How To Keep Priorities Honest

One year ago to the day, I was running my business and sitting in Las Vegas at the Acquisition.com HQ for their Scaling Workshop.

The prep work included pulling data points to understand your LTV to CAC ratio and identifying your biggest constraint—that is—the one thing keeping you from scaling to the next level.

I’d heard Alex Hormozi say it before, but this time he told us in person:

The whole workshop was about narrowing in on one constraint, fixing it and riding that momentum until you hit the next one. Singular focus.

It’s the same with priorities. For 500 years, priority was singular, you had one. Only in the last century did we make it plural and pretend we could have five first things.

That’s why a new “priority” isn’t always progress. Sometimes, it’s just your principal working hard on the wrong thing.

As Chief of Staff, it’s your responsibility to see this and then guide the way forward.

In last week’s poll, most of you picked this:

It’s the same dynamic I saw in the Scaling Workshop, except instead of a founder creating their own priority chaos, you’re managing the ripple effects of someone else’s.

The result? Suzie’s seven notecards get laughed right out of the room, and what was once a clear path turns into a crowded to-do pile.

This isn’t about managing time. it’s about defining the real problem and protecting focus until it’s solved.

You don’t need to be a former founder to think like one. You just need to apply the right mindsets. That’s the whole point of this newsletter, BTW: to give Chiefs of Staff the tools founders use to make faster, sharper, better decisions.

As a Chief of Staff, your job isn’t to block your principal’s ideas. It’s to help them separate true problems from shiny opportunities before they derail the focus you’ve already fought to get.

One of the simplest ways to do that is the 3-Question Priority Check. It’s my quick way to pressure-test whether a new “priority” is actually worth acting on now or better left for later.

I first saw these questions in action at the Scaling Workshop. When founders asked real business challenges, Alex would troubleshoot in real time, staring with these three. I’ve adapted them for the Chief–principal dynamic, where the problem isn’t a founder chasing their own ideas, but a principal adding “just one more” to an already full plate.

When your principal drops a new priority ask:

1. Logic — What does that mean?
Strip vague language down to a defined problem.
“When you say we need to ‘fix marketing,’ what exactly are we solving for?”

2. Evidence — How do you know?
Surface proof. Is this a pressing reality or just a passing hunch?
“What’s telling us this is an issue right now?”

3. Utility — Why now?
Force the trade-off conversation. If we act on this, what gets delayed or dropped?
“If we make this a priority, which of our top three moves down the list?”

Importantly, these questions don’t challenge your principal’s authority. They sharpen it while positioning you as their thought partner. The Priority Check slows the decision just enough to make sure everyone’s working hard on the right thing.

Think of it like Suzie Wiles’ seven notecards for the President: no new priority gets added without removing one. The cards make the trade-off visible; the Priority Check does the same thing in real time, through conversation.

It also works because it’s rooted in high-level listening. You’re asking questions without “I,” which keeps the focus on the problem, not your opinion. That makes it safe for your principal to answer honestly and gives you clean signal instead of emotional noise.

Founders respect this because it mirrors how they think when they’re at their best:

The Priority Check is built on your principal’s own problem-solving logic, so it rarely triggers defensiveness. Instead, it earns you more trust and puts you right where you want to be.

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