Do you remember Yahoo? In the late 1990s and early 2000s, Yahoo was the most widely used search engine on the internet. As they grew, they added more content and services to their site. However, the more this was done, the less recognizable Yahoo became.
In 2006, a Yahoo executive identified this problem and sent an email to the senior staff:
“We want to do everything and be everything, to everyone.” … “I’ve heard our strategy described as spreading peanut butter across the myriad opportunities that continue to evolve in the online world. The result: a thin layer of investment spread across everything we do, and thus we focus on nothing in particular. I hate peanut butter. We all should.”
Unfortunately, the company’s leaders failed to implement Brad’s ideas. Today, Yahoo still exists, but little remains of its market leadership.
How to prioritize like a pro
In our free organizational scan, the #1 tension leaders mention is simple but devastating: “We don’t know how to prioritize.”
It's the peanut butter problem: chasing dozens of problems, underdelivering on everything, and moving the needle on nothing. Teams are spread thin, leaders are saying yes too often, and everyone is drinking from the firehose.
The antidote is not more discipline, more pressure, or more dashboards. The antidote is a deliberate practice of strategy, trade-offs, alignment, and rhythm.
Here are 5 ways to avoid the peanut butter trap and prioritize like a pro. 👇
1/ Check if your strategy is really a strategy.
Lots of organizations proudly wave a strategy document. But too often, it’s vague, uninspiring, or impossible to act on.
A strategy that says “we want to be #1 in the market” doesn’t give teams focus—it leaves them uninspired.
A strategy that works is:
Inspiring (it energizes people to contribute).
Concrete (teams can translate it into action).
Bold (anchored in a bet or belief).
2-3 Year time horizon (because people overestimate what they can do in a year, but underestimate what they can do in 2-3 years).
Without a clear strategic intent, prioritization is impossible.
2/ Make trade-offs explicit.
Yahoo’s mistake was trying to do everything. The remedy is to name what you will NOT do.
If you don’t make trade-offs clear, people will assume everything is equally important. That’s how focus gets lost.
Try using even-over statements:
Quality even over Affordability.
B2C even over B2B.
Beautiful even over Functional.
Trade-offs turn strategy into a decision compass. Without them, people optimize for local wins at the cost of global impact.
3/ Let teams self-align to the strategy.
Leaders often complain: “I told them the priorities, but they still go in all directions.”
That’s because strategy is not a memo. It’s a practice.
First of all, teams need to be involved in shaping the strategy. That’s how you test whether it’s clear, whether it resonates, and whether it can guide daily decisions.
In practice, this means asking teams to self-align by defining their own:
90-day outcomes they’ll commit to.
Trade-offs they’ll embrace.
Metrics they’ll track.
When teams self-align, they go from merely complying with what is asked to taking ownership and initiative.
4/ Stack rank your priorities.
Even with a clear strategy and trade-offs, you might still have too many priorities.
Here’s a simple discipline: ask, “If we could do only one thing, which one would we do, and why?” Then repeat until the list is truly ordered.
Only one thing gets to be priority one.
Everything else follows in sequence.
The “why” behind each rank matters just as much as the order.
Without stack-ranking, you don’t have clear priorities. You have a wish list.
5/ Build a strategic operating rhythm that limits WIP.
Limiting work-in-progress (WIP) is one of the oldest lessons in productivity: don’t do 10 things at once. Do 1 or 2, finish them, then move on.
But in organizations, this only works if it’s reinforced by rhythm: regular, fit-for-purpose conversations about strategy.
Here’s a pattern you can try:
Weekly (1 hr): What must we prioritize this week to make progress?
Monthly (1 hr): What did we learn this month, and how do we adjust focus?
Quarterly (1 day): Is this still the right strategy? What outcomes do we prioritize in the next 90 days?
Do this at every level: team, department, and board level.
When rhythm meets prioritization, organizations stop drowning in chaos and start moving with focus.
Don’t become the next Yahoo.
Without prioritization, people drown in work that doesn’t matter. They get stuck in decision paralysis, endless meetings, and short-term firefighting. Energy is wasted.
With strong prioritization, people gain clarity. They make faster, better decisions. They say no with confidence. They focus on what will actually move the needle.
Prioritization is not about saying “no” more often. It’s about having clarity about what to say “yes” to with conviction.
Your turn:
When was the last time your leadership team had an honest conversation about what you will NOT do this year?
How to get started
Reply to this email for a free 1:1 “strategy reality check”. Send us your strategy deck, talk through your process of execution, and we’ll provide you with hands-on ideas, input, and templates to improve your chances of realizing your strategy successfully.
Pick up a copy of the Unblock book for more on our approach to strategy.
Book me as a speaker for your next event.
Meet me at one of these conferences.
That’s all for today. I hope you enjoyed it. Simply hit ‘reply’ or comment—I read every message. Have a great day! ☀️
