How Leaders Set Priorities

“What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.”

President Eisenhower

A top leader should favor important but not urgent issues. This refers to the idea that a top leader should spend as much as 80% of his time this way. If he is spending a high percentage of the time on ''urgent and important issues, or worse on urgent but not important stuff, his priority system probably has some deep flaws or he has not delegated well. Time spent on not urgent and not important issues is just a rest period.

History

Stephen Covey popularized the Eisenhower’s decision principle in his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Covey created a decision matrix to help individuals make the distinction between what’s important and not important and what’s urgent and not urgent. The matrix consists of a square divided into four boxes, or quadrants, labeled:

Urgent/Important,
Not Urgent/Important,
Urgent/Not Important, and
Not Urgent/Not Important.

Author

Terry Gardiner is the founder and President of Silver Lining Seafoods and NorQuest Seafoods - a medium-size Alaska seafood processing company; and currently a Board member of the Anvil Corporation, an employee-owned company specializing in oil and gas engineering.

His co-operative experiences include member director of the Commercial Fishermen Co-operative association; creation of legislation for the Alaska Commercial Fishing and Agriculture Bank; and advisor to the US Dept of Health and Social Services for the state Health CO-OPs.

Terry served ten years as a member of the Alaska House of Representatives -several legislative committee chairmanships, Speaker of the House, Chairman of the Alaska Criminal Code Commission and board member on various state and federal boards and commissions.

His non-profit experiences include National Policy Director for the Small Business Majority in Washington DC; working with the Herndon Alliance and ForTerra.

Terry authored the leadership book, "Six-Word Lessons to Build Effective Leaders: 100 Lessons to Equip Your People to Create Winning Organizations".

For more check: Terry Gardiner Long bio