Prioritisation: why does preventive work lose out to immediate results?
Making a procedure more reliable, documenting a supplier risk or maintaining equipment takes time for benefits that often arrive later. The management question is specific: how can we prevent the proximity of a result from becoming, on its own, a criterion for priority?
What the literature establishes
Shane Frederick, George Loewenstein and Ted O’Donoghue (2002, Journal of Economic Literature) show in a critical review that intertemporal choices cannot be reduced to a stable preference for the present. Delay matters, but decisions also depend on the characteristics of the choice and how its consequences are presented. For prioritisation, this suggests distinguishing the value of an outcome from the appeal of receiving it soon.
Immediacy is not just another delay
Samuel McClure, David Laibson, George Loewenstein and Jonathan Cohen (2004, Science) studied choices between monetary rewards available at different times. Their brain-imaging observations distinguish choices that include an immediate option from those in which all options are delayed. This study does not directly explain workplace schedules; it provides a reason to examine the appeal of immediacy separately from the length of the wait.
The tempting conclusion
It would be tempting to conclude that managers should always protect the long term against today's demands. That would overlook the uncertainty of some future benefits and the fact that immediate action can prevent significant harm. The point is not to favour prevention systematically, but to check whether postponement follows an explicit trade-off rather than simply the greater visibility of a competing result. (our executive and employee training programmes)
What the evidence cannot decide
Experimental monetary choices cannot determine what proportion of a schedule should be devoted to prevention. Within an organisation, safety obligations, dependencies between teams and consequences for customers change the problem. Simply counting completed tasks is also insufficient: it rewards visible output without establishing the value of incidents that may have been avoided.
A practical check in Vevey
In Vevey, across activities connected with the global food industry, corporate headquarters and SMEs on the Riviera, SHR's “Time Management & Prioritisation” programme could propose a four-week test: track a list of non-mandatory preventive tasks, excluding safety and compliance requirements. For each task, record its original time slot, whether it was completed or postponed and, if postponed, the work that replaced it and the stated reason. Then calculate the proportion of planned preventive tasks postponed in favour of a deliverable due that same day. This result does not prove bias, but makes the role of immediacy in prioritisation open to scrutiny. To go further: explore the Time Management & Prioritisation training in Vevey in the canton of Vaud, or browse our executive and employee training programmes in Switzerland.
In pictures: Time Management & Prioritisation in Vevey
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