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Stop Stacking Your Priorities Like Pancakes

Right, this one needs to be said. I see it everywhere – organizations that have finally cracked the code on setting clear priorities, only to watch their execution fall apart because nobody thought about sequence.

It's like having a perfectly organized closet where every item of clothing is neatly folded and labeled, but when you try to get dressed in the morning, you discover you've put your shoes on before your socks. The individual pieces are great. The order? Not so much.

The Problem With Priority Pancakes

Most leadership teams approach priorities like they're stacking pancakes – one on top of another, with no real thought about how they interact or which ones need to come first. They'll announce three "top priorities" for the quarter, assign teams to each one, and then react with surprise when everything gets jammed up in a spectacular collision of competing demands.

I learned this the hard way early in my consulting days. A client had beautifully articulated strategic priorities: improve customer retention, expand into healthcare, and modernize their platform infrastructure. All good stuff. All important. All assigned to different teams with clear ownership.

Six weeks later, I got the panicked call. The healthcare expansion team was blocked because they needed the platform infrastructure that wasn't ready yet. The retention team was fighting with the infrastructure team for the same DevOps resources. And leadership was pulling their hair out wondering why nothing was moving forward despite having "clear priorities."

The issue wasn't the priorities themselves – it was that nobody had thought about the sequence. They'd created what I now call "priority pancakes" – a stack of important work with no logical flow.

Why Smart People Make This Mistake

There's something about achieving clarity on strategic priorities that makes leaders want to immediately sprint toward all of them. It's understandable. You've done the hard work of figuring out what matters most. You're excited. You want momentum. So you launch everything at once.

But this approach ignores a fundamental truth: priorities don't exist in isolation. They have relationships, dependencies, and resource requirements that create natural sequencing constraints. Pretending these don't exist doesn't make them go away – it just makes them surface later as execution problems.

Think about it this way: if you were renovating a house, you wouldn't start painting the walls, installing the plumbing, and rewiring the electricity all at the same time. Some things have to happen first. Other things can run in parallel. And some things need to wait until earlier work is complete.

The same logic applies to strategic priorities, but somehow we forget this when we move from construction projects to business initiatives.

The Dependency Mapping Reality Check

The first step to fixing priority sequencing is brutally honest dependency mapping. This means sitting down with your initiative owners and asking the uncomfortable questions:

  • What do you need from other teams to be successful?
  • What foundational work has to be complete before you can start?
  • Where might you compete with other priorities for the same resources?

I remember working with a game studio that had three major priorities: launching a console version, implementing live operations, and improving player retention. Sounds reasonable, right? Until we mapped the dependencies.

The console launch needed the engineering team's full attention for platform optimization. The live operations required backend infrastructure upgrades from... the same engineering team. And the retention improvements? They needed data analytics capabilities that depended on... you guessed it, the backend infrastructure work.

Once we laid this out visually, the logical sequence became obvious. Infrastructure first, then console launch and retention work in parallel (since they used different parts of the engineering capacity), then live operations once the foundation was solid.

Creating Delivery Waves That Actually Work

Instead of launching everything simultaneously, smart organizations use "delivery waves" – logical groupings of work that respect dependencies and resource constraints while maintaining momentum.

Wave 1 might be your foundational work – the infrastructure, hiring, or platform improvements that enable everything else. Wave 2 could be your customer-facing initiatives that build on that foundation. Wave 3 might be your expansion or optimization work that requires the earlier waves to be complete.

The key is making these waves feel intentional rather than like delays. When you can explain to your team, "We're doing infrastructure first because it unlocks faster delivery of customer features later," that feels strategic. When you just say, "Sorry, we have to push back the customer work," that feels like poor planning.

This is where the narrative becomes crucial. You're not just sequencing work – you're telling a story about how the pieces fit together. People can get behind a story. They struggle with arbitrary timelines.

The Resource Collision Problem

Even with perfect dependency mapping, priorities can still crash into each other if they compete for the same limited resources. This is especially common with shared services – your data team, your QA function, your DevOps engineers, or your design resources.

The solution isn't to hire more people (though sometimes that helps). It's to actively surface these collisions during planning and make conscious trade-offs about timing.

I worked with a SaaS company that discovered all three of their strategic priorities required significant data engineering work. Instead of pretending this wouldn't be a problem, they got explicit about it. Priority A got the data team for Q1. Priority B got them for Q2. Priority C would start its data work in Q3.

This felt uncomfortable at first – nobody likes being told their priority has to wait. But it was honest about reality, and it allowed each initiative to get the focused attention it needed rather than having the data team spread thin across everything.

Your Roadmap Needs Backbone

The final piece is creating a "roadmap backbone" – 3-5 cornerstone initiatives that anchor your entire execution plan. Everything else gets sequenced around these backbone elements.

Think of it like planning a dinner party. You start with the main course (your backbone initiatives), then figure out the sides, appetizers, and dessert that complement it. You don't just throw everything in the oven at once and hope it works out.

Your backbone initiatives should be:

  • High-impact work that enables other priorities
  • Resource-intensive enough that they need dedicated focus
  • Foundational to your strategic direction for the next 6-12 months

Once these are locked in and sequenced, you can layer in supporting work, quick wins, and experimental projects around them.

The Payoff of Proper Sequencing

When you get priority sequencing right, something magical happens. Teams stop competing with each other and start building on each other's work. Dependencies become enablers rather than blockers. And execution starts feeling smooth instead of chaotic.

More importantly, you build momentum. Instead of having five initiatives that are all 20% complete and stuck, you have completed work that enables the next wave to move faster.

The goal isn't to slow down – it's to speed up by removing the friction that comes from poor sequencing. Sometimes the fastest way forward is to resist the urge to do everything at once.

Your priorities deserve better than being stacked like pancakes. Give them the logical sequence they need, and watch your execution transform from chaos to choreography.

Ready to build execution systems that actually work without burning out your team? Download our free guide: Survive and Thrive – 7 Critical Moves for On-Time Delivery Without Burning Out Your Team 👉 www.techleaderadvance.com/thrive

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