Situation: A small company is understaffed and finds it difficult to hire in the current environment. Employees struggle to meet both past and new responsibilities. There simply aren’t enough hours in the day to meet objectives. How do you clarify objectives so that the team can meet them? How do you define roles and responsibilities?

Advice from the CEOs:

• Start by working with employees to create a list of current responsibilities for each employee, along with the estimated time required to fulfill each responsibility.
  • Within this list, classify each responsibility as “Must Do,” “Second Priority,” or “When we have time.”
  • Look at the hours in the day or week. Assess what is possible to do in the hours available, and what is not.
  • Discuss this with the team and ask whether they agree with both the assessment and priority list.
  • Discuss trade-offs and the availability of any resources with the company that may be currently underutilized.
• Reassess the expectations of clients to determine whether everything that is being done must be done in the timeframe currently promised. This helps to define what is truly urgent and what is not.
• Another way of stating the process is to:
  • Prioritize and delegate what can be done, or reallocate what can’t be done with current resources.
  • Look for ways to work smarter to get more done in the time and with available resources.
  • If lower priority items still can’t get completed in the available time either drop them or discuss options for accessing additional resources to complete them.

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