As a company grows, it becomes critical for each individual to know how they contribute to its growth. A common mistake is to assume that your title alone determines that position for you.

At a company, at any one moment in time, several initiatives are happening simultaneously. A few of those initiatives will be the highest priority (P1), others’ mid priority (P2), and some low priority (P3) ones.

“Strategy is style of thinking, a conscious and deliberate process, an intensive implementation system, the science of insuring future success.” Pete Johnson

It is only natural that most people try to position themselves on the highest priority initiatives. First off, these projects ideally are high conviction high asymmetric bets. Which makes them risky are the ones that are most likely to face the greatest amount of volatility. The internal competition for these is the highest, and management will closely watch contribution.

Unfortunately, the aggregation of strong talent in these P1 priorities slows companies down, and inefficiencies start to creep in. Management can easily do a couple of things that will unlock productivity if they do see this happening:

1. Position your highest performers on the P1 priorities that are ready to take on the volatility and have the experience to deliver. Placing early rising stars into these opportunities is risky, and those individuals may not be ready for them yet.
2. Use P2 priorities to position your rising stars as these initiatives benefit from the momentum a growing organization will be experiencing. These are sweet spots and also where a company can unlock massive amounts of innovation and productivity.
3. Use P3 priorities for individuals who may be struggling and need easy wins to move forward. Another common mistake is to leave recent strong hires on these priorities for too long.

Every individual in a company needs to be able to benchmark their contribution and output to company objectives. This alignment helps to distribute opportunities strategically across the organization and unlocks massive productivity and efficiency gain.