To be a great leader, you need to put a high priority on your organizational management.  Most people are not very detailed-oriented, which is what we tend to think about when we think about being well-organized.  However, if we focus on the right and best details of what we need to manage, we can be highly effective and very efficient – which are the foundational principles of organizational management.

Here are some key points that will help you with your organizational management strategies and skills:

Be intentional about your priorities.

For many of us, we don’t like locking into any kind of obligations or requirements.  The reality of life, however, means that we have to be intentional about having no obligations or requirements – which means that we will require from ourselves to be obligated to not be obligated.  (Did you catch that point?)

Regardless of what we think is important, we need to determine our priorities.  What is important to you?  What do you want to maintain as an important part of your life?  Are there goals and objectives that will make you feel fulfilled and satisfied in this life?

For many of us, we start feeling guilty when we start thinking about these points.  Please don’t feel guilty for wanting to find the best for yourself.  Instead, make your priorities simple and personal.  Make them achieveable, too.

To be successful, you need to know what you are doing and what you intend to do.  That’s the core purpose of organizational management.   This requires some thinking and contemplating – which generally means that you need to get time off by yourself and to consider your plans without distractions.

For some of the best leaders, they spend daily time evaluating and deciding what they are doing and if their activities align with what they want (and need) to do.  They also spend a hour or two during the weekend to evaluate what they did, what they are currently doing, and then what they want to do.  Then they spend a weekend a year to evaluate and then refine their goals and objectives for the next year.

To be most effective in organizational management, everything you do should align with your goals and objectives.  If you make sure that everything you do is in alignment, your rate of success will be a whole lot higher than if you simply write down your goals and objectives and look at them once in a while.

Being intentional about your schedule is arguably the easiest thing to ignore when it comes to being effective and efficient in your organizational skills and strategies.  However, it is the easiest place to lose control of what you are trying to accomplish by being organized.  Have you ever had an “emergency” meeting that completely wrecked what you had scheduled for the day – and it ended up being less important than what you originally thought?

Charles Hummel shared this concept:  “Your greatest danger is letting the urgent things crowd out the important.” This point couldn’t be better stated.  Don’t let “urgent” things cause you to do the things you need to do to get where you need to be – not only with your schedule, but also with your goals, objectives and priorities.

If you want to know where you are going with your goals and objectives, look at the people you are around during the day.  Look at your friends, your associates, and those you trust.  They will determine your future.  In some cases, your relationships aren’t ones you can cut off.   Many of them can change if you have the right influences in other ones, however.

Do yourself a favor and look at who is talking into your life.  Consider those people who are your mentors and leaders and how they influence your life.  Are you getting better at what you do and who you are by the way they influence you?

Take another look at the people around you and find ways to increase positive influences.  Do they wreck your schedule?  Do they cause you to be highly distracted, either by their burdens or by their demands?  The best people are the ones who value your time and want for you to be more effective and efficient.

When we’re not doing great, we tend to avoid spending time thinking about what we can do to improve ourselves.  It’s hard enough to get through the day without piling more guilt on ourselves.  We think guilt will happen when we start considering how we can do better in our personal lives.  That effect causes us to avoid thinking about self-improvement.  However, we won’t get better if we don’t take the steps to be better.

When we spend some time to think about where we’ve been, where we are, and where we are going, we will find that there are patterns and character issues that come into play.  We can then start to make the right changes as we are honest with ourselves.

Get the distractions out of your way.  This will allow us to focus on what we need to do.  It’s important to prioritize what is most important.  That starts with a intentional schedule to take care of ourselves.