A newly appointed director of wealth management in a bank was handed an unmanageable portfolio of work. He attempted to gain agreement from the management team on prioritising projects. This proved to be impossible because of conflicting agendas and very differing views as to what was ‘important’. Working with the management team, agreement was gained on the prioritisation criteria whilst ensuring all involved had a common understanding about what was being done and why. This allowed for a significant ‘cleansing’ of the portfolio and acceptance of where scarce resource needed to be deployed.