Your top priority is ...
17/12/25 08:19 Filed in: Management
One of my favourite aphorisms is
If you have two top priorities you don't have a top priority
A situation that arrives all too frequently is that everything is important, resources are limited and changing priorities lead to relative inaction on anything.
This week's Agile Mentors Podcast provided an insight from the Marines (#170: Leadership Lessons from the Marine Corps with Tanner Wortham) about how having a goal and pre-declaring which other goals should be sacrificed (if necessary) provides a way to make progress.
The idea that Tanner Wortham disclosed was that the Marines are organised around the "rule of three" "mission first" thinking.
Essentially the highly hierarchical structure is based around a primary entity and two supporting entities. Each is assigned their goal but if the primary entities goal is at risk the supporting entities sacrifice their goals to further the success of the primary entity.
This provides:
And perhaps an answer to the question of what to do about sprint goals in diffuse teams who have difficulty deciding on a single sprint goal. A structure with a primary goal and other goals (all important) but we decide which to sacrifice in advance should we have to allows more inclusion but clarity of what to do should all the goals prove too optimistic.
Essentially the highly hierarchical structure is based around a primary entity and two supporting entities. Each is assigned their goal but if the primary entities goal is at risk the supporting entities sacrifice their goals to further the success of the primary entity.
This provides:
- clarity of goals
- pre-thinking of importance of goals
- allows the entities to both co-operate and be flexible
And perhaps an answer to the question of what to do about sprint goals in diffuse teams who have difficulty deciding on a single sprint goal. A structure with a primary goal and other goals (all important) but we decide which to sacrifice in advance should we have to allows more inclusion but clarity of what to do should all the goals prove too optimistic.