When everything is labeled “high priority,” nothing truly is. This paradox stems from unbridled project intake and unclear prioritization— two critical challenges facing strategic leaders today. When the project spigot is wide open, transformational initiatives stall unexpectedly, resources scatter across countless efforts with minimal impact, and teams perpetually fight fires instead of building the future.
The consequences are severe: top talent burns out from constant context switching, strategic visions die in endless priority debates, and leadership credibility erodes as promises go unfulfilled. All the while, organizations waste resources on projects that sound important but deliver no tangible value, duplicate efforts that waste precious time, and half-finished endeavors that become monuments to good intentions.
Two critical process failures drive this chaos, and strategy and governance leaders must address them to restore focus and enable true value creation.
A Vicious Cycle: Too Much Demand. Too Little Prioritization
Demand Disarray
Demand management is the structured capture and evaluation of projects, initiatives, and requests – the things your organization and people could/should focus on – to understand their alignment to goals, potential value, and resource needs. When functioning properly, it ensures only viable proposals advance for consideration.
In most cases, demand gone awry is instantly recognizable to portfolio leaders: Hours wasted playing “project detective,” hunting down basic information. Other signs may include:
- Multiple intake channels that obscure accountability for outcomes
- Tidal waves of unstructured requests via email
- Decisions made in hallway conversations and impromptu meetings
All of these and more force teams into perpetual reactive mode, often putting work that delivers tangible value in the rearview. Bye-bye strategy.
Prioritization Pandemonium
Prioritization is the process of selecting and ranking projects and initiatives based on their importance and strategic value to determine what gets funded and worked. When broken, it creates a culture where all initiatives are critical, undermining leadership credibility with the board and peers.
A lack of standards for prioritization can cause a ripple effect throughout the organization: More time spent in priority battles than delivering value. Team motivation plummets as work is repeatedly deprioritized without explanation. Strategic vision fails as resources remain trapped in politically protected projects and initiatives rather than flowing to objectively valuable opportunities.
Without objective criteria for evaluating and ranking initiatives, organizations become stuck in “the priority paradox”— the more strategic initiatives they add, the less they’ll actually achieve.
Four Process Patterns That Derail Strategic Execution
- The Priority Paradox: Strategic decisions based on squeaky wheels rather than objective value.
- The Overcommitment Trap: Saying yes to more than teams can reasonably execute.
- The Reactive Cycle: Constantly shifting “urgent” priorities, preventing meaningful progress.
- The Information Gap: Wasting countless hours tracking down basic information needed for effective evaluation and decision making.
The Process Maturity Matrix: Where Does Your Organization Stand?
Understanding where your organization stands is the first step in moving away from the chaos of scope creep towards a value-centric focus. This process maturity matrix offers a simple way to visualize the landscape of demand management and prioritization capabilities and make an estimation of where you may be and where you want to go:
First Steps to Cull the Chaos
No matter where your organization sits on this matrix, there are practical steps you can take toward ending project and initiative overload:
For executives: Establish clear value criteria to enable saying no. Define what strategic value truly means to create the courage to say no to almost everything else.
For strategy and governance teams: Implement objective evaluation processes that bring leadership into the fold to create transparency around why certain initiatives advance while others wait.
For practitioners: Standardize intake information requirements to stop playing project request detective. Establish clear requirements for what information must accompany any request for resources.
These initial steps focus on process improvement before technology implementation—creating structure through how you work.
Moving Forward: From Chaos to Strategic Focus
Intake overload and the chaos that follows aren’t primarily a people problem—they’re a process problem. When strategic intent fails to translate into meaningful action, the culprits are usually broken demand management and prioritization processes rather than team capability or commitment.
In our next blog, we’ll dive deeper into demand management—showing how to “trade the duct tape for a solid demand management structure” that transforms how work enters your organization. We’ll explore practical approaches that work at any maturity level to create the foundation for strategic execution.
Remember: “Strategic leaders don’t just set priorities—they create the courage to say no to almost everything else.” That courage comes from clear processes that connect strategic intent to daily action.
Stop sacrificing strategy for questionable quick wins. Clear the chaos and accelerate value delivery.
