How we prioritize at Sticker Mule

Organizations are the sum of their decisions. Those that prioritize well prosper, and those that don’t falter. At Sticker Mule, prioritization is the most important thing we do. Our growth accelerated as we got better at it, and there's still room to improve.

What prioritization is not

Most literature on prioritization is terrible. It treats the subject as time management or how to use to-do lists. That misses the point. Priorities make and break businesses, and no to-do list saves you from working on the wrong thing.

Amazon started as an online bookstore in 1994 and reached $147 million in revenue within three years. Last year it did roughly $719 billion with about 1.58 million employees, and passed Walmart as the largest company in the world by revenue, ending a 13-year run at the top. Walmart is a great company that has since built a serious e-commerce business. But Amazon compounded a decision Walmart made late, and the gap between them is still about a trillion dollars in market value. 

What prioritization is

Prioritization is picking the work that does the most for the business and declining the rest.

The hard part is that the highest-impact task is usually elusive. You rarely know which one it was until it's done. That's not a reason to avoid choosing. It's a reason to choose deliberately and revisit often.

It also means giving yourself permission to neglect things. A list of everything you need to do is just a list of everything you need to do. A prioritized list is a decision, and once you've made it you can work without the rest of the list distracting you. 

How we weigh work

You don't need to prioritize every task, but it helps to roughly classify them. These are the tradeoffs we weigh:

Growth over costs
Time is finite. You can always make more money, never more time, so we'd rather spend it growing revenue than trimming expense.

High impact over low impact
Though a pile of low-impact tasks is worth clearing if it's quick.

Enduring over temporary
Work that keeps paying beats work that pays once.

Definite over potential
A smaller certain gain beats a larger maybe.

Grouped over scattered
Related tasks go faster together, so we'll often pick up a low-impact task riding along with a high-impact one.

Fast over slow
All else equal. The exception is a long-term bet with a real payoff. Those compound, and most companies neglect them.

How we sort work

1. List the big projects.

2. Group the related ones together.

3. Estimate each one: how long it takes, whether the value is definite or potential, whether it lasts, and how much it moves the business.

4. Sort into three piles:

Do now. High impact, definite value, quick to finish.

Do later. High impact but slow or less certain. Worth doing, not worth doing first.

Delete. Low impact, low value. Not "someday", just delete. Deleting work is a decision too, and usually the cheapest one available. 

Questions we ask

Ask these periodically and your prioritization improves:

1. What's the most impactful thing you could work on?

2. Did you identify the right problem?

3. Do you know the most important problem to solve next?

4. Can you replace a planned task with a better one?

5. Can you delete a low-impact task entirely?

We aim to embed a passion for prioritization into our culture. If you think similarly and want to join our global team, we are hiring.