Aligning Team Objectives with Changing Priorities

Every task that comes to me is urgent and important. Sound familiar? This is a challenge many of us face daily. Early in my career, prioritization was relatively straightforward—my manager told me what to focus on. But as I grew, the game changed. Suddenly, I was managing a flood of requests, far more than I could handle, and the signals from others weren’t helpful. Everything was “important.” Everything was “urgent.” Often, it was both. To handle this effectively, I realized I needed to develop an internal prioritization compass. It wasn’t easy, but it was transformative. Here are 6 strategies to help you build your own: 1/ Be crystal clear on key goals Start by understanding your organization’s goals—at the company, department, and team levels. Attend organizational forums, departmental reviews, or leadership updates to stay informed. When in doubt, use your 1:1s with leaders to ask: What does success look like? 2/ Deeply understand KPIs Metrics guide decision-making, but not all metrics are equally valuable. Take the time to understand your team's or function's key performance indicators (KPIs). Know what they measure, what they mean, and how to assess their impact. 3/ Be assertive to protect priorities Not every task deserves your attention. Practice saying “no” or deferring requests that don’t align with key goals or metrics. Assertiveness is not about being inflexible—it’s about protecting your capacity to focus on what truly matters. 4/ Set and reset expectations Priorities change, and that’s okay. What’s not okay is working on misaligned tasks. Keep open communication with your manager and stakeholders about evolving priorities. When new demands arise, clarify and reset expectations. 5/ Use 1:1s to align with your manager Leverage your 1:1s as a strategic tool. Share your current priorities, validate them against your manager’s expectations, and discuss any conflicts or challenges. 6/ Clarify the escalation process When priorities conflict, don’t let disagreements linger. If you can’t agree quickly, escalate the issue to your manager. This avoids unnecessary churn, ensures trust remains intact, and keeps momentum focused on results. PS: You won’t always get it right—and that’s okay. Treat each misstep as an opportunity to refine your compass. What’s one tip you’ve used to prioritize when everything feels urgent? --- Follow me, tap the (🔔) Omar Halabieh for daily Leadership and Career posts.

“Set it and Forget it!” Ron Popeil, an Infomercial Inventor, remains my favorite pitchman. The guy was a legend. “Set it and forget it,” might have been great for working parents and the Showtime Rotisserie. But, it doesn’t work in leadership. Leadership and strategy are iterative. I’ve been watching Executive Leadership Teams (ELTs) struggle recently at crucial inflection points. Three common needs: 1️⃣ Talent density - need more intellectual horsepower ✌️ Upgrade communication structures - yelling across the room doesn’t work anymore 3️⃣ Resourcing - too many coaches still “doing the doing” I’m giving this topic a lot of mindshare because what got us here won’t get us there. From a practical perspective, I think, the job of the ELT is to drive “5 A’s” for the company: 1. ALIGN on the strategic direction. This means everyone is clear on the written strategy and their role with clear objectives. The plan should live in a Project Management tool. Specifically ask: 🫵 What problem needs to be solved? Align on the kink in the hose stopping throughput 🧐 What do we expect to happen and by when? Algin on the result 🤔 What are the alternatives? Align on options and priorities ☑️ What must be true for this to be successful? Align on the order of operations. 2. ACT boldly and decisively within your functional area of responsibility. This means your team is aligned on the objectives and has the Tools, Time, Training, Talent and Tenacity to achieve them. 3. Cultivate an ACCOUNTABLE performance-driven culture where your team executes and achieves the company’s goals, metrics, and KPIs. 4. ASSESS the individual, departmental, and executive performance. Ruthlessly determine what is working, what isn’t, and, most importantly, why. 5. ADJUST the strategic plan every 90 days. Re-create alignment and communicate the strategy and objectives. Go again. Love to know what subject is keeping you off the Dean’s List? 🎓 (Seriously - it’ll help upgrade my thinking on this topic) PS - This process is true even if you’re a company or department of one. 🚀 #leadership #strategicplanning #teamalignment

Misaligned Teams: The One-Degree Disaster Five ships leave New York harbor together. Each is aimed just one degree apart. The difference is imperceptible. In the first few miles, they appear close - still within shouting distance. No big deal, right? But let’s say the ships are moving fast - 25 knots. After 24 hours, they’ve traveled 600 nautical miles. That one-degree difference now puts them nearly 70 miles apart. One ship may be veering toward Bermuda, while another drifts toward Newfoundland. They’re still in the Atlantic, but they’ve entered very different waters. One heads into the warm, calm Sargasso Sea. The other into the cold, choppy currents of the subpolar North Atlantic. Different climates. Different hazards. This happens with teams too. They leave the “harbor” together - same kickoff, goals, and energy. But if each team interprets the mission slightly differently, or prioritizes work through their own lens, they begin to drift. Not dramatically. Not immediately. But steadily. Soon enough, they’re solving different problems and delivering outcomes no one asked for. Alignment with business needs isn’t automatic or self-sustaining. It decays, unless you actively maintain it. Teams don’t drift because they’re careless. They drift because there’s no system to keep them aligned as the journey unfolds. Business priorities shift. Markets change. Strategies evolve. Risks materialize. Without a mechanism to realign along the way, even high-performing teams can end up off course - efficiently delivering the wrong thing. This is where the SAFe can help. SAFe doesn’t assume teams will stay aligned. It's designed for periodic realignment. PI Planning brings everyone (teams, architects, product managers, executives) into the same conversation every 8-12 weeks. Not just to make a plan, but to make a shared plan. Teams define objectives based on business priorities. Business Owners assign value. It’s a handshake between strategy and delivery. Lean Portfolio Management makes strategy flow downstream. Themes, budgets, and priorities become epics, features, and stories. Teams don’t work on pet projects; they build what the business is investing in. Inspect & Adapt events offer structured course correction. These aren't just retros - they're checkpoints. Did we deliver what we planned? Did it create the value we expected? How can we improve? Cadence and synchronization keep ships sailing in the same direction. Teams share the same iteration and PI cycles. That structure enables collaboration, integration, and fast pivots when priorities shift. No framework guarantees alignment. But SAFe anticipates drift and provides mechanisms to detect and correct it. The point is that alignment isn’t a kickoff event. It’s a continuous discipline. It’s one thing to be aligned in the harbor. It’s another to stay aligned at sea. If you're leading at scale without regular, intentional alignment mechanisms, expect your teams to drift off course.

We've spent years pushing for the concept of "better together", advocating for the importance of alignment across sales, product, and success. However, it's time to stop talking about "better together"; we all understand and get it. Let's do, "Together. Better." Especially today, when speed is essential and demanded in everything we do. Speed is seductive. It feels like progress. It looks like momentum. But without alignment, speed just creates motion sickness (OK, so maybe I'm still recovering from thinking about altitude sickness after a week in Peru). You get busy teams chasing goals that are aligned at the 30,000-foot level, but aren't aligned in where the work actually happens. There are unspoken and competing agendas. And fleeting and shallow wins that celebrate individual victories but not company wins. In the end, we're all left with mounting frustration that no one can quite name, but everyone feels. This is one of the hardest balancing acts in leadership: How do we move fast without breaking trust, clarity, or direction? How do we actually do "together, better?" The answer is not to slow down. It is to align more intentionally. More often. And more visibly. Alignment is not a kickoff slide or a mission statement. It is a discipline. A muscle. A shared drumbeat that keeps people running together, not just running. Because without alignment, speed scales confusion. With alignment, speed scales outcomes. My thoughts on three ways to lead with both speed and alignment: 🔹 Communicate decisions out loud. Assume nothing. Clarity compounds when leaders speak directly and often about what is changing and why. I've lost track of the number of times I thought something was communicated clearly, but realized I had been working on a concept for months and had only communicated it to the team for a few days. 🔹 Cascade purpose, not just tasks. When people understand the “why,” they can act faster and smarter without waiting for permission. Prioritize perspective over permission, which means sharing openly, broadly, and consistently enough context to create the perspective that lets people closest to the work make confident, bold, and faster decisions. 🔹 Check for drift. Build in rhythm to realign. Fast-moving teams need regular calibration. Without it, small gaps become big ones. At DISQO, our cross-departmental, recurring meetings are focused on ensuring continued alignment and providing colleagues with the opportunity to understand changes and collaborate on solving gaps together. Are you ready for "Together. Better?" #CreateTheFuture #LeadershipInAction #StrategicAlignment #HighVelocityTeams #LeadWithClarity #ExecutionExcellence #FutureOfLeadership #TeamPerformance #GTMLeadership #CultureOfExecution #ScaleWithPurpose #CustomerSuccessLeadership