Here's how to prioritize effortlessly
In meetings or every day life.
When prioritizing important decisions it can be difficult to see what’s more important than the other, or what to do first.
Add more people in the mix with different expertise and it will become even more difficult.
Something I love to do is put it in a simple Effort/Impact matrix. Very easy and very effective.
First things first. You need to have a set of tasks/ ideas/ decisions ready before you can move to this matrix.
I would suggest that every expert in the meeting room writes down every idea they have on sticky notes. There are several things to keep in mind:
Each idea goes on a separate sticky note
Use one colour of sticky notes
Use the same marker
We write in silence
Make sure people can read your handwriting
Make sure that what you write down is easy to understand and cannot be interpreted differently
These side notes are important to keep the ideas anonymous.
The next step would be to vote on those ideas. Give everyone 3-4 voting dots and let each participant vote in silence for what they personally think are the top best ideas.
Take the 8-10 top voted ideas and start drawing the effort/ impact matrix on a whiteboard as shown below. You then pick the top voted idea and hover it right in the middle of effort and impact. Ask the participants ‘does this idea have higher or lower impact than where it is now?’ You should only go up or down on the impact axis.
When the impact is just right you do the same way only horizontally. ‘Does this idea have higher or lower effect than where it is now?’ Another way of seeing impact is to put it on a timeframe. High effort means that it would take the team a long time until the idea is finished or started with, low effort means the contrary.
Repeat the same exercise for the next 7-9 top voted ideas. You would get something as shown below.
When looking more closely at the diagram you will see which section you should address first, which steps you should take next and which clearly are not much of importance.
We should take into consideration though that we will probably always underestimate the impact or the effort when deciding. It is therefore crucial to investigate first the cost, timings and everything else before really diving into executing the idea. The matrix does give a strong indication of where to start first.
Good luck!
In my newsletters I will talk about:
How facilitating can improve your workplace
Improve team productivity
Improve happiness at work
Sustainable workplaces
Innovation and Design Thinking
Fixing team collaborations