There will always be more problems to solve and potential opportunities to explore than you have the resources for. How do you deal with this individually and as a team?
- Working hard is a big part of the solution. Waking up early and staying a little late never killed anyone.
- Working efficiently is also critical. Work with urgency and accuracy without over-processing.
These however are just prerequisites. The real issue is how you prioritize and sequence what you are working on. If you are leading a team it is how effectively you align the team around prioritization and execution. This gets exponentially harder as your company grows.
- The Martian is a great movie focusing on how an astronaut and NASA solve problems.
- Extreme Ownership spends a whole chapter on Prioritizing and Executing
- The 4 Disciplines of Execution is about how to align a larger team around priorities
- Objectives and Key Results is a management system aligning individuals, business units and the company around a quarterly prioritization and execution operating rhythm.
- Last Planner System is a tool for helping project teams prioritize, execute and learn.