Choose what matters when everything feels urgent, Complete Resource Pack

Ideas to keep

1. 01When AI reduces the effort of writing updates and summaries, more information reaches your desk in less time: longer proposals, instant meeting notes, more threads asking for a quick confirmation.
2. 02A polished summary can tell Elena what happened in yesterday's check-in. It cannot decide whether lending Dev to another team breaks a promise her own team already made.
3. 03The formatting request is stamped urgent for noon. The quiet request to borrow Dev for 3 days would delay a release her team promised a client for Friday.
4. 04The newest or most forceful message is not automatically the choice that matters most.
5. 05An agent counting this morning's messages cannot infer what breaking Friday's commitment means. Which promise is at risk, and who is affected if it slips, belongs to you as the leader.

Try it (optional)

1. Think of your own working week and find one decision among your current emails or project updates where the real consequence is much larger than the message suggests.
2. Write down which promise it puts at risk and who would be affected if it slipped.

Files and links

Elena is a prepared fictional department manager written for this course. Practice is always optional.

• Download the Section 3 starter materials (zip)/downloads/leaders/section-03/section-03-starter-materials.zip

Ideas to keep

1. 01An attention queue is a short, organized view with 3 groups: decisions that need your judgment, prepared drafts ready to inspect, and items waiting on another person.
2. 02The supplier pricing thread goes to the waiting group, because nothing Elena does moves it until the vendor replies. The client update goes to the drafts group for the afternoon review batch.
3. 03In its first pass the agent put the noon formatting request at the top, simply because noon was the earliest timestamp.
4. 04Elena corrects the order with what she knows: Dev is the lead engineer for Friday's committed client release, and the formatting request has no external impact. Decisions are ranked by consequence of delay, importance of the commitment, actual deadlines and what depends on the choice.
5. 05The queue is one saved page in her department project. At each review point the agent updates it and brings back only what needs her, and anything that threatens a committed delivery date goes straight to the top.

Try it (optional)

1. Open practice/elena-and-meridian-decision-files.md and read Elena's 4 incoming items and the Friday release commitment.
2. Optionally, give the 4 items and the commitment note to ChatGPT or another AI product your employer permits, with the first request below.
3. If the noon formatting request lands at the top, send the second request and check that the Dev decision moves to number 1.
4. Compare your result with tab 01 Attention queue in practice/priorities-and-decisions.html.

Files and links

The attention queue on the prepared page shows the target an agent works toward. It is authored teaching material, not a recording of a live agent run.

• Priorities and decisions, the prepared example/resources/library/leaders/priorities-and-decisions-prepared-example
• Elena and Meridian case files/resources/library/leaders/elena-and-meridian-decision-files
• Open the interactive priorities and decisions page/downloads/leaders/section-03/priorities-and-decisions.html
• Priority triage skill/resources/library/leaders/priority-triage-skill

Ideas to keep

1. 01A polished table of pros and cons can make a high-stakes choice look simpler than it is, and hide the single assumption that would make the plan fail.
2. 02Maya's adapted skill from Section 2 checks senior integration specialist time instead of total headcount. Her only 2 specialists are committed to another client's launch planned to run into weeks 3 and 4.
3. 03The agent compares 3 options: bid on the full 6-week scope, propose a narrower phased scope that moves integration to week 5, or decline to bid.
4. 04The pivotal assumption: the full bid is viable only if the other launch finishes early, by day 10 at the end of week 2, without a single day of spillover.
5. 05That launch depends on a third-party vendor whose testing schedule is unconfirmed, so Maya chooses the phased scope and accepts a smaller first contract to protect the launch her team already promised.
6. 06She also names what would reopen full scope: written confirmation, before the bid is due on Friday, October 9, at 5 p.m., that the current launch has passed final testing early enough to free both specialists by day 10.

Try it (optional)

1. Open practice/elena-and-meridian-decision-files.md and read the Meridian RFP summary and the team capacity note.
2. Open tab 02 Option comparison in practice/priorities-and-decisions.html and find the pivotal assumption in the full-scope row.
3. If you try it yourself, send the comparison-plan request first and correct the plan before the comparison runs, then ask for the pivotal assumption.

Files and links

Maya and Meridian Manufacturing are a prepared fictional case. An RFP, or request for proposal, is a document from a prospective customer describing the work they want suppliers to bid on.

• Maya's corrected plan from Section 2 (lecture 2.5)/resources/library/leaders/skills-and-project-records-prepared-example#adaptation
• Priorities and decisions, the prepared example (option comparison)/resources/library/leaders/priorities-and-decisions-prepared-example#comparison
• Option comparison skill/resources/library/leaders/option-comparison-skill

Ideas to keep

1. 01Reasoning buried in a 30-message comparison chat is hard to reconstruct a few days later, and a new chat next month will not automatically remember today's discussion.
2. 02Right after confirming her choice, Maya asks the agent to draft a concise decision record with 5 items: the confirmed choice, the reasons, the alternatives considered, the fact still to confirm, and the condition that reopens full scope.
3. 03Her job is to review and confirm the record's meaning, not to fill in a blank form. She checks that the phased scope is named as the final choice and that the week-5 specialist hours stay listed as the fact still to confirm.
4. 04The approved record is saved in the Meridian Proposal project folder, beside the RFP summary and the capacity note.
5. 05Saving is half of the loop. On Thursday, in a fresh conversation inside the project, the agent retrieves the record, points to the saved file and reports both open items.
6. 06If a workspace or chat route has no access to the project folder, the agent should say the record is inaccessible rather than guess the reasons from memory.

Try it (optional)

1. Open tab 03 Decision record in practice/priorities-and-decisions.html and find the 5 fields.
2. Check the two things Maya checks: the confirmed choice is the narrower phased scope, and the week-5 specialist hours are still a fact to confirm.
3. Open skills/priorities-and-decisions/SKILL.md and find the decision-record row in the Sequence and handoffs table.
4. If you try it yourself, open a fresh conversation in the same project and send the retrieval request. The answer should point to the saved file.

Files and links

The skill files are authored course materials. They have not been run in a live agent yet, so check how your own tool saves and retrieves files before relying on them.

• Priorities and decisions, the prepared example (decision record)/resources/library/leaders/priorities-and-decisions-prepared-example#record
• Priorities and decisions workflow/resources/library/leaders/priorities-and-decisions-workflow
• Decision record skill/resources/library/leaders/decision-record-skill

Ideas to keep

1. 01A clear leadership decision does not pretend every fact is certain. It states the tradeoff you accepted and the uncertainty you are still watching.
2. 02Elena can now say she is handling Dev's staffing request first because lending Dev for 3 days would put Friday's committed client release at risk.
3. 03Maya's explanation has 4 parts: the confirmed choice, the protected commitment and accepted tradeoff, the fact still to confirm, and the condition that reopens full scope.
4. 04Naming the uncertainty and the revisit condition makes your judgment trustworthy, because colleagues know what to watch for instead of finding a hidden risk midway through delivery.
5. 05Halfway through the course you can hand an agent your meeting follow-through, keep your background and methods in a project and a skill, sort your week with an attention queue, and keep the reasons for a choice in a decision record.

Try it (optional)

1. Open tab 04 Tradeoff explanation in practice/priorities-and-decisions.html and read the 4 parts.
2. Pick one project you prioritized over another this month. Can you state the choice, the tradeoff it accepts, the uncertainty you are watching and the fact that would change your mind?

Files and links

• Priorities and decisions, the prepared example (tradeoff explanation)/resources/library/leaders/priorities-and-decisions-prepared-example#explanation