Conflicting Priorities: Why Your Team is Struggling to Get Anything Done

Make Work Not Suck

In this episode of the Make Work Not Suck podcast, Daniel Steere and Ryan Hodges tackle one of the most frustrating challenges in any organization: conflicting priorities. Whether it’s sales versus operations, or budget constraints clashing with urgent software rollouts, conflicting priorities can grind progress to a halt and make work miserable for everyone.

Drawing from real-world experiences, we discuss how unclear vision and a poorly defined Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) are often at the root of these conflicts. Without a compelling and shared understanding of what your organization is trying to achieve and for whom, teams get pulled in different directions, leading to endless debates, wasted time, and stalled initiatives.

In this episode, we break down:

• [00:00] Introduction: The Impact of Conflicting Priorities on Team Performance

• [01:18] Real-Life Examples: Sales vs. Operations and the Battle for Priority

• [03:15] The High Cost of Task Switching and the Price of Uncertainty

• [10:47] Middle Managers: The Unsung Heroes Caught in the Crossfire

• [13:19] Horizontal Conflicts: When Departments Don’t Play Nice

• [15:29] The Root Cause: Lack of a Clear Vision and Well-Defined ICP

• [26:55] The Connection Between Vision, ICP, and Organizational Alignment

• [31:25] The Importance of Choosing Your Ideal Customer and Building Around Them

• [39:37] Managing Multiple Personas: Balancing the Needs of Buyers, Payers, and Users