“Learn to say No.”
(Elad Gil)
Good advice is actually to reduce your working time and space.
The strategy is born to use capital over time. So if you have no money, you should not spend time on the process. You should experiment and try different tactics to survive. It would help if you prioritized what you experiment first. In this class, we will talk about prioritizing and present tactics to prioritize with the Eisenhower Matrix.
Remind - Getting the right things done is about Prioritizing right.
According to Oussama Amar, Partner at The Family, as an entrepreneur, you should separate your task into two categories: Growth or Not Growth. The founders should focus (be intense and put the highest level of energy) in things that help them grow. Priority for a startup is growth (or eventually at early beginning reaching Product/Market fit).
1. First Steps - Have a Document with all the tasks/ideas listed
Before even starting prioritizing, we recommend that you have a file where you will continuously write the idea and task that comes to your mind that could have a direct impact on helping your business to grow and reach your goals. You can do that on a Spreadsheet or use tools like Trello, Notion, or Wunderlist to name some that I use. Important is that the document/tool should be simple to complete and read.
Then each week (or day), take a look and start prioritizing what needs to be done and how. Hereafter, we present two methods of prioritizing, there are for sure other good tactics. Feel free to share advice on the comment wall on the right of your screen.
2. Prioristing tactics - Eisenhower Matrix
A good tool to help you range your task according to the priority is the Eisenhower Matrix.
The Eisenhower matrix was invented by Dwight D. Eisenhower, 34th president of the United States back in the sixties. A matrix is a tool he used to help himself make tough decisions as President or back when he was engaged in the Army. It allows people to prioritize the things they have to do by classing them into four categories in a matrix made of 2 axis:
- X - Grade of Importance
- Y - Grade of Emergency
The matrix is then divided into 4 squares in which we will order the task:
Urgent & Important:
In this square come all the tasks that are important for you to (1) Survive and (2) Grow. The notion of urgency is determined by the time you have to deliver on the risk to lose the opportunity or worst die.
Those tasks are usually direct links to your OKR or KPIs.
For example:
- Preparing a Proposal of over 50’000 USD for a Client (Sales Team or Founder depending on the importance).
- Fundraising (CEO).
- Fighting an hacker attack against your platform (CTO and Founders).
- Answering the claim of important unhappy customers (Head of Sales, Founders).
- Adaptation of your policies, technology, etc to new enforced norms.
How do you deal with those deliverables?
Action: => Manage! Do First!
- Intense focus (cut distraction: social media, WhatsApp, team interactions).
- You eventually reschedule another meeting, to get it done.
- If needed, you reorganize your team to get there. (example: SWAT team for retention).
Urgent & Not Important:
This category encompasses the things that are not highly important to grow or survive but still critical to solving. Usually, the emergency is related to your brand capital value and the cost of the opportunity to wait before getting it done.
For example:
- Preparing a Sales Proposal of a middle amount for a Client (Sales Team or Founder depending on the importance).
- Changing the logo of your partner on your webpage because it was not the right color.
- Finding an expert to replace your CTO that is sick to give a webinar.
How do you deal with those deliverables?
Action: => AVOID, Delegate or Outsource!
- Delegating is not an easy task. In his book “High Growth Handbook”, Elad Gil encourages learning how to delegate as it is a condition to survive when you scale. It would be best if you experimented with delegating. Try assigning again and again until it works. Some signs you are not delegating well are:
- You tend to leave meetings with many action items for yourself.
- You are still DOING most of the work in an area you had delegated to someone.
- You feel the need to jump on every email thread, join all team calls or read all slack channels at the end of your day.
Not Urgent & Important:
In this square enter all the things you dream of trying, and that can move the needle to bring your company to exponential growth and toward your vision. That said, they are not necessarily urgent for you to survive and keep growing as of now.
For example:
- Development of new features on your App.
- Introduction of a scheme of perks for your most loyal employees
- Reviewing the accounting.
- Going for your run in the morning so you arrive with a fresh mind to work.
How do you handle those deliverables?
Action: => Schedule & Commit (we tend to neglect this quarter, and this is not a good habit!).
- Plan time in your calendar, send invites in advance to the team involved with your projects.
- Brainstorm, Experiment, iterate,
- “Active procrastination” - while walking, taking your bus/Uber, etc.
- Avoid distraction as well -> this is the perfect task to do on a plane.
Not Urgent & Not Important:
Those are the tasks you should immediately delete from your list and head! Yes, it hurts, but come back to the purpose and understand that “you can’t do everything”.
For example:
- A private dinner with the CEO of a luxury Brand while you target the middle class.
How do you deal with those deliverables?
Action: => Limit and eventually Eliminate!
If it is really too hard for you to take it out of your life, create a list of not important deliverables that you can go check from time to time and eventually get done as an “Entertainment” or “Leisure” to change your mind and take a break.
3. Prioritising tactics - The tips of Adora Cheung Partner At YC
Adora Cheung, Partner at YC, recommends alternative methods to prioritise tasks. The idea is to categorise the different tasks you need to get done according to:
- The IMPACT they will have on achieving your weekly goals.
- High: high probability it helps you to hit your goals.
- Medium: not sure if it allows you to reach your goals.
- Low: low probability it helps you reach your goals.
Note that the definition is somehow subjective but the more experiment you run, the more time you spend leading your startup, the more you will have an experience and certain objectivity evaluating the impact.
- The COMPLEXITY of the task. Does it mean how long it takes for you and your team to complete it?
* Easy: is something you can do in less than a day.
* Medium: is something you can do in 1 or 2 days.
* Hard: might take you many days and therefore can’t be completed within the week.
Given, the directive is to reach your weekly goal, the obvious choice is always to go for the combos of high easy combos and high medium that is something attached that has high impact and is easy to do. It would be best if you always did those first and then go to high impact and medium complexity. And what you don't want to do is focus on something that has probably very low probability in helping you achieve your goal and is very hard to do, takes a long time to do.
So just as important as selecting the right tasks to work on is making sure you don't try to do everything at once. Pick enough tasks that you can complete and do well. Doing too many things means you won't be able to finish much of them with much conviction and makes it hard to show progress from week to week.
4. How do I know If I prioritized well?
The answer is quite simple, if you reach your goals then you theoretically prioritized well.
Now, usually, you will reach part of your goals. Therefore it is always important to have an honest reflection about your capacity prioritizing. Ask yourself:
- Is my business growing? Why?
- Did I reach my weekly goal?
- If Yes - what did I do well?
- If Not - what were the main barriers to reach the objective? Did I have control on this?
- If not, will these barriers change next month and allow me to move forward or how could I go about?
- If yes, what can I do better and iterate for next time?
In a word, prioritizing well comes with experience. It’s essential one more time, to be honest about it and to have discipline keeping track of your performance. You will learn by doing and iterating. Take notes of those learnings and apply them. With time, focus, and persistence, you will maximize at the art of prioritizing.
Summary
In this class, we talked about the importance of prioritizing in a startup.
We presented the Eisenhower matrix, one method of prioritization, which consists of dividing your deliverables into four categories:
- Urgent & Important => Do First!
- Urgent & Not Important => Delegate!
- Not Urgent & Important => Schedule!
- Not Urgent & Not Important => Eliminate or Put on hold and get done for “Entertainment” purpose.
And also talk about a tactic used by Y Combinator that consists of ordering task according to their:
- Impact on reaching your weekly goals.
- Complexity to get done (time speaking).
Finally, we discuss how to track your prioritization performance. In a word, if you grow and reach your goal, then you most likely prioritize well. That said, it is more a learning process with ups and downs, rather than a beautiful exponential curve.
In the next class, we will finally discuss how to spread a culture of focus.
