Leaders who try to do everything on their list often end up accomplishing very little. On this episode of Lessons in Leadership, Dave Anderson, President of LearnToLead, breaks down the seventh commandment in his “15 Commandments for Organizational Peak Performance” program. He starts by borrowing a famous quote from the late Stephen Covey:
"The main thing is to keep the main thing, the main thing."
Anderson says the commandment is about focus, and about working inside the discipline of priorities every day. Most people start the day by counting the 40 things on their list. Anderson argues that’s the wrong approach. He suggests identifying the four tasks most likely to drive the result required in a given role, then getting excellent at those.
That clarity has to come before the day starts, not during it. Anderson says leaders need to know up front what they’ve got to say yes to every day. Once that’s settled, saying no or not now to everything else gets a lot easier. He calls that kind of resolve powerful.
Anderson also draws a hard line between activity and accomplishment. A day can be full of motion without producing any real progress. He pushes back on the instinct to treat busyness as a badge of honor, pointing out that leaders often report a busy day as a good one without asking whether it was actually productive. Those, he says, are two different things.
"Schedule your priorities. Don't prioritize your schedule."
Anderson warns that prioritizing your schedule can mean prioritizing low-return work by default, simply because it’s already on the calendar. He closes the lesson by urging leaders to build the day around their priorities rather than trying to squeeze those priorities into a day that’s already full. That approach, he says, is how leaders put first things first and last things not at all.
