Why Is Prioritization So Difficult?

By Carl Manthe, Director and Medical Technology Industry Lead, Integrated Project Management Company, Inc.

We all have limited time and resources, both in our personal lives and in our work, so we must make choices and prioritize things for ourselves all the time. But when it comes to prioritizing within an organization, most people rate their companies poorly. What gets in the way?

Understanding the challenges can help us find ways to overcome them.

Prioritization requires people to make decisions, so it is dependent on human nature. Failing to account for human nature will lead any prioritization system to fail. Let’s look at some of these factors.

Procrastination or decision paralysis

• Making choices means saying no to some ideas or options, even some good ideas. This can be uncomfortable for some, so they may put it off. Try saying “not yet” instead of “no” to these ideas. Perhaps have a parking lot to hold them for reconsideration later.
• Some decisions can be scary because they are too big or considered too important. Try breaking these into smaller parts to make them less dauting. Or run pilot projects to prove the merits before making a big commitment.
• Having too many options to choose from can also lead to paralysis. It is important to have objective measures, applied rigorously, to decide between competing ideas.
• Not having enough objective data or information can hamper decision making. But perfect data or full information is never available. Prioritization always involves some level of uncertainty. This is one reason prioritization exercises need to be run on a regular basis.

Setting the wrong focus

• An organization must have a clear mission, vision, strategy, and goals. If these goals are lacking or missing, it is impossible to focus the effort, make proper choices, or measure outcomes.
• Too often, resources are supplied for the immediate needs and there is nothing left for the long-term needs. Where is the organization going and how is it going to get there? Prioritization should begin by dedicating resources focused on the big picture needs and the vision. Breaking down the long-term goals into shorter-term objectives might also be helpful.
• Similarly, prioritizing the urgent over the important can shortchange the most important actions and deprive them of the needed resources. Recognizing the differences between these needs can help prioritize them. Appling a so-called Eisenhower Matrix can help decide if you should “do,” “schedule,” “delegate,” or “delete” a task.
• Sometimes conflicting priorities can get in the way of prioritization. We’ve all seen pet projects approved or that could not be killed although they promised little value. Objective measures can help with this, but it is also important to look at who has power in the organization. It is critical to tie the prioritization decisions back to the overall strategy.

This is just the start and certainly there are other factors to consider. But accounting for human behavior and setting up a structured system that retains some flexibility and adaptability will certainly help.

Let’s look at an example

In the medical device industry, a major change in regulations to serve the European market, called EU-MDR, has been looming for several years. This is a significant overhaul of the way medical devices are registered and approved. It affects new products but could also require major remediation for on-market products.

Dealing with this change required prioritization on several levels. First, companies had to recognize this as a serious threat to their products and the associated revenue. They had to prioritize resources to understand the details of these changes and assess the work and cost to bring their products, both on-market and in development, into compliance. Having this objective information was critical to the next (and hardest) step: the strategic prioritization of their product portfolio. For most companies there would not be enough time, resources, or return on investment to remediate every product. Older designs may have to be discontinued, with resources prioritized to the next generation of products. But could the next generation be ready, approved, and launched in time to prevent a sales gap?

Human nature bias makes it difficult for companies to prioritize at both stages. Complicating the initial assessment is a pervasive attitude in the industry that once a product is approved and marketed, it is good to go and is (usually) exempt or grandfathered from future regulation changes. But that is not the case this time and it is difficult to overcoming this bias.

Complicating the next stage, portfolio prioritization, is that it can be very hard to move away from your existing sources of revenue to new or updated products. The information available to make important decisions is incomplete with many unknowns. Will the new generation be ready in time? What if there are technical challenges or problems getting regulatory approvals? So these decisions have to be made in uncertainty and the risks are high. This can paralyze the organization while they seek to gain more certainty.

Generating objective information, quantifying the opportunities and the risk, having a structure for objectively evaluating the information, and accounting for contingencies are all essential to overcome the logjam. We have to accept that the prioritization is imperfect and have a process for rechecking base assumptions when new information becomes available.

Have you seen these factors affect your prioritization? Company leadership may not identify human nature biases as the root cause of the problem. If your prioritization process doesn’t account for human nature, it is likely to repeatedly fall victim to these roadblocks.

Service: Project Portfolio Management
Industry: Medical Technology

— Published September 12, 2023