April 13, 1970. Two days after launch, roughly 200,000 miles from Earth, an oxygen tank failed aboard Apollo 13 and the spacecraft began losing power, heat and drinking water. The crew had no way to land on the Moon. They now had to get home. Every leader eventually lands in a version of this: ten things broken, no time, and a team looking at you. The question is how to prioritize tasks when all of them feel urgent. Apollo 13 is the best answer I know.

The moment

NASA’s own account is short. Apollo 13 launched April 11 with Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise aboard. After the explosion the crew shut down the command module and used the lunar module as a lifeboat. Mission Control had four flight directors, and Gene Kranz was one of them. The team on the ground worked out a way home with limited power, no cabin heat and little water. All three men splashed down on April 17. NASA calls it a “successful failure.”

They did not fix everything. They ranked it.

I am not going to put words in Kranz’s mouth. What the record shows is behavior. A crisis arrived as a pile of problems, and the team did not attack the pile. They sorted it. What kills the crew first? What kills them next? Who owns each one? Then they worked the top item to done before they let the next one in.

That is the whole answer to how to prioritize tasks under pressure. Rank by consequence, not by noise. The loudest problem in the room is rarely the one that kills you first. Give each problem one owner. Work it to completion. Do not start the next one until the first is closed.

The other half is just as important: nobody guessed. When you are scared and short on time, an assumption feels like progress. On a spacecraft, an assumption is how a bad day becomes a funeral. If a number was not confirmed, it was not a number. It was a hope.

How to prioritize tasks: the part of SMACCC most leaders skip

This is the Actions element of the SMACCC planning process I teach, which you can grab in the free workbook. Situation, Mission, Actions, Contingencies, Command, Communication. Actions are not a to-do list. They are a sequence, in priority order, each with a name beside it.

In the SEAL Teams we planned that way because on a target the order mattered more than the list. Nobody ever died from a short list. People died from doing the fourth thing first. Most business plans I see have the opposite problem. Forty actions, equal weight, no owner, no order. Everything is a priority, which means nothing is. Hope and assumptions fill every gap. Hope and assumptions have no place in the leadership equation.

Apply it this week

1. Pick one live problem. The one on your desk right now. Write every action it needs, no filtering.
2. Rank by consequence. Put a number beside each: what hurts you first if it does not happen? One is the item that kills the mission. Cross out nothing yet. Just order it.
3. One name, one finish line. Put one owner beside the top three and a time they will report done. Then mark every line that rests on an assumption. Verify it or call it what it is.
4. Log it. Four times a day, note which action you worked and whether you finished it before starting the next. That is the homework I give in the course.

Take it to your team

Three questions to read out loud Monday morning. Let the room answer.

1. Question one. Of everything we have in flight right now, which one problem, if solved first, would make the others smaller?
2. Question two. Where are we guessing right now and calling it a plan?
3. Question three. Who owns each of our top three problems, by name, and when do they report back?

Apollo 13 did not end well because of luck. It ended well because a team under the worst pressure of their lives ranked the problems, owned them one at a time, and refused to guess. That is how to prioritize tasks when everything is on fire. This is Moment 08 of Leadership Moments in History. Last week: Nelson at Trafalgar.

Keep your eyes on the target. — Errol