5.1 How do we prioritise?
In English the first known use of the word ‘priority’ is a from a 14th Century Northumbrian poem. There are multiple roots that the word could have been drawn from – the French ‘priorite’ or the Latin ‘prioritas’ but in English this is the earliest. The meaning behind the word was slightly different than we’d recognise today; it meant ‘the quality or state of being prior’. In other words, if something was a priority, it was a thing that had come before. And for 500 years this was its meaning. The word ‘priorities’ didn’t exist. Priority was a singular noun that could be used to describe the state of being prior.
Then, sometime in the 19th or 20th century, but picking up in frequency around the 1930s, it changed. The meaning of priority expanded and over time became generally more well known for meaning the ‘condition of coming first in importance or requiring immediate attention’. And priority as a singular expanded to include ‘priorities’, the plural. Now, you could have multiple things that should be given attention over others in the order of next action. I’m not someone who believes language is immutable and must never evolve so I find this change simply interesting to observe. We have taken a word that embodied a state of what had happened previously and transformed it into a word that described the thing or things that should happen next. And what about phrases like ‘top priority’ – of all the things that be given attention over others, this is the most priority-ous. Or ‘priority request’ – describing an item in a way that demands it be ascended to the top of the pile. Or ‘priority boarding’ – services that allow select groups to gain access to an aeroplane ahead of others. All these are a far cry from the simple, singular state of being prior. And they all reflect the state today of many, many priorities seeming to exist. Perhaps this is why prioritisation seems to be one of the hardest things to do in modern organisations.
I cannot overstate this enough: prioritisation is one of the key outputs you should aim for from any strategic planning exercise – the other being how you will operationalise delivery of the priorities. Too easily strategic planning can devolve to list building of all the things that need be done rather than removing items from the list and ordering those that remain. Tactically planning a detailed activity and touchpoint plan for the next 12 months is not the same as strategy, and to confuse the two can be a huge drain on productivity. Trying to plan tactics for work that may change or does not have sufficient detail defined will probably result in the plan being reworked multiple times before work actually hits the market. This type of behaviour increases rework and adds cost to your value chain with little productive output. Plan strategy only to a level sufficient to ensure effective prioritization, operationalisation and goal clarity Then plan detail only when you need to deliver outputs within those parameters. Finally, ensure that everyone across the marketing organisations understands this process, these decisions and the impact for their role.