We've all been there.

You come out of a planning meeting (or maybe just a good conversation with your leadership team) and for a brief moment, everything feels clear. 

You know what matters. You've got the list. You're aligned.

And then the week starts.

The bank needs updated financials. A key client has an issue that only you can resolve. Someone on your team is struggling and needs your attention. A competitor just made a move you didn't see coming. 

By Thursday, the list is still there, but you're not working on it. And neither is anyone else.

This is the part nobody talks about honestly. 

The advice we all receive is to pick our top priorities and protect them. And I've given that advice countless times myself. But the longer I was in the seat, the more I realized that the priority list isn't actually the goal. 

Getting things done — the right things, over months, sometimes over a year — while still running the business every single day. That's the goal. And those are two very different challenges.

We tend to treat priority-setting like an event. The offsite, the planning session, the strategic review. We leave energized, commitments made, initiatives named. And then reality begins to negotiate with the plan.

What I found works better is building priority-setting into how you operate. This isn’t a one-time exercise; it’s an ongoing process. 

It’s one where people have time to digest what's been discussed before anything gets locked in. It’s where good ideas that don't make the cut get parked somewhere visible, so they're not lost and nobody feels dismissed. And finally, it’s one where the team operates by a shared rule: before something new gets added to the list, something already on it has to come off.

That last part is the hardest. Because everything feels important, and nobody wants to be the one who blinks.

This learning was explicit for me during an M&A process. The opportunity was real — the kind you don't walk away from — but it arrived on its own schedule, not mine. Suddenly I needed my core team focused on due diligence, integration planning, and stakeholder conversations, all at once. 

The problem was that those same people were already carrying the work we'd committed to. Nothing was going to pause itself. So we had to make the call — explicitly, and as a team — about what moved, what waited, and who picked up what got set down.

It was uncomfortable, and in the moment, disappointing. We put a lot of work into choosing where to focus and why. We had teams engaged. Vendors were active.

But ultimately, the M&A opportunity had transformative potential. And because of that, it was the right conversation for us to have. That's the discipline we don't talk about enough.

Trading priorities in real time, when a can’t miss opportunity or something more important shows up, isn't a sign that you've lost control. It’s not a sign that you didn’t pick the right priorities several months beforehand. It's how good leaders manage what comes at them, and especially so in small to mid-sized businesses. 

And, in my opinion, that deserves the respect it's due.

So here's what I'd ask you to think about this week: When the unexpected lands on your desk — and it will — does your team know how to trade priorities without it turning into a political conversation? That capacity is worth more than any list you'll ever make.

Hit reply and let me know what you think. I read every response.

Until next week,
Cabot