We are always clear in our communication and our priorities

”We are clear about what applies.” From the management room, the priorities may seem obvious: the decisions have been made, the messages have been communicated, and the direction has been established. However, when these same priorities are to be implemented in the daily lives of employees, the picture may be different. What should be done first when several initiatives are competing for the same resources? What can wait? And what decisions apply when a new, urgent problem suddenly demands attention? The difference between communicated intent and practical reality is the starting point of the article. Clarity is not only about what is said, but also about how consistently the organization’s decisions, resource allocation, and follow-up support the stated direction. If Friday’s priorities are changed on Monday, it does little to help if the presentation was clear. Projects lose momentum, resources are diverted, and already begun work needs to be rescheduled. The level of activity remains high, while important deliverables are pushed back. In larger organizations with a high rate of change, many stakeholders, and extensive maintenance debt, this contradiction becomes particularly pronounced. Strategic development must be implemented in parallel with ongoing operations, while previously postponed problems reappear as urgent matters. Each individual reallocation may be understandable, but together they can make it difficult to maintain the long-term direction. Therefore, the question of unclear priorities also needs to be examined as a management problem and a potential capacity problem. Is there room to implement what has been decided? Is the maintenance debt being systematically managed? And are there clear exceptions that can actually change the priority order? This article examines what happens when decisions meet these conditions and how the organization can create more stable priorities, make the consequences of change visible, and strengthen implementation. Clarity only arises when the stated direction also holds true in day-to-day work.

Zero point:

• Management makes priority decisions, for example at Friday’s management meeting.
• The decisions change shortly thereafter when new requirements, problems, or risks escalate from the business.
• The PMO and the project organization are forced to continuously re-prioritize resources.
• Projects with a long duration (>6 months) lose momentum or never reach completion.
• The organization experiences a high level of activity but low delivery capacity.

Desired location:

• Priorities should be stable over time.
• Only exceptional events should be able to change decided priorities.
• The project must be able to be implemented without recurring disruptions.
• Maintenance debt must be managed in a structured manner without permanently competing out strategic initiatives.

What is the underlying cause?

The problem is rarely that the management lacks decision-making ability. The problem is more often that the organization tries to manage two different businesses in the same portfolio:

1. Strategic change (project and transformation)
2. Accumulated maintenance debt and operational problems

When the technical, procedural, or organizational debt becomes too great, it begins to generate constant disruptions that push strategic initiatives aside. The organization then believes it has a prioritization problem when in reality it does not. capacity and debt problems.

Knowledge areas that are required or need to be utilized

Additional important areas:

• SAFe Lean Portfolio Management Read more->
• Management of Portfolios (MoP) Read more->
• TOGAF or equivalent architecture management Read more->
• OKR management Read more->
• Theory of Constraints Read more->

Proposal for a solution in the short term

Action 1: Pre-”Priority Freeze”. After each portfolio decision, a freeze period is introduced. Example:

• Priorities are determined on a monthly basis.
• No projects should be re-prioritized between meetings of the decision-making body.
• Exceptions require a decision by the management group.

The goal is to stop the ”Monday phenomenon”.

Action 2: Create a category for urgent matters. Many organizations treat everything as the highest priority. Instead, they have three categories:

When a new case arises, it must be placed in a category before resources are redistributed.

Action 3: Make the cost of re-prioritizing visible. For example, measure:

• Number of re-prioritizations per month
• Lost project hours
• Delays
• Projects that have been paused

Examples:

If a project team of 20 people loses two weeks every quarter due to re-start work, that corresponds to approximately 800 lost work hours per quarter. When this cost becomes visible, management’s behavior often changes.

Action 4: Introducing a ”Change Budget”. For example, reserve:

• 70 % capacity for strategic initiatives
• 20 % for technical debt
• 10 % for unforeseen events

When the 10 percent are consumed, new urgent initiatives must compete with already decided activities.

Action 5: Define what will break a priority. Example: Can break the priority:

• Legal requirements
• Information security incident
• Customer influence above defined threshold
• Significant economic risk

Must not break the priority:

• An individual manager wants faster delivery
• New idea
• Local optimizations
• ”Now we have discovered something important”

Proposal for a long-term solution

Objective: Portfolio management with two separate flows. Many organizations incorrectly conflate development and debt management. We recommend two parallel portfolios:

Portfolio A – Strategic transformation. Responsible for:

• Business development
• Digitalization
• New abilities
• Strategic projects

Timeframe:

• 1-3 years

Portfolio B – Debt reduction. Responsible for:

• Technical debt
• Process debt
• Competence debt
• Infrastructure modernization

Timeframe:

• Continuous

Ahead of the Portfolio Review Board. The board or management often makes decisions based on the latest signals from the business. Instead, a forum should be established that assesses:

• Strategic value
• Risk
• Resource needs
• Addictions
• The impact on debt

Decisions are then made based on the same information base.

Measure the stability of the portfolio. Proposed KPIs:

Manage maintenance debt explicitly. Our experience is that the likely rotor issue in the description is:

The organization has been dragging its feet on these issues for several years. Once the debt becomes large enough, it creates a constant influx of urgent activities that compete with long-term initiatives. Unless this debt is reduced, no new prioritization framework will work in the long term.

Responsibility and Drive (RACI)

Explanation:

• R = Responsible
• A = Accountable
• C = Consulted
• I = Informed

The critical principle is that there should only be a decision-making body for priorities. In practice, many organizations allow every manager to renegotiate priorities on an ongoing basis, which undermines governance.

Need for consultants

Consultants should only be used when internal expertise is lacking or when an independent analysis is needed.

Particularly valuable is an external analysis of:

• Technical debt
• Process debt
• Capacity utilization
• Number of ongoing initiatives

Many organizations then discover that they have 3-5 times more ongoing initiatives than their actual capacity allows for.

Summary and short action plan

An overall conclusion is that the problem probably does not primarily stem from poor prioritization but from The maintenance debt has become so large that it continuously creates new ”urgent” priorities.. The management then reacts rationally to each new problem, but the result is strategic instability.

The most likely reason for the bottleneck is not a lack of decision-making, but rather that the organization has accumulated more problems, dependencies, and debts over a long period than it has the capacity to handle. When this happens, each new problem becomes legitimate, but the sum of all legitimate exceptions means that nothing important is actually completed. This is a classic symptom of an organization’s demand exceeding its delivery capacity.

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Rolf Olsson Partner

Rolf Olsson is one of the founders of Chief of Staff Platform and specialist in business transformation, strategy implementation, and management support. Rolf has worked more than 40,000 hours as a consultant and writes about how the Chief of Staff role, modern governance, AI, and change management can help organizations increase their execution capabilities and create sustainable business results. Rolf has a degree in civil engineering, a master's degree in IT Management, and a PhD in Computer Science. Comments or remarks on this article can be emailed to: glossary@chiefofstaff.se

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