to measure the results. For example, if you have a goal to improve employee engagement by the end of the year, but that metric is only measured annually at mid-year, the data may not be available when needed. 
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4. Validation and Communication: Discuss with the team how they will contribute to achieving the goal.   
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Consider modifying a metric if it doesn’t align with the team’s activities
If the goal is established, understand any obstacles in achieving these outcomes and potential solutions
If the goal is not established, consider setting minimum goals and stretch targets
Identify the person/people responsible for providing the metrics and confirm the level of effort needed
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How will you know if you understand your priorities? You will:
A list of metrics that are tracked at the appropriate intervals
Alignment with your manager or board of directors that ensures you have the correct metrics
Identified solutions to address potential obstacles in achieving your goals
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