What You Feel: everything IS a priority but you don’t have enough fingers and toes to plug all the holes

Perspective: there are 100 hours of work to do and ten hours of time. There are many holes in the dam and you find yourself plugging the one that leaks the most today.

Most entrepreneurs are in a state of chaos due to too many things to do, little time and very few resources.  Everything needs to be done at the same time.  Financing, people, product, customers, business models, technology, operations, finance, cash, and the list goes on.  Entrepreneurs are in a constant state of hole plugging partly because you lack financial and human resources.  But that is only part of the issue.  The other part, and the part you can change, is the fact that the entrepreneur has not set priorities and aligned the scarce resources of the company to those priorities.

Many entrepreneurs scoff at this.  “We can’t set priorities.  We have to do everything to build the business.”  Every company on the planet has more to do than they have time, money and resources.  Entrepreneurs fail to see this.  They believe that they need to address everything to build the business.  This is a recipe for failure.  Especially with limited resources, you must decide the organization’s top priorities and align resources and processes to those priorities.  When you set something as a priority, you should create an operating structure (e.g., a daily meeting) that brings the organization’s focus and accountability to that priority.  In addition, these top priorities require your best thought and the inputs and expertise from various constituents.  It not only about setting the priorities, but building the process that brings the focus, substance, expertise and accountability of your organization to those priorities.

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