Why Prioritization Requires an “Or” Mindset (Full Transcript)
[00:00:00] Speaker 1: I understood there, from a mindset perspective, we call this the or mindset versus the and mindset. And is really good for improv, you know, and this, and that, and brainstorming. Yes and, yes and, yes. Yes and, yes and, really good for those things, but not great for prioritization. You want or. It's gonna be that or that. It's gonna be this or that. That's what you want when you prioritize. So with that mindset, you can't do it all. The second piece is the mindset that we wanna use people's intelligence. And so now with those two things, I'll place a behavior. They were brilliant at doing exposure therapy. They would round up the things that they were really important, that they were gonna at least explore saying no to, and they would ask, if we don't do that project, if we don't do the Johnston project, man, what are we gonna lose?
- Use an “and” mindset for brainstorming and improvisation, where expanding possibilities is valuable.
- Use an “or” mindset for prioritization, where meaningful choices require trade-offs.
- Accept that a team cannot do everything and must decide what not to pursue.
- Invite people to assess the consequences of declining a project to use their collective intelligence.
- Exploring the loss of saying no can make difficult prioritization decisions more manageable.