HOW YOU USE PRIORITIES NOW

Priorities Now is a tool for managing work effectively - for deciding or advising on what to do, based on agreed consistent priorities. You can use Priorities Now to analyse and readily resolve problems, particularly those critical issues which involve many factors, many people, or insufficient information. Or you can use Priorities Now to agree coherent policies and objectives. Indeed you do both at once, formulating those decisions which will consistently reflect your priorities and policy in practice.

1. You state the ISSUE in plain English.
2. You compare the OPTIONS for resolving the issue. (You put your views to Priorities Now direct)
3. In team decisions, you note who's involved ( and their relative influence as DECISION-MAKERS).
4. Priorities Now works out your individual PRIORITIES (and reconciles your divergent team PRIORITIES).
5. Your individual and t.eam DECISIONS are lucidly displayed, stored and printed-out, together with CHECKS on how far you're consistent, how far the team agrees, and how far it matters.

Stalemate! The conflicting parties seem so committed to their sectional interests they're pulling the organisation apart. The Production Controller is mortgaging the future for short-term expedients. While the ever-optimistic Marketing Director discounts any short-term measures to cope with the current crisis. The Sales Director pursues some undisclosed interest of his own. The Personnel Director's stand-in is confused and at a loss. Wearily, the Acting Accountant proposes the same recipes which failed in the past. Even the compromises hinted at by the Managing Director seem on this occasion to skirt the real issue. So each person runs through Priorities Now.
Only the MD turns out consistent. But after a surprisingly brief and enlightening discussion, they are all well satisfied with the consistent team consensus which a second round of Priorities Now produces. "Reasons and realism re-assert themselves" the MD concludes.

An Individual Decision

"We're at another crossroads". The manager had half-decided on diversification. But nagging doubts persisted. She hadn't enough information on performance and found it difficult to evaluate the effects of competitor activity. And there were "too many factors” So she listed the four main options - diversification, vertical expansion, horizontal expansion, or consolidation of present markets. She considered each option in the context of a major, a medium or a minimum level of competition, and expanded her list to 12 options. From a 20-minute round of Priorities Now, she elicited her consistent priorities between all 12 options, with reasons and evidence. She opted for horizontal expansion, predicting a medium-level of competition. For she'd come to recognise that her earlier decision had not reflected the implications of her own analysis of the factors involved. Thirty minutes later she'd produced her specific product plan to carry out this horizontal expansion using a second round of Priorities Now.

Training

Faced with the urgent need to retrain 7 professional staff as middle managers, the Training section of a public service organisation used Priorities Now as the training tool. Experienced managers already in post drew up a typical sample of their difficult management problems, clarifying the reasoning behind their decisions with the help of Priorities Now. The 7 trainee managers tackled the same sample of real life problems, using Priorities Now as a self­training exercise. They evaluated their own results against those of their more experienced colleagues ( a procedure sometimes repeated on other decisions after the trainee managers took up their posts). This notably successful course of training involved only one introductory session on Priorities Now followed by a half­day's joint discussion and evaluation.