The start of the year provides ample timing for organizations to release their annual strategic initiatives. These strategic initiatives highlight the priorities of what’s needed to successfully drive the organization’s long-term strategy. It’s an opportunity for leadership to provide clear messaging on where each team needs to focus their efforts and drive the organization forward.

What’s interesting is how different leaders approach this process of setting clarity of priorities. No matter the industry, each organization can be very complex. Endless opportunities to grow and diversify which leads to a big pool of opportunities to prioritize. Sometimes this large pool of options can overwhelm an organization and there becomes this feeling of needing to do it all. Leadership decides that this long list of opportunities all needs to be prioritized for long-term success. The result is a confused workforce running every which way trying to make a long list of priorities all important. Realistically, there’s no chance that any of these priorities have meaningful progress made. They go wide and struggle to go deep.

Some organizations truly understand the importance of being selective and narrowing down to only the essential initiatives. Yes, there is struggle not prioritizing certain parts of the business. But the tradeoff becomes the ability to go deep on a small select number of initiatives. Going deep leads to very visible progress and allows the organization to make a big jump along their path of long-term success. These organizations choose to go deep and not wide. Their employees benefit from clarity and the organization sees material progress.

Now shift your attention to what your strategic initiatives are for the year (call them whatever you’d like – goals, resolutions, list of things to be awesome). Do you feel you’re set up to go wide and not deep, or have you prioritized the essential and prepared yourself to go deep and not wide? I’ve been guilty plenty of times of going too wide. I invest time to reflect on where I’m at versus where I want to be and identify a long list of opportunities for growth. While all on the list would help me grow, not all are priorities. And furthermore, not all are essential for the growth I want to make now.

When I haven’t invested the time in prioritizing and identifying the essentials for the year, progress is difficult. I spread my energy too wide and struggle to go deep. The years I’ve been more disciplined in my approach and been more attentive to a small number of priorities, I feel myself investing more time and energy in that short list and making huge progress.

It’s difficult – there’s noise everywhere distracting your focus and attention. Priorities get jumbled and we don’t invest the time to step back and continue to evaluate the essentials. Tradeoffs make us feel like we’re missing out on opportunities. The real miss though in opportunity is when we go too wide. Go deep, not wide and progress will follow.

Take your step: evaluate where you feel your priorities are at in your growth journey. Take an honest assessment of how many priorities you’ve set. Do you feel you’re going too wide? Challenge yourself to review your priorities and re-evaluate whether they’re nice to have or essential to the growth you want to see in yourself. Yes, tradeoffs can be painful but challenging yourself to narrow the priorities allows for more dedicated time and effort to go deep in these areas and see substantial progress.