How Leaders Set Priorities

“What is important is seldom urgent and what is urgent is seldom important.”

President Eisenhower

A top leader should favor important but not urgent issues. This refers to the idea that a top leader should spend as much as 80% of his time this way. If he is spending a high percentage of the time on ''urgent and important issues, or worse on urgent but not important stuff, his priority system probably has some deep flaws or he has not delegated well. Time spent on not urgent and not important issues is just a rest period.

History

Stephen Covey popularized the Eisenhower’s decision principle in his book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. Covey created a decision matrix to help individuals make the distinction between what’s important and not important and what’s urgent and not urgent. The matrix consists of a square divided into four boxes, or quadrants, labeled:

1. Urgent/Important,
2. Not Urgent/Important,
3. Urgent/Not Important, and
4. Not Urgent/Not Important.

Author

The author of this page is John Macpherson