Explicitly Prioritizing What’s Important

Near the end of the John Doerr video, one of the audience members asks about work/life balance. Doerr then goes on to talk about the partnership’s values. Initially, I thought the values were going to be the core values (e.g. positive, self-starting, and supportive — three of my favorite), but it quickly became clear that these values were how they prioritize life in context of their firm.

Here are the Kleiner Perkins values as presented in the video:

1. Family first
2. Partners
3. Portfolios
4. New ventures
5. Public/community service

While a VC partnership is a different than a startup, explicitly prioritizing what’s important is a great exercise.

What else? How do you prioritize what’s important?