The CEO’s Priority Matrix: How to Focus on What Truly Matters

High-level people should not be in the weeds working on low-level tasks.

If you are, you have a broken system and your business will suffer.

I break work into four levels of priority:

🔵 Low Priority – Nice to have, but minimal impact. Delegate, automate, or eliminate.

🟡 Mid Priority – Important but not urgent. Can be handled by competent team members.

🟠 High Priority – Directly impacts strategy, revenue, or key operations. Requires leadership oversight.

🔴 Critical Priority – Make-or-break decisions. Company direction, high-stakes negotiations, crisis management. This is where top leaders should be fully engaged.

The higher up you are in an organization, the more your time should be spent on high and critical priorities.

If you’re a CEO spending 50% of your time on low-priority tasks, something is broken. You need to:

✅ Delegate – If someone else can do it 80% as well as you, hand it off.

✅ Deprioritize – Some tasks simply aren’t worth doing. Let them go.

✅ Automate – Find systems or processes to remove manual effort.

✅ Hire – If you don’t have the right people to take on these tasks, hiring becomes a high-priority problem to solve.

When leaders get stuck in the weeds, they either neglect critical work or rush through it, both of which hurt the business.

The best leaders protect their time and focus on what moves the needle most.

Time is our most valuable asset so spend it wisely.