Team priorities are the small number of things a team has agreed matter most right now, written down somewhere everyone can see, so the day to day work connects back to them. Getting them right is less about picking the perfect list and more about setting them clearly, making them visible, and checking regularly that the work happening actually matches what was agreed.
Why priorities stop working
Priorities usually come apart for one of two reasons. Either nobody actually agreed them together, so each person is quietly working from their own version, or they were agreed once and never looked at again. We cover the second problem in depth in why your team ignores the strategic priorities you set, which found the pattern usually traces back to priorities living in a document nobody opens, rather than in the work itself.
The three layers that make priorities stick
- People. Each person's own working manual, so their part in a priority is set against how they actually work, not a guess.
- Priorities. Agreed together, written down, and visible to the whole team, not held in one person's head or a slide deck.
- Rhythm. A regular cycle of review, so priorities get checked and adjusted rather than set once a year and left.
Priorities rarely fail because the wrong things were chosen. They fail because nobody kept coming back to them, and the daily work quietly drifted away from what was agreed.
Setting priorities for the first time
If a team has never set priorities formally, the OKR format, objectives with a small number of measurable key results underneath, is a solid starting point. We walk through the process in how to set up OKRs for the first time in a growing team. The workshop that opens this guide's closing section does the same job in a single facilitated day if you would rather not build the process from scratch.
Making priorities visible to the whole team
A priority that lives in one manager's head or a document nobody revisits is not really a priority yet. How to make team priorities visible, without micromanaging covers how to put them somewhere the whole team can see, and tools for making OKRs visible to the whole team looks at the practical options for doing that.
Getting a team to actually follow its priorities
Setting priorities and having a team follow them are two different problems. How to get your team to follow the quarterly priorities sets out what keeps priorities live week to week, and pairs with the diagnostic above on why they get ignored in the first place.
Connecting individual work to the priorities
Priorities only do their job once each person can see how their own work feeds into one. How to connect individual work to company goals covers that link, and how to track individual contributions to team priorities shows how to see each person's part fairly, without activity tracking or scores assigned to people.
Tracking capacity alongside priorities
Priorities set without any sense of what the team can actually deliver tend to multiply until nothing gets finished. How to track team priorities and capacity together covers keeping the two in view side by side, so new work gets weighed against what is already committed.
Checking the team is working on the right things
Priorities are worth revisiting on a schedule, not just when something goes wrong. How to know if your team is working on the right things sets out the questions to ask at each check, so drift gets caught early rather than at the next big review.
Setting it up
The fastest way to get from nothing to a working set of team priorities is the Working With Me workshop, from £2,000 with a four-week platform trial, where a team builds its manuals and agrees its priorities in a single facilitated day. Working With Me keeps the rhythm going afterwards, with priorities and the daily work view built around them, so the priorities stay live rather than fading back into a document nobody opens.
Common questions
What are team priorities
The small number of things a team has agreed matter most right now, written down and visible to everyone, so daily work connects back to them rather than drifting off in different directions.
How many priorities should a team have at once
Most small teams do better with three to five priorities at a time. Beyond that, none of them get proper attention and the list starts to function as a wish list rather than a set of priorities.
How often should team priorities be reviewed
A quarterly review works well for most small teams, with priorities checked and adjusted rather than left untouched for a year. A short weekly or fortnightly check-in keeps them live in between.
Do team priorities need special software
Only if it removes work rather than adding it. The test is whether the tool keeps the manuals, the priorities and the daily work connected in one place, and whether the team would keep using it unprompted.