Episode Description

Imagine a burning building with three people trapped in three rooms. You run to the first and free them halfway, then the second, then the third, then back to the first. You spend all your time running and never fully free anyone. That image is what split focus actually costs an organization, and once you see it, you can't unsee it.

In this solo episode, Sarah walks through how to prioritize when everything feels urgent, drawing on her years as an executive director and her work coaching organizations through it.

In This Episode, You'll Learn

• Why context switching keeps you running from fire to fire without ever fully solving one

• The shortcut to prioritizing: you don't need to understand every problem before you pick the one to solve first

• Why team and money are the two problems that jump the line, and how to decide which comes first when you have both

• Where programs, technology, space, and vision fit in the order of operations, and why visioning rarely comes first

• The fire bucket, and the leadership habit of asking "is there a fire?" instead of "oh no, a fire"

Who This Episode Is For

• Executive directors who inherited a hard situation and feel pulled in five directions at once

• Leaders meeting department by department, problem by problem, without a single clear priority

• Anyone whose days feel like running room to room in a burning building

More on the subject

• Pick one priority, singular, and address it to the point that it no longer needs your focus before moving on

• If you have wrong-fit team members and a money problem, look at the people problem first, since it often frees the resources to fix the money

• Before you treat something as a fire, stop and ask whether it is actually a fire, or something you can let time and space resolve

About Your Host, Sarah Olivieri

Bold, strategic, and refreshingly human…

Sarah Olivieri is the go-to expert for conversations on aligned leadership, outcome delegation, and sustainable growth.She brings wit, warmth, and real-world wisdom to mission-driven founders, visionary CEOs, and change-makers who want more clarity, more joy, and more results.

Most leaders hit a wall when success depends on them holding it all together. Sarah helps them change that by redefining leadership around outcomes instead of activity, empowering teams to own results that scale and freeing leaders to focus on the vision that drives them.

A former director of three nonprofits and founder of five businesses, she has a rare ability to spot opportunity where others see chaos, shift stuck patterns, and build organizations that support both legacy and life.

Sarah leads with the same mindset that made her an award-winning sailor: iterate on what works, stay focused in the storm, and never forget the joy of the journey.

Links

Website: saraholivieri.com LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/sarah-olivieri

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