Planning & Prioritizing for Change and Agility: Leaders Version

How to get out of the weeds and make more time for strategic priorities.
Leading Self in order to better Lead others.

Most people, when faced with change, uncertainty and pressure to go faster, plan less. Yet the productive, agile response is to stop, think and plan more. This highly interactive session will provide you with immensely practical planning strategies to help you rise above the weeds, better execute on strategic priorities and thrive in the new game of hybrid work and constant change.

The virtual version of this course is 90-120 minutes & the in-person version is 2-3 hours.

Priority Mapping (intermediate planning).

  • Stopping, thinking and adjusting for change. Reconciling changing priorities with long term strategy and direction. Making thoughtful (not reactive) choices about what is and what is not a priority for the month ahead.
  • Creating a Priority Map. Translating our strategic priorities and leadership intentions into clear, meaningful, actionable objectives for the month ahead.
  • How to use Powerful Aligning Questions to support ourselves and our team in knowing where to focus our efforts.  

Paying Priorities First (weekly/daily planning).

  • Proactively planning for connect time. Instead of hoping that “connecting” will happen spontaneously (it won’t) we need to plan for connect time with our teams – it’s critical for psychological safety, collaboration, and engagement.  
  • Time blocking for Leaders. How to apply smart strategies to proactively carve out time for developing your team and other strategic priorities. (instead of waiting for a “good time”, when there’s nothing else to do, and no more change or uncertainty.)
  • (Optional) Planning your work-at-home day. How to stay resilient, connected and productive while working at home.

Triaging change. How to prioritize, and if necessary push back on, incoming tasks, requests and issues.

  • How to “resist the noise” of technology (email, IM, Social Media) and create small windows of high quality, undistracted time for deep work.
  • Good questions and other strategies to help us deliver a diplomatic, positive push back on some lower priority requests (with a focus on helping leaders negotiate & reduce meeting time).
Doug Heidebrecht

LET’S TALK.

I help teams and individuals do more with less, reduce stress and carve out more time for their true priorities.