Action Plan » Assign & Prioritize

The Purpose Of Assigning & Prioritizing Tasks

The purpose of assigning and prioritizing tasks is to ensure that the most important projects command attention first and that there is accountability for your staff.  Typically the CEO comes up with new task on a daily or weekly basis. In our company Mondays are a bad day for this since our CEO has had the weekend to think of things.

There will always be more tasks than you have time or money to complete!

Whenever possible, try to delegate to your staff or the lowest salaried employee.

This provides several benefits. First, leveraging off of your staff prevents the tempo from slowing down while you are gone. Second, this frees you up to do higher level value-added tasks.

How Often Tasks Should Be Assigned & Prioritized

Since you are working off of the action plan, it is important to keep it up-to-date continuously in order to provide you with a situational awareness of the task list. As projects become complete, new ones will be created. As such, it is also important to re-prioritize your action plan.

How To Assign & Prioritize Tasks

Prioritizing tasks can be done by either:

• Task
• Due Date
• Status
• Person Responsible

Typically, we sort the Action Plan by order of Status, then Due Date. You want to have the status sorted alphabetically. If you use the follow descriptions; Done or completed, In-Progress or blank, then all of the completed tasks will be listed first.

The benefit of this tactic is to remind both the CEO and your team members of the progress that has been made to date! Remember, Out of Sight = Out of Mind!