What Salvador Dalí knew about priorities
It was Salvador Dalí's birthday recently. Not a name that one spontaneously associates with focus or strategy. And yet someone who embodied a consistency in his work that is rare in everyday life.
Melting watches. A twisted moustache. Images that burn themselves into the memory. Dalí was an eccentric and provocateur, someone about whom it is difficult not to form an opinion. But behind the spectacle was a remarkable discipline: Dalí never tried to paint everything.
Surrealism. Depth. Time. Dream. That was his terrain for decades, while other artists jumped around stylistically. He did not broaden his focus. He radicalized it.
This may sound far removed from everyday professional life. And yet when working with teams and individuals, the same picture emerges time and again: the question of the three most important strategic priorities rarely generates three clear answers. It generates six, eight, sometimes ten. Everyone in the room has a slightly different version. Somehow they are not all wrong.
This is precisely the problem.
Incidentally, the word «priority» was originally a singular word. There was no such thing as «priorities», there was «the priority». We have turned it into a plural, with predictable consequences. If you prioritize everything, you have prioritized nothing.
Three observations from practice:
- Clarity forces you to make decisions. That's why many people avoid it. A concrete target image excludes options. That feels like a loss. Nevertheless, it is the real lever.
- More than three priorities is not prioritization. It is a list. Lists are reassuring. As a rule, they don't change anything.
- A strong why protects the focus. If the team does not understand why a priority is really important, it loses the competition with the operational. Always. The calendar doesn't lie: what doesn't get time is not a priority.
Dalí once said that he was the only one who did not need to understand Surrealism because he himself was Surrealism. A self-confident statement. But there is something concrete behind it: he knew exactly what he stood for.
Three questions for reflection:
- If you ask three employees today what their three most important priorities are: Do you get three consistent answers, or seven different ones?
- Which priority on your current list would be dropped if you were really honest?
- What has been on your calendar for the last two weeks that has nothing to do with your top priorities?
Dalí would probably not have asked these questions. He would have simply crossed out everything that didn't belong on the canvas and carried on painting.
To the author:
Volkmar Völzke is a success maximizer. Book author. Consultant. Coach. Speaker. www.volkmarvoelzke.ch
