Brave New Work 44. Prioritizing Your Priorities With Even/Overs

Prior to the 1940's, the word priorities (plural) was rarely used. Because the word priority means that which comes before anything else. It's one thing! But these days, it's not uncommon for leaders and boards to demand multiple, often contradictory outcomes at the same time. We want faster output AND higher quality. We want to grow market share in our core category AND open three new categories. We want to hit the impossible target AND have work life balance. But as the saying goes, if everything is a priority, then nothing is a priority. What we need is a way to make tradeoffs explicit and strategic. And that's exactly what "over" statements and "even/over" statements do. They ask us to put one good thing even over another good thing.

In this episode of Brave New Work, Aaron Dignan and Rodney Evans discuss how to create and leverage even over statements, and how they can help any team at any level focus on what truly matters now.

As promised, we've also included three of our even/over statements for the Brave New Work podcast here in the show notes:

• Authenticity e/o Polish (We keep it real, including the occasional curse word)
• Depth e/o Breadth (We'll do a whole episode—or five—on prioritization)
• Brevity e/o Freedom to Roam (We try to keep it snappy and we ask guests to do the same)

Read our article on even/overs on Medium.

Mentioned references:

• Tom Thomison: BNW Ep. 16
• HolacracyOne
• The Cheesecake Factory menu
• Patagonia's "Don't Buy This Jacket" ad
• "Essential Intent"
• "Governance episode": BNW Ep. 43
• "Teal context" - Teal organizations
• "Episode about hiring": BNW Ep. 14

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00:00 Intro + Check-in: What’s a difficult trade off that you’ve made and did it pan out for you?

04:49 What are even/overs and where did they come from?

09:33 More is not always better

11:14 Examples of good even/over statements

19:25 Even/overs don’t necessarily mean you won’t get the second thing

21:13 Using even/overs around Brave New Work principles

29:30 Facilitating a team to get good even/overs

35:00 Using even/overs when all decisions look like the right one

39:20 Good even/overs can be counter-intuitive

42:45 Wrap up: Leave us a review and send us your favorite even/overs!